States by nature know their needs and money options better than the federal government. Let the people of the states vote on it, and let each state decide whats best for them. Such is the nature of Federalism. Coercing states into accepting something they dont want nor cant afford does not seem like a suitable option.

After all, what California wants might not be what Virginia wants, and what works best for Nevada might not work at all or South Carolina or New Hampshire. At least this way, you get to let states be the laboratory to see if this stunt will actually work, as opposed to gambling with everyone’s taxes…interesting move by Reid, lets see how this turns out, but this “solution” at least seems tenable…but, we’ll have to wait and see…

And I suppose Florida will opt out. In which case, my spouse and I will opt out of Florida (and take our 5 degrees in quantitative disciplines, middle class income and tax revenue with us).

Your going to see a party line adoption and rejection of the public option based on politics and control rather than the needs of the people.

Hopefully, it will help people recognize the absurd, power hungry absurdity of right wing ideology.

How about the You Folks In Congress can Kiss My Ass Option?
I mean, if your going to have a Public Health Care Program, Why not have the President, Congress, The Senate and the Supreme Court on the same program that Ole John Q, Smith has..
Until then, I’m sticking with the Kiss My Ass Option..
Oh, in about 18 months, I’m betting Ken Starr comes back to Washington D. C. to start sniffing around..

Oh America, why can’t you be bold domestically? Oh right… corporate money.

Jed Clampett

Sadly, I can’t say I trust Harry Reid at all, he’s proven himself to be cheap… as in, it only takes a little bribe to get a large return in favorable legislation. This is no different. We’re being bamboozled and the leadership is helping the Flim-Flam man.

Remember me talking about the Reich Wingers being fake victims… tossing sand in peoples face and then acting the victim when their targets defend themselves.
They will lie, confuse, distort the truth, misrepresent, exaggerate, steal, and even kill if necessary.
After the attacks on our economic system by the Taliban and Al-Qaida, who were actually trained and deployed by Pakistan, the Bush administration helped them to the tune of Billions yearly, ensuring that our enemies would be well funded so the war could last a long time and treasury money could flow rapidly into the coffers of weapons companies and all the other businesses ’supporting the war effort’(keeping the war going is more apt). Even more amazing, they were allowed to grow poppies to and produce opium to fund their insurgency.
Today, those who created the Taliban, Pakistan, are accusing India of funding the group; they are attempting to use the ISI’s war on their own people as a tool to create conflict with their neighbor. I guess now that they have billions of our dollars, they can afford to buy billions of dollars worth of armament from our companies. Sweet deal, no? Don’t you feel safer now? Thanks Bushney.

There’s no limits to what the enemies of humanity will do to create war and chaos and fill their pockets in the process, they are confident they will not be touched and will be secure in their stately palaces.
Perhaps they should be shown the error of their logic.

What does true justice look like? A heart attack for a thief that thought he could enjoy billions stolen from families?

Hey CHENEY, tic toc, tic toc?
If enough of us will it, can we make his black heart explode? Perhaps we are staring at the wrong goats. Clear your mind of verbal thoughts and picture a black heart exploding.

From CBS news, Obama has attended 23 Democratic fundraisers since taking the oath of office, Bush attended 6 in the same time frame.

Obama has also caught Bush in golf outings, but Bush took 34 months to accomplish them.

Jed Clampett

Well, seems we’ve decided that professional pilots that don’t pay attention to their jobs and therefore ‘endanger’ the public, could loose their license to do their jobs and have their careers destroyed.
Now, what is the penalty for financiers, insurers and bankers that do the same at the national level with markets worth trillions of dollars affecting hundreds million people?

I see the trick being this, every state will have to pay in but the bill gives the option of preventing their citizens from using it. No state is going to pass on a public option if its not part of their budget. They could just say it’s a federal program so there would be no political liabilities.

This bill will probably be over 1,000 pages long. Most people could write a whole health care plan in under 2 pages. The one I put on here was around 25 sentences and that included a full blown budget. There is going to be a lot of hidden stuff in it since only the dedicated will actually read it all and that will be weeks or months after the bill was already voted on.

A new report from Reuters lists $800 billion a year in waste.
$200 billion is from fraudulent Medicare claims. The 2009 Medicare budget was $408 billion. That’s a corruption rate of 49%. That’s waste is going to increase if the public option becomes law.

Reid said that tort reform would save another $54 billion a year. I would have to add another $200-$300 billion (Reuters) which is the amount spent on tests to protect doctors from lawsuits.

