Paul's Totally Simple Health Care Plan

by: Paul Rosenberg

Wed Aug 12, 2009 at 00:00


(1) Have everyone opposed to socialized medicine sign a waiver, relinquishing their Medicare coverage.

(2) Extend Medicare coverage to everyone currently without health insurance.

(3) Sit back & have a beer.

If this isn't an open thread, I don't know what is.
Paul Rosenberg :: Paul's Totally Simple Health Care Plan

Tags: , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email
Paul's Totally Simple Health Care Plan | 42 comments
And when all the dufuses finally figure out (4.00 / 2)
that their health care, Medicare, their that they love, is government run, they will be screaming and crying because they signed it away.

And since it is an open thread... I need to rant.  Ed Schultz ought to be called on the carpet by liberals for his blantant display of sexism today.  As he bonded with wingnut Tom Tancredo when they tittered over "Hillary's tantrum", I was nauseated.   How can a liberal man still be so blind to sexism:  his tease:  Hillary's "tantrum"  and "the normally cool Tiger Woods loses it....why?
Translation: an angry woman (who's been dealing with sexism in a part of the world where rape is acceptable) is like a toddler while a man's anger is rigteous cause some one cause it.

He and Tancredo acted like two thugs in a locker room.....and only Bill Press called Schultz on his sexism.

Schultz (4.00 / 1)
Schultz is a conservative who changed is mind.  He is useful because he can speak to conservatives and get them to open up to liberal ideas.  That is very valuable.

But he ain't no liberal's liberal and is still conservative in many ways.

[ Parent ]
With friends like that (0.00 / 0)
you end up with Blue Dogs...worse than GOP , in that, at least GOP tells you to your face that they just do not care...
[ Parent ]
All the 50-60 something white guys (4.00 / 2)
talked as though Hillary was out of line.  

I tend to think that their reaction isn't typical of anything but Versailles foppery.  

[ Parent ]
Dude! Let's Open Eyeman World! Tim Eyeman (4.00 / 2)
has run all these anti-tax initiatives, successfully, in washington state cuz:

1. our overly polite leafy neighborhood dems can't relate to anyone but their leafy neighborhood friends, therefore they're incapable of defeating eyeman / raygun style lies.

2., 3., 4., see #1.

Anyhoo - when I hit the big lottery, I'm gonna go to eastern washington and buy 640 acres of dust, and then I'm going to buy an initiative called Eyeman World.

ANYONE AND EVERYONE who does NOT want to pay taxes can stop paying taxes. You just take your ass, and ONLY pre-industrial technology, and you'll be dropped off at the edge of Eyeman World, and you can do WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT WHENEVER YOU WANT - FOREVER.

Go for it.

Since government has had its fingers in our economy since the begining of time, you can NOT have any of the toys of technology or industry, cuz, indirectly, gov't enforced bill gates crooked monopoly, or the railroads free land that transported the iron and the steel, so you ain't getting ANY modern tools!

fuck 'em.

rmm.  

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way

Ah, ship 'em all to Hanford (4.00 / 3)
with a free supply of plastic bags and some seed corn to grow their own unregulated nucluyar food. Tell 'em the best land glows at night. Throw in some farmed salmon with extra mercury.

That man is such a douchebag. I literally don't get these radical libertarians. All hypocrites and cowards hiding behind a piece of paper and ranting on about the 10th Amendment. They say that they'd rather die as proud self-reliant individuals than be nanny stated by teh evil big guvmint. But the second the actually need it, they demand to be catered to, saying oh, that's different. Nothing more despicable than someone who lies for a living and is proud of it.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
not hanford, kovie. (4.00 / 1)
that's far too close to me.

south yemen?

[ Parent ]
Just the glowingest part (4.00 / 2)
Do we hate South Yemen that much? I'm thinking North Korea or Waziristan.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton
[ Parent ]
deal. (4.00 / 1)
waziristan it is.

in the back of my mind i hear a little voice saying:  "you guys are gonna be screwed once all the randian exceptionalists are gone."  just kidding.  adios bastards.

*didn't john mccain actually put his boots on the ground in waziristan?  he might actually know their leader as well.  obama can't say that.

*debates 2008

[ Parent ]
Great timing, Paul (0.00 / 0)
you post an Open Thread after I post this on the previous thread:
http://www.openleft.com/showCo...
Love (4.00 / 2)
the Plan!
Me too, except I'd tighten up the language on point #1 (4.00 / 2)
Have everyone opposed to socialized medicine sign a waiver, relinquishing their Medicare coverage.

I'd also like that waiver to give them the power to take away medicare from their family members who have it - force them turn their parents out into the cold private insurance industry market. Let 'em take a bite of that sandwich.  

