August 5th, 2009 | 
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Specter will be in Lebanon, on Tuesday, August 11th at the HACC building at 9:30am.
On the 11th, he will be in Lewisburg at 3:45pm at Bucknell University.
On August 12th, he will be in State College at 8:30am, at President’s Hall.
And finally on the 13th, he will be in Kittanning at 3:00pm.
Update: 11 Aug 2009
He took a real beating at Lebanon today. If he ever wondered how he will fair come election time I do believe he has been given a sign!
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I am completely opposed to Obama’s Health Care Plan being forced thru by the congress and later to be rubber stamped by the senate. You want this plan try it out for yourselves first (you be the guinnie pigs) then ok it for the people paying your salaries. Yeah that would be us poor working slobs w/no power what-so-ever. I’d like to protest one of these town meetings in person instead of saving gas money and being a silent participant.You guys have no respect for my money.Oh yeah, you guys are just guys like the rest of us.
As a former Independent I’ve switched to the conservative party. If it is Republicans then so be it. Whoever stands up for our rights will now have my vote. We need term limits on these jokers. Specter has been in there too long and he just said today in Lebanon that he supports a single payer public option that is sure to bankrupt us as a nation and hurt the oldest among us the worst. Here is their prescription for us all. “Don’t get sick!”
If government wants to overhaul health care so much, Congress and the President should have to take part in the plan, and their families. All this spending and no explanation of how it is going to be paid for. Are you going to tax people and businesses that are already hurting from the economy? What about people losing healthcare due to the unemployment rate? Not even reading bills and voting on them is shameful. The government can’t run cash for clunkers, how will they run health care?
As a retired Air Force guy I can tell you that the VA is not what Joe Biden says it is. No problem if you’re a high ranking officer or have the sniffles. Even if these guys said they would accept the same health care system you know they would get preferred treatment.
I can’t believe this guy Specter. He can’t decide if he wants to be a Demoncrate or Republican and switches parties after he is elected! He has no right to even represent Pennsylvania as an elected official. We need a law that keeps these guys from running after they are elected to two terms just like a President.
Wow, saw the video on this. He really got an ear full today. Wonder how he can stick to this fiasco? Doesn’t he realize more than 60% of Americans don’t want this kind of reform. Nothing wrong with change we can believe in as lone as we don’t change what we believe in.
I attended the Lebanon town hall meeting today. There was so much passion and unity in the air against the House bill 3200 that for the first time since Obama was elected I felt a glimmer of hope. We just might defeat this monstrosity of a bill if we just hang together.
I am totally opposed to President Obama’s health care agenda. The govenment has not been able to run Medicare how will they fend with this healthcare plan. I, as a working union member, will ultimatly be orced into government healthcare. As a teacher , school boards, will make the decision for us. In addition all countries and states who have gone this route have suffered. Why woudl this be anything different. It is my opinion the scare tactics of President Obama and Nancy Pelosi are inexcusable. What has happened to free speech and the democratic way?
The United States has the best health care in the world. People from other countries do not like thier “Universial Healthcare” which is run by their government. That is why people from other countries come to the USA for treatment. In their country, many have to wait on a waiting list for their turn, and unfortunately, people die waiting on the wait list for their surgery. Will the president wait his turn for any necessary surgery? I think not, but if this bill is passed, we will.
Just returned from Specter’s State College event, we could not get in. About 400 people were allowed in the room and at least twice that number were turned away due to lack of space. We arrived an hour prior to the event, I’m surprised there were no plans for overflow crowds like the Missouri senator’s meeting. Based on the placards and t-shirts it looked a 5 to 1 crowd against Obamacare.
Yes, let’s abolish all government run health care including Medicare and make EVERYONE pay $700 a month for their insurance. After all, we must line the pockets of insurance company execs…that will most certainly get the economy going!
I am for health care reform…1) tort reform, 2) reduce waste in current system, 3) eliminate pre-existing conditions to get insurance, 4) ensure someone can’t be dropped from insurance for suing benefits.
I AM OPPOSED to 1) increased cost that has been said to be over a trillion $ to cover everyone, 2) government option as we all know it will become a single payer government plan in the future, 3) restrictions on medical providers, 4) any type of rationing, 5) paying for abortion on demand (must be medically necessary) and 6) covering illegal aliens, 7) government control of the system.