You REALLY have to question the intelligence of the Dems for putting Harry Reid in charge of anything more complex than making a PB&J sandwich.

Not much different than putting George Bush in charge of anything more complicated than a beer Concession, huh?

Or Cheney in charge of handling firearms.

Or Rumsfeld in charge of battlefield operations.

American politicians… who needs enemies that hate us, our career politicians do enough damage on their own.

Merk:
I agree, but the problem is, If your state Ops Out, Your state is still going to be CHARGED for it. Use it or not, your going to pay for it.
I know, I send my Child to Private School, yet I still pay for Public Education even though I don’t use it.
Sure, I’m already paying for the Un-Insured, But soon and I mean real soon, that’s going to be fixed by DEFAULT,, you know, $1.5 Trillion Dollar Shortfall Per Year..
This Ole House of Cards is about to start Tumblin Down and after it does, the end result will be, You Use, You Pay. You Don’t Pay,, You Don’t Use..
Life is Tuff, like it or not, that baby bird that falls out of the nest is going to get eaten by that rat.
Those Dogs and Cats are going to be put to sleep because No Body Wants Them.
And People who choose not to pay their way are going to suffer until they do.
Hard Love might not be the best Love, but sometimes it’s all the Love some people are going to get.

If you’re sending your kid to private school yet you are still paying your local school portion of taxes, then you are pretty stupid, there are many ways to avoid that tax when you present the receipts for the kids education. Did you really think the people with money would allow themselves to still be taxed for public education when they are spending so much on private schools? You guys really don’t know how badly the system has been corrupted huh?
PARROTS!!

Didn’t some of the governors threaten to opt out of the stimulus package?
Didn’t work out too well for them.

Anon, large difference Bush (and his right to appoint after the Senate approves)was ELECTED by the American People, Reid was elected by a small state and CHOSEN by the Dems for his position.

I beg to differ, he was appointed by the supreme court in his first term… imposed by doctored voting machines in his second.

Neither case, or a lawful election, would give him the right to shop around for military advisers that gave him the opinion he wanted to hear. Scuttle the constitution, or give himself the power to selectively be bound by some laws and not by others.

He took those powers like any despot or tyrant does, by coercion, force or merely ignoring the will of a people under the guise that they are ignorant, easily deceived and can’t be trusted with the truth.

My taxes are already over 20% with state, fed, soc sec, fdcbgiahd etc,too much is too much, I can’t pay for it, the Chinese shouldn’t have to pay for it, let’s get back to defending our country and get off the pipe dreams. Lower our taxes, thta will stimulate the economy

Jed Clampett

Over 20#? ha! What a simp. most middle class people are in a 35% tax bracket. Canadians pay 50% but they get services for that money. Republican elitists have made it to where all you pay for is corporate profits and corporate rescues of mismanaged monsters that are too big to fail.

Before Regan, the very wealthy paid up to 70# in taxes. Republicans switched the tax burden from the elites and corporate pirates to the middle class and poor. Then they allowed industry to go partake of the poverty stricken labor forces of foreign countries in the process laying waste to the tax base and source of good paying trades, allowed them to destroy the environment and increase profits by ignoring environmental laws everywhere, reduced their responsibility by ignoring enforcement of regulations and fines, and prepared the country for making war into a business by increasing spending on the military Industrial complex, ensuring that the business of war would have a thriving market by selling armament to anyone who would pay for it, including evildoers like the Iranians, Pakistanis, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Irasaelis, Contras, and a myriad of terrorists and insurgents throughout the world. Subsequently, Republican’ts that have avoided military service themselves and have vested and secretive interest in the war industrial complex have promoted war and poverty around the world to make sure their investments in killing and destruction would have a steady market in which to profit from both the American public and the poor people all over the world.
If your taxes are at the 20% bracket or below, you are one of the peons that helps pay for the elitists’ lavish lifestyle. congratulations genius, you are a tool for selfish largess and global imperialism. Not only that, they’ve given you a social disease where you have fallen in admiration of those who rape you and steal from you, you are ripe for being sent to kill and die to protect ‘their way of life’.

Pee-ons? I don’t work for them I work for myself. I think you could have condensed it down to three words, “I love taxes”, I like to blame the rich as I steal their money, People get so many great gov services for their 50% taxes,, no they don’t, you don’t know what you are talking about, Taxes = slavery. Tax for protection of our right to freedom, that’s it. Congreemen should be interchangeable volunteers not little proletariats.