[ Parent ]
Your plan is not progressive enough for me (4.00 / 3)
And I must oppose it unless the beer is also socialized and subsidized by the government, but in a way that doesn't just throw money at large beer corporations.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both
No way! (0.00 / 0)
Rum?  Sure.  Tequila?  Please send me my government supplied bottle.

But beer?  Bleh.

But I am willing to compromise...

[ Parent ]
What about a "Buy American" provision? (0.00 / 0)
You can choose beer, rum, tequila, and perhaps a few other options, but it has to be an American-owned brand made primarily of U.S.-grown ingredients.

I'm not sure how that affects your options.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

[ Parent ]
Yeah, there you go again! Discriminating us poor Krauts. (0.00 / 0)
As if the recession hadn't hit us hard enough, you now wanna ruin one of our last export products that still make a profit: Beck's beer! Grrr....

;-)

[ Parent ]
Large American Corporations have bought all the Tequila companies in Mexico. (0.00 / 0)
I am sure that the fraudulently installed "president" of Mexico couldn't care less.

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.
[ Parent ]
Hey! I think you are stealing my material! (0.00 / 0)
Just kidding, but I've thought something similar to number one for a long time.
I love good (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
I don't need the stinking guvmint (4.00 / 3)
getting between me and my insurance company. If they want to deny me essential coverage or rescind my plan when I'm on my deathbed, then that's their constitutional right and it says so right there in the whatsit amendment, right next to the part where it says that Kenyan abortion doctors shouldn't be allowed to be born in Hawaii and Sarah Palin is Jesus.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton
This is not far from what I heard out of my local telephone town hall. (4.00 / 1)
Apparently, because health care is not mentioned in the constitution, we can never, ever have it, and somehow it is felonious (?) for a congress member to put forth a health care plan giving his stated mission to uphold the constitution. I'm not sure what his understanding of what a congress member does is given by that logic they aren't endowed with the authority to make any laws. Is it also felonious not to make laws if your stated mission is to make laws? Oh, the fun of living in a politically divided county!  
[ Parent ]
Not exactly (4.00 / 1)
It goes back to the framing of the constitution and the debates between the Federalists, who propounded an expansive view of the government's powers that granted it "implied" powers not expressely enumerated in the constitution, and the anti-Federalists, who propounded a much more limited one that only had the specific powers spelled out in the constitution. The latter got some concessions, the biggest being the Bill of Rights, but the former effectively won out, both in the final document that was ratified, and in how the courts, congress and the executive have interpreted it over the centuries.

If we were to follow the anti-Federalists' strict reading of the constitution, we couldn't have the following:

Air Force
Space Program
EPA
Social Security
Unemployment
Medicare
Medicaid
FEMA

I'm sure that others more expert on this centuries-long debate can provide better examples and a more substantive explanation. But the gist of it is that they're carrying on a debate that was effectively settled 200 or so years ago, and which in any case would have rendered the federal government impotent and pointless. We might as well be debating evolution.

And, in a way, we are, in more ways than one.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
My Favorite Is The Air Force (0.00 / 0)
I've mentioned this on several occasions.

When conservatives want to dismiss "promote the general welfare" as, well, whatever their excuse is, then I say, "Same goes for 'provide for the common defense,' then.  So where does it say anything about an air force?"

I really do think it would be quite amusing to start a movement to abolish the air force on "constitutional" grounds.

Though not as much fun as a Biblical war on Red Lobster.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Actually (0.00 / 0)
I recently read somewhere that there's a SCOTUS ruling that held that the preamble (where the "provide for the general welfare" clause is contained) is not a part of the constitution that is controlling. However, I'm more than content with Hamilton and Madison's "implied powers" doctrine, given that we have various checks and balances that, in theory at least, protect us against abuses of this doctrine (and when such checks and balances fail, as they recently did and really still do, it's not this doctrine that enables that, but rather sheer contempt for the entire document, and the will and means to ignore it).

The constitution is not a dead letter. Enumerated powers is a dead idea.

Well, for sane people, at least.

And we really do need to abolish that unconstitutional congressional health insurance.

An abomination!

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
The issue isn't enumerated versus unenumerated (0.00 / 0)
But after this crap, forget about it! For John Mackey to design this false image of Whole Foods as a "progressive" company while simultaneously trying to kill both Employee Free Choice AND real health care reform is simply outrageous. It's bad enough for them to deny their employees the right to consider organizing into unions, but this takes the company to another level... One I thought was reserved for Wal-Mart.

Support a Pennsylvania Progressive for Governor - Joe Hoeffel
[ Parent ]
I did not write this (n/t) (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
Huh? (0.00 / 0)


"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton
[ Parent ]
The issue isn't enumerated versus unenumerated (0.00 / 0)
It's the Necessary and Proper Clause:

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Which means, you can't just look to the rest of Article I, Section 8 ("the foregoing Powers"). The Constitution clearly enumerates that there are further powers, but leaves it to constitutional politics to determine what the scope of those powers are. It does not tell us what they are, but that doesn't mean that there are no limits either.  Hamilton and Madison were generally arguing about the scope of this clause when they dealt with implied powers.


