Still sizzling

Here is a recent e-mail exchange that took place among Presiding Pundit's relatives. I changed the names to protect the innocent . . . and the guilty.

----- Original Message -----
From: Dash
Sent:  Saturday, November 21, 2009 9:54 PM
Subject: healthcare
As much as I would like to support Obama on healthcare reform, this bill is 2074 pages of misguided crap.  It disingenuously claims not to raise the deficit, but does so through accounting trickery:
1. it accounts for two years of increased revenue via hiked taxes before subsidies kicks in.  If you adjust the revenue and spending to start at the same time, it is not revenue neutral.
2. In order to get doctors to support it, it prevents scheduled cuts in Medicare payments, but does so by moving the $274 billion in costs into a different bill to hide the issue.
Mainly, it focuses on expanding coverage to the poor yet does nothing to control the ridiculous costs of the existing system. Rather, Obama should focus on cutting costs of the system first. Instead, we are now adding millions of people onto a taxpayer supported system with artificially high costs that benefits lawyers, doctors, insurance and pharmaceuticals. The system sucked long before Obama came to office, but he needs to not add more people onto a broken system. These are real reasons why the democratic bill is crap.  Most of the reasons put forth by the republicans on why the bill is bad (supposed lost jobs, gov't run healthcare, etc) are also disingenuous and false.
Here's the -- http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act.pdf
 
From: Kit
Sent: Sun, November 22, 2009 7:59:33 AM
Subject: Re: healthcare
You obviously have not been reading the Wilsonville Pundit.  Presiding Pundit and Brooklyn Beagle have espoused the health care reform bill with great wisdom - basically, it doesn't matter how much it costs, do it.

From: Dash
Sent: Sun, Nov 22, 2009 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: healthcare
Yep, I can understand the desire for healthcare reform and to fix the terrible existing system.  It's a good idea. The problem is that the order in which reform happens is important. They need to bring costs under control before adding 30-40 million more people to the system. We can't bring the wasted money on the Iraq war into this.  It's irrelevant, as the old saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right!

From: Presiding Pundit
Sent: Mon, November 23, 2009 6:48:41 AM
Subject: Re: healthcare
I have not had a chance to read the entire bill, but the Congressional Budget Office did they actually gave it a good rating.  Here is their report: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/107xx/doc10731/Reid_letter_11_18_09.pdf

We have a very small window of time in which to get this done.  If we don't do it now, the republicans and health insurance companies will make sure it will never get done.  I don't care how much it costs, it is necessary.  It is the moral thing to do.  We should be ashamed as a country that we have not done this until now.  All of the other western countries have universal health care.  Due to greed, we are the lone holdout.  I don't think that one can ignore the money spent on the Iraq war, all of the money that went into the pockets of Dick Cheney and his friends and how we almost lost our freedoms because of their assault on our constitutional rights.  The people who supported and voted for Bush/Cheney TWICE are the same people who rant, rave and lie (or are eager to believe the lies) about Barak Obama and the Democrats' efforts to provide good quality health care to all Americans.  According to Harvard Medical School researchers, 45,000 people per year (that's one person every 12 minutes) die due to lack of adequate health care because they do not have insurance.  No matter what the cost, we do not have the moral right to refuse to change a system that sees fit to let people die due to lack of health insurance. 

From: George
Sent: Mon. November 23, 2009 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: healthcare
I intend to organize and track local, state and federal officials that vote "yes" or "present" to any part of this stupid idiotic spending spree and, accordingly, oppose in any and every way possible their continuation in public office.  These people have to be stopped.  We can't community organize and spend our way out of this mess.  Stop the spending; send the special interest groups, unions, bleeding heart AH insurance companies and, especially, the ever loving litigating Washington lawyers to hell.  I am serious.  I hate them all.  I do not trust anyone right now. Not even Sarah and particularly anyone that claims they are a democrat or republican.

From: Dash
Sent: Mon, November 23, 2009 9:45:08 AM
Subject: Re: healthcare
By adding on tens of millions to the existing system, it will only make service worse and pump more money into the doctors, insurance and legal industries. This makes them more powerful and means that it will be even harder to control costs in the future.  Why else would the corporations be lining up behind this bill?  It funnels taxpayer money, which we will have to borrow at high rates, to these industry groups by way of 30-40 million people who otherwise couldn't afford it. Instead, wouldn't it be better to get the skyrocketing costs down first, and then afterward move to implement broad coverage?  To me they have this backwards. It's akin to guaranteeing everyone the right to subsidized gasoline when prices are $5 a gallon.