GOP weighs anti-gay plank for '04 platform

Angie - There's no question it would create problems. Just off the top of my head (where I keep all my poorly considered ideas), I'd say you'd have to offer benefits in terms of fixed dollars (or fixed percentages) and trust adults to make informed, reasoned decisions as to how to divvy those benefits up amongst multiple partners. Alternatively, people could pay more out of their own pockets for increased benefits.

Scrat, that sounds fair and could work. Excellent thought !

What bothers me about the whole health care thing is that there is not now nor has there been in the recent past any real dialogue on the issue. Hillary Clinton tried to open one and was shot down. Regardless of how one felt about "her plans", at least she opened the subject.

This was an issue during the compensation awarded families of 9/11 victims. It goes beyond health care and taxes.

Thanks!


Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself, but it wasn't the fact that she opened the subject but the specifics of her plan that met with my displeasure.

health care
The only way to achieve an medically and cost effective health care plan is to immediately change the method of payment to health care providers. The first step would be to stop using the term "health insurance" and start referring to it as "Health Care." The insurance Industry must be removed from participation or it will never work. It was Hillary's attempt to control the insurance industry that doomed her maiden effort.

I have over 10 years of experience exploring how to change the US health care delivery system. I have watched everything that my Union employer tried to alert the health care professions and the public during the 1970s and 80s about HMOs and other provider group forms and the effect it would have on the quality and scope of health care. It was so difficult to try to make everyone recognize what was happening, much less prepare to do anything about it to avoid the disaster we are now in.

The only thing that will work is a not-for-profit single-payer health care system that does not include the insurance industry. It will be difficult enough to control the profit motives of the hospital industry.

Until we get the for-profit parties out of the health care system, the conditions we now face will only get worse. The insurance industry will fight to the death to prevent this from happening because they earn huge amounts of money by controlling health care through employer and private health insurance plans. They always cry "poor mouth" about their costs, but its a scam on the public.

If we get the insurance companies out of the picture and convert to a single payer system, it will help small employers as well as large, and everyone will have access to health care services.

I could go on and on, but this is getting too long and I'm getting riled up in frustration over the greed that has caused this situation.

BumbleBeeBoogie

Reposting BBB's health care comments to a new thread
I'm reposting my comments to start a new thread because I think it is an important issue that others may be interested in discussing.

BBB

If I understand Scrat's proposal correctly it would be a two tier system in which the public sector would offer basic coverage and anything beyond that would be covered by supplemental private insurance. That is fair if the basic coverage is adequate.

Not precisely, though that might work. My point was more that if you (employer, state government, federal government, etc.) are going to offer benefits to a spouse, it would make sense to me to offer the same unit of coverage in a multi-spouse situation. It would be the responsibility of the persons involved to decide how to spread that coverage across all spouses, and whether additional coverage--purchased out-of-pocket--were warranted.

Of course, it would make sense to consider whether a multi-spouse union was financially feasible before entering into one. I imagine in today's world that individuals in such a union might each provide their own health coverage.

Oh come on , Scrat. Why are you being a bigot?

Just what is wrong with a little bestiality?

I have heard people say that they love their cats and dogs much more than any human.

And, why would it be wrong for someone to marry his sister?

Consenting adults- right?

And the prohibition against Man-Boy Love. Why, Professor Hobibob, who is an expert on the Middle Ages can tell you that Boys married at 12 and 13 years old in those days.

Why not now?

I think we are far too Puritan a society.

Why, for example, did they dissolve the Necrophilia League?

A perfect example of Puritan disdain for LIBERTY!!

It has been said that the countries of Spain and Italy have reached the reproduction rates which will result in ZPG. More deaths than births and therefore a diminution of numbers in those countries.

Have gays reached ZPG?

I would guess that they have.

That would be possible only if homosexuality were a purely hereditary trait. Clearly, heterosexual couples have homosexual offspring from time to time.

I have no problem with someone choosing to live a homosexual lifestyle. I believe society should grant people that liberty. As I do not think children or animals posses the requisite ability to choose for themselves, I do not think society should grant people the liberty to live zoophilic or pedophilic lifestyles.

Doesn't ZPG mean zero percent growth?

p=population

either way it would seem to indicate that there were equal deaths and births, not more deaths than birth. Of course one needs to take into consideration that there is imegration and emigration.

Scary Gay People Welcome Apocalypse With Hugs, Hot Wet Kisse
Scary Gay People Welcome Apocalypse With Hugs, Hot Wet Kisses
Mark Morford

Whiny hyperventilating little sexless conservative groups plan to use the debate over gay marriage as a catalyst to register millions of equally terrified and homophobic Bible-numbed voters. Organizers from more than two dozen groups, including fun-filled party people from the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Family Association and the Christian Coalition, say they want to make gay marriage the No. 1 social issue in the 2004 election, because there's nothing like rabid homophobia and misunderstanding and outright hate to stir a nation.

"We want to make sure that homosexual marriage is not legal in this
country," whined utterly depressed and secretly visciously horny Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America (formerly known as Desperate Women Without Dildos), a conservative public policy org you should probably right now be just a little bit ashamed to share the same planet with. "This is the very underpinning of civilization. If we remove those foundations, our entire civilization will come crumbling down," she actually said.

Seriously. This is what they actually believe. This is the mindset. Let the love of gay people be legally recognized and our entire civilization is wiped out. Done. Apocalypse. Riots. Chaos. Anal sex. Bestiality porn at Wal-Mart. Lesbians kissing each other in the streets with open mouths and full tongue action. Small European cars. "Queer Eye for the Homophobic Christian Right-Wing Jackass Guy." Open-toed sandals on men. Strap-ons. Leather. Tea.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/10/01/national0207EDT0434.DTL&nl=fix

So, Mark Morford is more entitled to his beliefs than "utterly depressed and secretly visciously horny Sandy Rios"?

I think Mark Morford is a jackass that is stating his opinion in such a way to get national coverage.

The mangled English in the article is enough to make me cringe.

Morford has done a splendid job of making himself look far more stupid than those his hack-job intended to denigrate.

He certainly is energetic, it's just that this kind of journalism is off-putting and it comes from both sides. Now that "throw all the drug addicts into prison" Limbaugh is a drug addict himself, the picture becomes clearer. Those who set themselves up as demigods will eventually expose their feet of clay. It isn't that Medford isn't right in exposing some of those demigods, it's just that his journalistic style is difficult to input without laughing. I would have actually said, "Desperate Women Without Vibrators," but then everything can use some fine tuning.

Show me where Rush Limbaugh said "throw all the drug addicts into prison".