Rememeber too big to fail Fannie Mae? Barnei FranK? not republicans.
I’m not a republican or a Democrat they are the Yin and Yang of the status quo. I am for term limits, pay limits on Government, get rid of all the EPA, Fed Reserve and all the other largesse that ate up our gross domestic profit, . You didn’t say it’s okay for Chinese ot foot the bill anywhere in your discussion. The Chinese are flipping hte bill, you knew that right?

Jed Clampett

..Before Regan, the very wealthy paid up to 70# in taxes. Republicans switched the tax burden from the elites and corporate pirates to the middle class and poor….

There you go again Jed, using Liberal myths. From the CBO office.

Tax rates 1979
Top 1% paid 37% of income in Federal income taxes.
Poorest Quintile paid 8%

Tax Rate 2005
Top 1% paid 31% of income in Federal income taxes.
Poorest Quintile paid 4%

Now where Jed’s myths are completely debunked;

1979 Top 1% paid 15% of total federal tax liabilities
Poorest Quintile paid 2%

2005 Top 1% paid 28% of total federal tax liabilities
Poorest Quintile paid 0.8%

In math Jed can understand. Top 1% of this country are paying almost TWICE as much of the total federal tax bill they did in 1979 and the poorest are paying less than half what they did in 1979!

There is nothing better than to bask in superior care and to know that it is at a conservative’s expense.

That’s right cons: WE ENJOY TAKING YOUR MONEY.

You wanna fight it? COME AT US.

There is a fairly simple solution to all of this. It’s called a boycott. It simply requires the American public to get out from in front of their in-home theater systems and stand on their hind legs long enough to tell their government they have had enough of being exploited by greedy corporations and Congress-critters intent on lining their own pockets at the expense of their less-fortunate constituents.Try a nation-wide refusal to obey an individual mandate that requires you to buy the health insurance industry’s crap-laden product. This particular method is tried-and-true, having been expounded by Henry Thoreau (see his Treatise on Civil Disobedience)and used successfully by the likes of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In fact, King’s boycott of the Montgomery transit system is a major spark that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement.
People, it is going to take getting good and angry before anything will change. Change must always come from the people. It rarely comes from the representatives when those same “representatives” are owned by industry; ours are most definitely owned.

they won’t do it, their watching Lenno

Harry Reid has turned out to be just like all the others, willing to compromise away any real changes in insurance reform instead of standing up for the people. He and Representatives from both parties will vote to protect their funding sources. Does anyone really believe that their Representative or Senator is really a Statesman working for the good of the people, and not just voting blindly to support some misguided ideology or special interest group? They can all be bought cheap and easy.

One thing the opt-out clause will likely accomplish is to double the number of health care lobbyists, as they descend on state legislatures to try and prevent them from enacting government-run healthcare in the individual states. Allowing states to “opt out” simply means the majority of them will continue to support the insurance companies statewide because of campaign $ concerns, and in Texas where Republicans rule, but don’t represent the majority, we will definitely be “opted out” from the beginning and reform will MEAN NOTHING to Texas residents.

Well, what have right now for a healthcare system in the U.S. is certainly a mess. For those that have insurance, we have runaway increases, and an industry that does everything in its power to deny claims. For those without insurance, they have access to limited care provided often in emergency rooms, the most expensive healthcare possible, bills for which they too often don’t pay, which is bringing down many of the hospitals across the country. That’s not a system we can maintain.

The “public option” and “single payer” are completely different things. The public option is designed to be another participant in the current healthcare system, that is, another component for spreading the risk across the entire industry. As for taxing high cost “Cadillac” plans, it will force the average household to accept inadequate coverage and stay where we are already, “under covered”, and foster the high deductibles we already pay, that prevent us from seeking needed treatment.

Personally, I think that right now, the system is so flawed that making minor changes will only encourage the same behavior that got us into the mess we have now. There’s too much inefficiency and runaway greed for the system to work effectively. It could be that the only way to fix that is a major “shock” to the system

Now is the time for our Legislators to do the right thing for the people and fulfill the Public Mandate for real insurance coverage for all Americans, not compromise that only covers their a$$es while they prostitute to the Insurance industry. It’s imperative to drive down costs, not only for the people, but to keep from bankrupting the country…

The state “opt-out” idea is actually a pretty astute strategy to undermine the right-wing. No politician is going to survive who actually acts to deprive his constituents of affordable health care. In five years time, it will be like being on the wrong side of the apple-pie and flag debate. Just try and take medicaide away from the oldsters and see how far you get.