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Tue 10 Jul, 2007 08:40 pm
That's right; I said it. The movie was witty and the point was driven all the way home and then some. "Who are we?" was/is a very powerful question. Only Western country left? What are we friggin retarded? My hat is off to Michael Moore. I'd like to buy him a drink. So there.
I agree Bill. It doesn't matter which end of the political rainbow you are on because our health care distribution screws everyone except the insurance companies, their lobbyists and a few politicians. Moore focuses on the system as a whole, but I'm your typical uninsured American. My husband and I run a successful business and we employee about 6 people. We can't afford health insurance for ourselves or our employees. We make too much to qualify for state insurance for small business owners (it's capped at $33,000 per household, not per person) and we do not make enough to afford private insurance (@$8,000 per year for the two of us). I know too many talented people working for Big Box stores just for the insurance. We have lost good employees for this very reason. Often these people find out the insurance they have from these rotten jobs is inadequate when they need it.
People cannot afford to start a business unless their spouse has insurance to cover the family. Others are stuck in a job they hate because they need the health insurance. We are destroying American entrepreneurship with our fear of change. We need to stop seeing this issue as a Socialist Boogie Monster and demand it become a government priority.
I'll join you when you have that drink and I'll even pay for the second round (make mine a club soda with lime).
I'm aghast, stupefied and amazed! OCCOM BILL, the ultra Conservative??? The Bush-loving, Limbaugh-listening, Dr Laura preaching OCCOM BILL? Perhaps there is hope for this world after all!!!
Haven't you heard, O'BILL? Moore is fat, and so he is not to be taken seriously. Didn't you get the memo from the RNC?
Good grief. I don't think that you understand Bill at all.
I have not seen the movie. Never wanted to see any of Moore's earlier ones, but from what I have read about this one, it might be worth a look-see.
Hokie Bird- Great clip. It simply states what I have known all along. IMO, most people have money for what they want, and if beer and cigarettes are a priority over health insurance, it is the health insurance that is not bought.
That's nothing particularly new. People who earn a lot can't be bothered to pay into health insurance, because they assume they'll be able to pay for whatever comes up out of their pockets. And young people think that getting sick or ending up in a hospital is something that only happens to other people.
But no matter why somebody is uninsured, he'll still have to get treatment in case of an emergency. So you could either make an argument that
- somebody without insurance shouldn't get treatment, or
- getting an insurance should be mandatory
Very good find HokieBird.
Green Witch- Before I went on Medicare (which sucks, big time) I had to pay my own individual health insurance. It cost me $10,000 a year for 5 years. So you may say that I could afford it. Maybe so, but that meant that I could not afford something else with the money that I paid for the insurance.
I put a high priority on health insurance, maybe because my past experience with medical bills have made me aware of how important being insured is. I would rather do without some luxury, than leave myself open to medical bills that I can't pay.
Speaking of Medicare, having been on it, the only thing that I can say is that it runs as well as the Post Office. I think that what has ruined health care are the HMOs, but that is for another thread. I could go on forever about HMOs.
"Who are we?" It is the right question, bill. There is a seriously influential strain of modern conservative ideology which holds that Mr. Scrooge had it right
before the three spectral visitations. Or that the real hero of "It's a Wonderful Life" is Mr. Potter, not the bleeding-heart redistributionist and immigrant-loving George Bailey.
Quote:Yesterday I came across this terrific passage from Michael Walzer, regarding an argument made by Irving Kristol in the early 1970s:
"At the very center of conservative thought lies this idea: that the present division of wealth and power corresponds to some deeper reality of human life. Conservatives don't want to say merely that the present division is what it ought to be, for that would invite a search for some distributive principle -- as if it were possible to make a distribution. They want to say that whatever the division of wealth and power is, it naturally is, and that all efforts to change it, temporarily successful in proportion to their bloodiness, must be futile in the end."
http://mediamatters.org/altercation/?f=h_column#note1
We'll note that this non-amateur production was posted by healthpolitics. If you link to that fellow's site
http://www.healthpolitics.org/ you'll find, down at bottom left, the following note...
Quote:Health Politics is supported
by the Pfizer Medical
Humanities Initiative
blatham wrote:
We'll note that this non-amateur production was posted by healthpolitics. If you link to that fellow's site
http://www.healthpolitics.org/ you'll find, down at bottom left, the following note...
Quote:Health Politics is supported
by the Pfizer Medical
Humanities Initiative
Does that make it untrue in some way? They seemed to give facts to back up their claims that would seem to be easily researchable.
Or, just attacking the source when the message can't be?
blatham wrote:
We'll note that this non-amateur production was posted by healthpolitics. If you link to that fellow's site
http://www.healthpolitics.org/ you'll find, down at bottom left, the following note...
Quote:Health Politics is supported
by the Pfizer Medical
Humanities Initiative
Wrong. Healthpolitics had nothing to do with the video I linked. Nothing.
HokieBird is correct in this. I made the mistake of thinking Blatham actually looked it up. It was directed, written, narrated by Stuart Browning. His website can be found
here.
No mention of
http://www.healthpolitics.org/ there. Where exactly did you get your information Blatham?
Your link to the utube site notes who posted the film there. That's the chappie at healthpolitics.
But thankyou for the quick link to Mr. Browning. An interesting fellow himself.
Hmmmm. I'm not so sure that there isn't an agenda behind this film. I followed the links:
Posted by freemakretcure
Went to freemarketcure and found:
Quote:Web site funded by a generous grant from the Moving Picture Institute (www.thempi.org)
So I went to thempi.org and I would guess by looking at the projects they have given grants to that there is most certainly an agenda despite all their talk about freedom and liberty.
blatham wrote:Your link to the utube site notes who posted the film there. That's the chappie at healthpolitics.
But thankyou for the quick link to Mr. Browning. An interesting fellow himself.
Says it was posted by freemarketcure, Mr. Browning's website.
blatham wrote:Your link to the utube site notes who posted the film there. That's the chappie at healthpolitics.
Look again. It's not the chappie at healthpolitics.
HokieBird wrote:blatham wrote:Your link to the utube site notes who posted the film there. That's the chappie at healthpolitics.
Look again. It's not the chappie at healthpolitics.
He is looking at a link in the side panel which goes to a different movie with the same name. Rather unusual for Blatham to be so careless.
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