One Ad finally swung me to Kerry

[Kilmer]

I have always voted Republican. I am really surprised how undecided I was and just kept looking for a reason to vote either way. It has been close and I have swung back and forth on almost a daily basis ... until two days ago and...

A freakin Bush negative Ad about Kerry turning our Healthcare into socialism and taking the decision making away from your doctor.

How ignorant and out of touch that was...our health care is already out of the hands of our doctors and in the control of HMO's!!! That is a big reason for the need to reform.

Complete tools.

[Kilmer17]

Smart move. Let Kerry take it away from the HMOs and into the hands of the Govt.

[afparent]

Don't mean to change the subject but you guys have the same username...almost

[Kilmer17]

You know what they say about immitation.......

[codeorama]

Originally posted by Kilmer17

You know what they say about immitation.......

When I first saw this thread, I though you finally lost it....:laugh:

[Kilmer]

Originally posted by Kilmer17

Smart move. Let Kerry take it away from the HMOs and into the hands of the Govt.

Who was saying it was better (although it can't be worse)...I was just pointing out how out of touch the ad actually is. The biggest problem with the Bush admistration seems to be that you can't fix a problem when you don't even understand that one exists.

The off topic...I was actually surprised the name Kilmer by itself as available when I signed up...I figured I would have to go with 17Kilmer or similiar.

[NavyDave]

For a moment there I thought Kilmer17 was seduced by the clueless side of the Force.

[Dexter's Better]

Government run programs = socialism.

Plain and simple.

[portisizzle]

Originally posted by Kilmer

Who was saying it was better (although it can't be worse)...I was just pointing out how out of touch the ad actually is. The biggest problem with the Bush admistration seems to be that you can't fix a problem when you don't even understand that one exists.

The off topic...I was actually surprised the name Kilmer by itself as available when I signed up...I figured I would have to go with 17Kilmer or similiar.

I was in Finland a year ago. They have this real nice government healthcare system. When we went on a bus trip through Helsinki, I learned all I needed to know about government run healthcare.

They pay a yearly flat fee for healthcare. I does not matter if you need a heart transplant or a hangnail removed. Of course this comes at a significant cost as their tax rates a extremely high. Well over 50% of what they earn. But most importantly........

I asked "What happens if you need emergency surgury?" Her answer...... "That is why we have the private hospital down the street."

Kilmer, never believe anyone who says that the grass is greener on the other side. Be assured that at least on the healthcare front it is not.

The best point to consider when looking at government run healthcare.....

Is anyone denied emergency healthcare, ON DEMAND, in our country?

[KevinthePRF]

I almost had a heart attack, until I saw the first reply....whew...

[Joe Sick]

John Kerry's plan for Health Insurance

Affordable health care for all

Affordable, high-quality health care will keep our families healthy, our businesses competitive, and our country strong.

Over the last three years, family premiums have increased by more than $3,512 and prescription drug prices have grown four times faster than inflation. These skyrocketing costs have hurt our economy and forced many families into bankruptcy.

We deserve a president who understands that in America, regular check-ups shouldn't empty family checkbooks - a president who will put people ahead of insurance and drug companies.

John Kerry and John Edwards have a plan to address soaring premiums and cut Americans a break. Their plan will lower family premiums by up to $1,000 a year, cut waste from the system, lower the cost of prescription drugs to provide real relief to seniors, and use targeted tax cuts to extend affordable, high-quality coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every child. And because John Kerry and John Edwards believe that everyone's health is equally important, they will provide all Americans with access to the same coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

To make affordable health care a right - not a privilege - for every American, John Kerry and John Edwards will:

Cut Your Premiums

John Kerry and John Edwards will cut family premiums by up to $1,000. That's $1,000 in real savings people can use to buy groceries, pay the bills, and save for their children's future. And that will mean more jobs and more competitive American businesses.

Cover All Americans With Quality Care

The Kerry-Edwards plan will give every American access to the range of high-quality, affordable plans available to members of Congress and extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every American child. Their plan will also fight to erase the health disparities that persist along racial and economic lines, ensure that people with HIV and AIDS have the care they need, end discrimination against Americans with disabilities and mental illnesses, and ensure equal treatment for mental illness in our health system.

Cut the Cost of Prescription Drugs

The Kerry-Edwards plan will reduce prescription drug prices by allowing the re-importation of safe prescription drugs from Canada, overhauling the Medicare drug plan, ensuring low-cost drugs, and ending artificial barriers to generic drug competition.

Cut Waste And Inefficiency

Today, approximately 25 percent of health care costs are wasted on paperwork and administrative processing. The Kerry-Edwards plan harnesses American ingenuity to cut waste, save billions, and take new steps to ensure patient privacy.