Support a Pennsylvania Progressive for Governor - Joe Hoeffel

[ Parent ]
Of course there are limits to such power (0.00 / 0)
But such limits are not indicated by the powers that are explicitely enumerated, per se. They are indicated by various parts of the constitution, in a positive sense by the broad powers granted to the governement (e.g. "common defense"), and in a negative sense by the Bill of Rights and other explicit constraints, the interpretation of both being left to posterity.

Put another way, the constitution grants X enumerated powers, but doesn't specify how these powers are to be implemented, which is where implied powers come in. E.g. "common defense" can mean an air force, if needed and otherwise constructed in compliance with the constitution, even though no such specific department is mentioned in the constitution. An air force is implied by this general power. Or so have the courts interpreted the constitution over the years. However, there are no such implied powers outside of these X explicit general powers. They are all contained within these powers, as natural derivations of them.

Furthermore, the Bill of Rights and other parts of the constitution place specific constraints on these explicit and implied powers--these constraints themselves leading to various implied constraints, e.g. the prohibition against electronic spying on citizens without a warrant and just cause, a specific instance of spying which the framers couldn't have envisioned but which clearly derives from the 4th Amendment.

The way I look at it is that the framers envisioned a set of federal powers that were "deeper" than the specific powers explicited stated in the constitution and which were implied by them, but were nevertheless still contained within these explicit powers, and thus not infinite. And, to reduce the chances that these "deeper" powers would be overinterpreted in potentially tyrannical ways, they added the Bill of Rights, which itself contains "deeper" implied rights. A quite brilliant framework for government, guarding against too much, and too little, federal power, that in the right hands can work wonders (and in the wrong hands...).

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
Oops, neeeeever mind, my mistake (0.00 / 0)
I forgot Article I of the constitution, section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Close enough, no?

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
I would go even further, and add a point (4.00 / 1)
1b)Give those who sign that waiver a tax credit equaling the amount of money the government averagely paid for them over the years. Good luck for finding a private insurance at this price on the market!
Can they also exempt themselves from taxation? (0.00 / 0)

Sure, (4.00 / 1)
so long as they give up their American citizenship to someone else who would appreciate it. If you're not willing to pay for America, you don't deserve to live here.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
there's already a simpler plan in place (4.00 / 1)
That's fraud in advertising, and also horrible discrimination! (0.00 / 0)
You're right in raising public awareness about this shocking Scandal. Americans deserve better than this! Firstly, of course the stuff should correctly be called "Soylent White". "Green" implies a purely natural product, which is totally misleading in this case, since everybody knows the raw material is full of artificial vitamins, aspirin, and other drugs, sometimes even Botox!

And then, people deserve to have a choice, and so there also should be "Soylent Black", "Soylent Yellow", "Soylent Red" etc. Nobody should have this allegedly "green"  stuff forced down his/her throat. Freedom is just another word for being able to buy the Soylent that you like!

[ Parent ]
"green" tested better (0.00 / 0)
.
Perhaps because, so far, there are no green people. And we'd rather not know what, or who, is in our feed.

On the other hand, as the Marine Corps says, "We're all green here." If you're so concerned about what other people are going to be eating, do some sit-ups. Ooo-rah.
.

[ Parent ]
Leftist plagarizes Health Care Solution (0.00 / 0)
I call prior:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress....

marc sobel Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
There is a simple solution to this whole thing. If the 27% of those who don't want the government interfering are taken off medicare, that would allow enough savings to fund healthcare for the uninsured. close snark

If I sign the waiver, do I get a tax break? (4.00 / 1)
I mean, why should I pay my hard-earned dollars to support some DFH who is trying to force me to drink beer?  

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
health care (4.00 / 1)
I can't support this without 'Death Panels'.
With all the guns people are bringing (4.00 / 1)
and physical rousting going on--I say, everyone HAS to bring a weapon and kill at least one person...

Progressives wouldnt be there and we could push thru HR676 when y'all are gone....cuts down on costs from the get go, too...

It does have a certain "Darwinesque" appeal...n/t (4.00 / 1)

[ Parent ]
As those Guinness guys would say.... (0.00 / 0)
Brilliant!
Paul's Totally Simple Health Care Plan | 42 comments
Donate to Open Left







QUICK HITS

Friends of the Earth thanks the OpenLeft community for the ideas you generate and your contributions to the progressive movement.
As an anti-spam measure, there is a 24-hour waiting period after registering before new users can comment.
blog advertising is good for you
blog advertising is good for you
LIBERAL INSTITUTIONS
STATE BLOGS
SEARCH

   

Advanced Search

Home | RSS/XML Feed | Register | Contact

  © OpenLeft 2007-2009, Powered by SoapBlox