I’d rather NOT DO ANYTHING to the current system than accept these conditions.
Hey Mr. Spector, let me be clear, I don’t want to debate the issues of your proposal, I don’t want the government involved in my healthcare at all! Butt out!
If we allowed insurance to be bought across state lines and didn’t ask insurance companies to pay fees for each state so they can sell insurance we would solve half of that $700 per family per month price that Jenny S refers to.
I lived here in PA when we went through Tort reform on car insurance too. My costs went way down.
We can’t expect Obama and his crowd to do Tort reform. Why? It would affect lawyers badly. Fewer lawsuits means fewer attorney’s needed. Obama is a lawyer, his wife is a lawyer all his buddies are lawyers. Of course they won’t do anything to help America that hurts lawyers. Specter is also a lawyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlen_Specter.
We also need term limits on Congress like we have on Presidents. Of course, they are not going to vote themselves out of a job are they?
Senator Specter’s belief in the Constitution is laughable as he broke article 2 sec 1 of the Constitution by being named Elector for McCain which is illegal. MCCain’s campaign named him. What would have happened if MCcain had won?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKwgV8PAAYE&feature=player_embedded
Palin/Abram ‘12
Do all you who say “Hands off my health care!” say that to your insurance companies? These are the biggest and most powerful hands of all. Bigger than the government.
They RATION your health care. In truth, there is nothing in the world that is not rationed except maybe air.
They deny coverage because they’re a business. You can die before they will let the business die. Don’t you get this?
The top 10 CEOs of health care take home a cool .1 billion dollars just for a paycheck. Guess you pays that. Joe, Sally, Tom, Jane. In the form of the money they pay to insure them.
What we really need is a single payer system to cut the administrative costs to those of medicare.
Don’t fret about socialism, if you ever knew what that meant. By your def, my neighbor bringing me a freshly baked pie is a NAZI.
The US is doing ok with your so called socialized medicine already. The veterans medical centers and medicare/medicaid.
I went to a town meeting yesterday and guess who showed up in a big new fancy bus advertising “Hands Off My Health Care”. All brought to you by your premiums. Maybe instead of lobbying, advertising and buying busses, your money could be better spent educating people on how to not get sick. Preventive Care.
You conservatives are always against doing things that are good for society. Why do you hate your species so much?
Rocky Shepheard
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html
Watch this Pennsylvania. If you are still against health care reform after this…I just don’t know.
I would like to know when there will be a townhall meeting in Hazleton or Wilkes-Barre with either Benedict Arlen or his shadow Bob Casey. Anyone know?
We have 18 comments on the Arlen Specter health care thing. I’m not counting 2 as they are my follow ups. We even got two liberal responses so far. The rest are saying very conservative things. I’m guessing conservatives are 80% more passionate about this subject. I don’t mean to imply that we have 80% Republicans visiting this blog. I just mean that 80% are agreeing with the conservative point of view on this subject. That seems to fit with the polls I’ve seen. 91% of Americans are covered by insurance and most of them are happy with their insurance and care.
I do believe we need to do something about the 9% that are not covered. However, dismantling the best health care system in the world is not the way to go about it. There are solutions.
1. Tort reform which means you sign a paper with your insurance company that says you will not involve yourself in frivolous law suits. This is the number one thing that drives up the cost of health care and insurance in our nation. Lowering insurance costs for doctors also encourages more people to become doctors driving down the cost of seeing one. One of the main reasons they cost so much is so few people are willing to go to school for all those years only to graduate in deep debt and then have to pay huge malpractice insurance costs. Bottom line is fewer doctors equals a higher cost to see one.
2. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. This brings insurance costs down significantly. These first two things were done with car insurance here in PA and it did bring down costs significantly in my life time.
3. We also need to streamline the time and cost that it takes for the FDA to get new drugs on the market. Miracle drugs are already here but we can’t use many of them as they are waiting 10 years or so for FDA approval according to some reports. This would cut down on the high cost of research and development bringing down the cost of new drugs.
If we did these three things it would solve 90% of our problems with health care. Yes, we would still need to cover some folks without insurance but it would cost far less to do it. We need to take this problem one step at a time. Here are a few more things that would help from the perspective of we tax payers.