[portisizzle]

Originally posted by Jackson's Ward

John Kerry's plan for Health Insurance

Affordable health care for all

Affordable, high-quality health care will keep our families healthy, our businesses competitive, and our country strong.

Over the last three years, family premiums have increased by more than $3,512 and prescription drug prices have grown four times faster than inflation. These skyrocketing costs have hurt our economy and forced many families into bankruptcy.

We deserve a president who understands that in America, regular check-ups shouldn't empty family checkbooks - a president who will put people ahead of insurance and drug companies.

John Kerry and John Edwards have a plan to address soaring premiums and cut Americans a break. Their plan will lower family premiums by up to $1,000 a year, cut waste from the system, lower the cost of prescription drugs to provide real relief to seniors, and use targeted tax cuts to extend affordable, high-quality coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every child. And because John Kerry and John Edwards believe that everyone's health is equally important, they will provide all Americans with access to the same coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

To make affordable health care a right - not a privilege - for every American, John Kerry and John Edwards will:

Cut Your Premiums

John Kerry and John Edwards will cut family premiums by up to $1,000. That's $1,000 in real savings people can use to buy groceries, pay the bills, and save for their children's future. And that will mean more jobs and more competitive American businesses.

Cover All Americans With Quality Care

The Kerry-Edwards plan will give every American access to the range of high-quality, affordable plans available to members of Congress and extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every American child. Their plan will also fight to erase the health disparities that persist along racial and economic lines, ensure that people with HIV and AIDS have the care they need, end discrimination against Americans with disabilities and mental illnesses, and ensure equal treatment for mental illness in our health system.

Cut the Cost of Prescription Drugs

The Kerry-Edwards plan will reduce prescription drug prices by allowing the re-importation of safe prescription drugs from Canada, overhauling the Medicare drug plan, ensuring low-cost drugs, and ending artificial barriers to generic drug competition.

Cut Waste And Inefficiency

Today, approximately 25 percent of health care costs are wasted on paperwork and administrative processing. The Kerry-Edwards plan harnesses American ingenuity to cut waste, save billions, and take new steps to ensure patient privacy.

.....and John Kerry will make everyone live happily ever after.....

[Kilmer17]

Lot's of "pie in the sky" rhetoric.

I want to know HOW they plan on doing all that they say they can do.

Cut family premiums by 1000.00? HOW?

I agree with their stance on drugs from Canada.

But until they address adequately tort reform, the cost of Healthcare will continue to skyrocket. And allowing the lawyers to police themselves is not just NOT the answer. It's an invitation to make it worse.

[Kilmer]

I guess I did not make my point quite clear enough. I am not for Kerry's Healthcare plan and I honestly think it is too radical to ever become a reality, so my voting for Kerry BECAUSE of his health plan would be pointless.

Personally, I can't stand Kerry...but the Bush administration is so incompetent and out of touch that I can no longer just blindly vote republican.

[portisizzle]

Originally posted by Kilmer17

Lot's of "pie in the sky" rhetoric.

I want to know HOW they plan on doing all that they say they can do.

Cut family premiums by 1000.00? HOW?

I agree with their stance on drugs from Canada.

But until they address adequately tort reform, the cost of Healthcare will continue to skyrocket. And allowing the lawyers to police themselves is not just NOT the answer. It's an invitation to make it worse.

More importantly, how are they going to get that socialist poilcy through the Congress of these United States?!?!?

What is the point of Kerry's rhetoric if he cannot get the legislative branch to pass the plan.

I guess they will try to get it through the legislative back door; just like Row v. Wade.

[portisizzle]

Originally posted by Kilmer

I guess I did not make my point quite clear enough. I am not for Kerry's Healthcare plan and I honestly think it is too radical to ever become a reality, so my voting for Kerry BECAUSE of his health plan would be pointless.

Personally, I can't stand Kerry...but the Bush administration is so incompetent that I can no longer just blindly vote republican.

Please define "incompetent".

[Kilmer17]

You shouldnt blindly vote anything.

But you should realize WHY healthcare costs are ballooning out of control. And take a look at what each candidate is proposing to do to stop it.

Kerry and Edwards favor allowing LAWYERS to police themselves to prevent the frivolous lawsuits that are driving the increase.

Bush wants a major tort reform and stiff penalties for thos who violate the reforms.

Healthcare costs will come down when INS companies dont have to spend BILLIONS defending ridiculous lawsuits.

[Kilmer]

Originally posted by portisbowwow

Please define "incompetent".

Iraq

[Joe Sick]

Good for you Good Kilmer.

Yet another scare tactic and outright misrepresentation of Kerry's plans by the Bush campaign and right-wing reactionists...

From factcheck.org

Bush Mischaracterizes Kerry's Health Plan

Bush claims Kerry's plan puts "bureaucrats in control" of medical decisons, "not you, not your doctor." But experts don't agree with that.

