Pat Oliphant for June 24, 2009

Senor, only if we work together and stand up. http://www.aarp.org/issues/dividedwefail/ You will find this link has unusual bed fellows.

Oh, don’t worry about the insurance companies. They’ve weathered storms before. They’ll try every trick in the book to make sure they come out on top. Hmmmm….. I guess you /should/ worry about them.

Once again Pat’s got it right. 75% of the American public want a public health care option.

And I would indeed love to see the insurance companies driven out of business, as the guy on the right suggests.

In Japan, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit. Let’s try that.

“mivins said,

In Japan, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit. Let’s try that.”

we did about 40 years ago…..health insurance was not-for-profit

Health insurance should be like public utilities- not for profit.

“I cant think of a worst way to make money (off the sick and dieing) unless it’s making money off of orphanages.”

I, unfortuantely, can…or at least, of equal “badness”:

Making money off of wars.

Those people saying “butt out” in this cartoon are the reason healthcare costs have gotten out of control. Take that an add the haphazard way most Americans take care of their health. It is cheaper to maintain it than to wait until its broken and then try to fix it. All of this leads to our healthcare now.

If the lobbyists are not at least severely reigned in or elimiated from the process altogether and Americans don’t start taking preventative medicine seriously then the “public option”, no matter how good it is or how many people it helps will be unsustainable.

Why is it so easy for people to see the “pie in the sky” but forget so quickly that you’ll get what you pay for and someone has to pay for it.

If you think just the rich are, you’d better do some math. The richest man in the world to date has 40 billion dollars to his name. President Obama calls 600 billion dollars a “down payment” on healthcare. Someone see a problem here?

Oldlegodad, here’s the problem. Some of us serve our communities in ways that are not military. And if everyone were professional military, who would do anything else? The military is meant to be a small part of the population, yet it consumes the largest part of the budget – far bigger by percentage than any other country.

Why should the small business owner, once the backbone of this country, be made to suffer? Why should the countless selfless others, who work innumerable hours for chicken feed to make their communities better, not also receive healthcare the way you do.

Just in case you’re Christian, please realize that selfishness is not a Christian value.

senor: I was actually on vacation. :-)

Did Dred get kicked off? How come? I’m still with the questions, senor.

I do hope oldlegodad is just being sarcastic. In my experience, people who do feel that way wants their piece of the government pie, but it utterly unwilling to share with anyone else.

Screw what the government promised anyone 50 years ago. /I’m/ paying for it with /my/ tax dollars /now/. If you’re collecting from the government coffers that I contribute to and refuse to let those in need collect some small tid-bit, then you owe me a refund.

@Jase & others: Here’s the editing FAQs for GoComics; (http://home.comcast.net/~ccdesan/Pibgorn/StyleGuide.html). Not obvious, but useful at times.

oldlego, sigh. You got me.

But you’re right about listening to fennec.

Keep the problem in the pocket of the business man.

Re: cdward - “Just in case you’re Christian, please realize that selfishness is not a Christian value.”

Neither is neither is confiscating the earnings of one to give to another. I’m fairly sure that charity is voluntary.

Taxes are not confiscation. If you want to live in a state of nature, go ahead. The rest of us realize there is a cost to be paid to maintain our infrastructure. And incidentally, we have one of the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world.

The heck with lobbyists!!! Those bloody politicians have more to lose if they don’t push this down our throats then the lobbyists do. Universal Health care will be twice nothing, and twice nothing is less than nothing. (So says a person currently without health insurance.) They messed up Medicaid and Medicare. Who in their sane minds expects them to get it right when it’s bigger and easier to misappropriate OUR money?