Summary

A Bush ad claims Kerry’s healthcare proposals would put "big government in charge" of medical decisions. In fact, Kerry's plan would leave 97% with the insurance they have now -- while up to 27 million who aren't insured would gain coverage.

Bush's claim turns out to be based on opinions from two conservative advocates whose predictions aren't supported by neutral experts.

Analysis

Bush launched this misleading attack on Kerry's plan in an ad made public Sept. 13, and has been repeating the same idea in nearly every campaign speech since.

"Bureaucrats in Control?"

The ad claims Kerry's health care plan puts "Washington bureaucrats in control. . . Big government in charge. Not you. Not your doctor."

That's grossly misleading. In fact, 97% of Americans who now have health insurance will simply keep the plan they have now, according to projections by the independent, politically neutral health-care research firm The Lewin Group.

And The Lewin Group's vice president, John Sheils, disputes the Bush ad's claim:

Sheils: I don’t see how, in Kerry’s plan, decisions on medical procedures would be made in Washington under any circumstances, under any proposal.

Another health-care financing expert, economist Jeff Lemieux of Centrists.org , calls the claims in the Bush ad "way out of bounds."

Lemieux: There is an increased government involvement in providing health insurance through the expansion of Medicaid.  But interfering between doctors and patients? There is nothing in (Kerry's) reforms that would come close to making that happen - It is just way out of bounds.

In an earlier assessment of the Kerry plan, the nonpartisan Centrists.org found Kerry’s health proposal to be "similar in many ways to a blueprint offered in July by Senate Republican leader Bill Frist," and concluded that Kerry’s proposal tries to achieve “liberal goals" mostly through "conservative means.”

And in fact, a conservative health-care expert,  Robert E. Moffit of the Heritage Foundation, calls the claim in the Bush ad oversimplified "bumper-sticker health policy." Moffitt notes that Kerry's plan would expand existing government programs, mainly Medicaid, to cover more children and low-income workers than at present. He said, "In those government programs, as with private managed care programs, your doctor will be under the same restrictions he is under today. In that respect, Kerry is making no changes in the doctor-patient relationship." He added:

Moffitt: The Kerry plan amounts to an expansion of existing public and private third party payment system; it is not so much a change in policy direction, as a dramatically more expensive version of the status quo; and with its cost, it's the status quo on steroids. In other words, it's weirdly "conservative," in the worst sense of that word.

Moffitt did predict that Kerry's plan would lead to "much higher levels of federal regulation," but chiefly on employers and insurance providers rather than doctors or patients. Kerry's plan envisions reducing the cost to workers of existing private health coverage by having the federal government pick up 75% of the cost of "catastrophic" medical bills exceeding $30,000 per year. That would require federal oversight to audit claims and define what medical procedures can be counted toward that $30,000 threshold, Moffitt said. But that's not the same thing as putting "big government in charge" of decisions now made by doctors and patients, as the Bush ad claims.

We also went to Kenneth Thorpe for his assessment. Thorpe was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy during the Clinton administration, and is now a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, where he has studied both the Kerry and Bush health plans. He says Bush is just making up the claim in the ad:

Thorpe: This is just a fabrication.. . . .  Kerry’s plan simply builds on what people are enrolling in today. The (Bush) big-government claims are just the same old scare tactics.

Thorpe says Kerry's plan includes providing private health insurance for small businesses and their workers through a program modeled on the Federal Employees Benefits Health Plan, the program that currently provides a wide choice of coverage for federal workers and members of Congress. "You can choose whatever you want," Thorpe says. "It’s the consumer’s choice."

Bush's Backup

When asked to back up their ad, Bush campaign officials point to two editorial articles written by conservative advocates for Medical Savings Accounts, the approach Bush favors.

One article is by John C. Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, which describes itself as an organization developed to "promote private alternatives to government regulation and control." Goodman's article states that under Kerry's plan, "Most people would be forced from the private health plans they have today," a statement that is contradicted by the politically neutral Lewin Group's study we cited earlier.

Lewin's vice president John Sheils told FactCheck.org that his computer model projects that only 8.2 million (of the 243 million who currently have private or government health insurance) would change their insurance plans under Kerry's plan. And even those who would change would be covered either by Medicaid, in which 70% still have fee-for-service coverage that leaves them free to choose their own doctor, or subsidized private insurance coverage.

We asked Goodman to explain how he could predict that "most" would change insurance when the Lewin computer projection showed that 97% wouldn't change. "Well you know, I haven’t carefully read the Lewin study," Goodman said. "I’m surprised that they said that."

The second article cited by the Bush campaign is by David Gratzer of the conservative Manhattan Institute , but his article mainly urges Republicans to make the political argument that Kerry's plan involves more government control:

Gratzer: Kerry's proposal would nationalize catastrophic coverage. Couple this with his endorsement of drug reimportation, and it becomes clear that a Kerry administration would end up running and setting the price of much of American health care.

Republicans, thus, are presented with a short-term opportunity. Kerry has painted a trillion dollar target on his back. . . . If Washington is in the business of covering catastrophic health expenses, how long before it manages all expenses?

That's not a fact, of course, it's Gratzer's opinion. And it's not shared by the experts we quoted earlier.

A 1.5 trillion price tag?

The Bush ad gives Kerry's plan a "1.5 trillion dollar price tag" and the figure is shown twice on screen during the ad.  What the ad doesn't say is that the figure covers a full 10 years, and that it's the highest of three independent estimates issued so far. The figure comes from a study by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative, pro-business think tank in Washington.

But as we've previously reported, the Bush campaign originally quoted a study by Ken Thorpe of Emory University, who estimates the total cost of Kerry's plan to be $653 billion over 10 years. A third study released later by The Lewin Group concluded that Kerry's plan would cost about $1.25 trillion over 10 years.

The estimates all agree that Kerry's ambitious and expensive plan would provide health coverage for a large portion of the 45 million who currently lack it. The American Enterprise Institute put the figure of those who would gain insurance at 24 million, the Lewin Group put it at 25 million and Thorpe is estimating 27 million.

[troyster]

Originally posted by Jackson's Ward

John Kerry's plan for Health Insurance

Affordable health care for all

Affordable, high-quality health care will keep our families healthy, our businesses competitive, and our country strong.

Over the last three years, family premiums have increased by more than $3,512 and prescription drug prices have grown four times faster than inflation. These skyrocketing costs have hurt our economy and forced many families into bankruptcy.

We deserve a president who understands that in America, regular check-ups shouldn't empty family checkbooks - a president who will put people ahead of insurance and drug companies.

John Kerry and John Edwards have a plan to address soaring premiums and cut Americans a break. Their plan will lower family premiums by up to $1,000 a year, cut waste from the system, lower the cost of prescription drugs to provide real relief to seniors, and use targeted tax cuts to extend affordable, high-quality coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every child. And because John Kerry and John Edwards believe that everyone's health is equally important, they will provide all Americans with access to the same coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

To make affordable health care a right - not a privilege - for every American, John Kerry and John Edwards will:

Cut Your Premiums

John Kerry and John Edwards will cut family premiums by up to $1,000. That's $1,000 in real savings people can use to buy groceries, pay the bills, and save for their children's future. And that will mean more jobs and more competitive American businesses.

Cover All Americans With Quality Care

The Kerry-Edwards plan will give every American access to the range of high-quality, affordable plans available to members of Congress and extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every American child. Their plan will also fight to erase the health disparities that persist along racial and economic lines, ensure that people with HIV and AIDS have the care they need, end discrimination against Americans with disabilities and mental illnesses, and ensure equal treatment for mental illness in our health system.

Cut the Cost of Prescription Drugs

The Kerry-Edwards plan will reduce prescription drug prices by allowing the re-importation of safe prescription drugs from Canada, overhauling the Medicare drug plan, ensuring low-cost drugs, and ending artificial barriers to generic drug competition.

Cut Waste And Inefficiency

Today, approximately 25 percent of health care costs are wasted on paperwork and administrative processing. The Kerry-Edwards plan harnesses American ingenuity to cut waste, save billions, and take new steps to ensure patient privacy.

Most people who are voting Kerry are doing it because they don't like Bush or his policies. You are one of the few I've seen who actually seems to idolize Kerry. Do you really read a piece of drivel like that and think it means anything? All I saw in there that wasn't empty promises was a plan to allow importing drugs from Canada.

Do you actually buy into stuff like this, "The Kerry-Edwards plan harnesses American ingenuity to cut waste, save billions, and take new steps to ensure patient privacy." How exactly do you harness ingenuity to save billions? Is it like harnessing a horse?

C'mon man, both of these candidates are full of it when it comes to this kind of thing.

[Kilmer17]

So explain how he plans on offering more and and charging less?

Details. They're the devil.

[portisizzle]

Originally posted by Kilmer

Iraq

What exactly about Iraq?

[KevinthePRF]

Originally posted by portisbowwow

What exactly about Iraq?

Just name your number of Extremeskins thread links and we can update you...50? 100? We've been chatting about it awhile now.

[Kilmer]

Originally posted by portisbowwow

What exactly about Iraq?

Well...for one...the fact that we were safer as Americans with a corraled Saddam in control than the militant Islamic factions that will end up with control after the Iraqi elections.

Not to mention that the entire basis for the war was false and many American's have died based upon fabrication and lies...or just incompetence if we actually thought Saddam had the WMD.

[Dan T.]

Cool. Dueling Kilmers.