1. Give priority to the physically and mentally handicapped, elderly and children or anyone who cannot help themselves.
2. Lower priority for Drug addicts and alcoholics, people who refuse to work who can work, people here illegally.
best health care system in the world until, for example, we live longer than Canadians, and every citizen has the same access to health care.
As for illegals, I say ship them back to their mother countries because I don’t want to pay for them. Yes, there’s a little conservative in every liberal! If they want to legally immigrate, fine. Then they can share in our system.
We don’t have a better hcs than even england. Having better medical toys doesn’t make a better system. It’s about not having the enfranchised have better care than the disenfranchised. Right now the US rations care to the wealthiest. I’d much rather see everyone get a smaller piece of the pie but a real piece. As far as the differential? Stop being so ignorant about your health and start taking care of yourselves so you won’t need that heart bypass by 50. Here’s a few recommendations.
1-become vegan
2-don’t drink
3-walk everywhere you possibly can
4-exercise preventive care on yourself
5-don’t smoke
Just to show that there’s a million ways to pay for Obamacare (even if he is 100% wrong about it paying for itself or creating a surplus).
Here’s just one of my ideas:
CBO has estimated highly the cost of Obamacare to be 1.5 Trillion over 10 years which equates to roughly $1200 per capita, if you only consider those that actually owed on their taxes in 2007.
51 gallons of soda are consumed per capita
Soda is a major contributor to diabetes, obesity and other forms of chronic health care issues, without which the CBO estimate could have been much lower.
So simply create a 25 dollar tax per gallon of soda
that’s 3.50 dollars a day for the same amount of per capita consumption, for their soda habit,
THAT WOULD TOTALLY FUND OBAMA CARE!
13.5 teaspoons of sugar a day with this amount of consumption. Americans are not totally to blame. The soda industry is the root cause. They simply don’t have a product that is healthy and they push is just as surely as the dealer on the street sells his wares on the free market.
Just imagine having to eat 13.5 teaspoons EVERY day. It may look a little more noxious in the context.
Just imagine if we taxed fast food which we love but still know it’s not good for us. We’re a nation who willfully kill ourselves because of instant gratification.
alcohol and cigarettes more.
In Canada a fifth of whisky is about 40 to 50 dollars. No wonder they can pay for their health care and they live longer. They are smart and progressive. We need to be the same. I fear that will not happen soon because Americans are stubborn and just not as educated in many ways as other countries.
Summary
2.50 PER CAN OF SODA WILL PAY FOR HEALTH CARE or make people healthier by avoidance. There is one problem though. The soda companies will not allow you to end your over consumption until they spend every last dollar in brain-washing attempts to glamorize their sugar water.
Rocky, crack a book on basic economics and learn what price controls do to a marketplace because that’s exactly what you are supporting. What you think your system might save in money, will cost 10x more in time which may just cost you your life.
Obama lied, he lied about the cost, he lied about the contents of the bills, he lied about the AARP, he lied about the coverages, he lied about his desire for a single payer system and he lied during the election last year. He has never left the stump, the differnce is now as president people hold him accountable for what he does and says. And people don’t trust him, period. And they don’t trust the people who support him either.
I think we conservatives are winning this debate. Some may think I’m cruel but we already do ration health care. If you don’t work, haven’t worked or got all hooked up on drugs and drinking you are not covered. I know there are some good folks who fall through the cracks in our system. We do need to figure out how to help them. The rest get what they deserve. If you ever went outside the US you would be amazed. Most countries don’t have welfare let alone health care. Are we going to expand health care to our neighbors like Mexico? Heck, a bunch of them are already here why not (I jest).
Health care is a bad phrase for this debate anyway. Is health care taken to mean the best of all care for every and any extreme illness? That is sure to bankrupt any country. You just can’t do it. These pharaceutical companies spend billions creating new drugs. They have to get their investment back some way. Can the government fund all this? Hell no. Sorry, this just doesn’t work. It is a shame for anyone to suffer or die but it is a fact of life. We should simply focus on easing the pain for now. It is all we can afford to do.
Aside from the lies & the basic economics, which definitely need to be learned, lets look at the rest of the world. Places that have socialized medicine currently have income rates averaging 50%. None of them started socialized medicine with 50% income tax, they got there over years of the system failing. All of these countries are currently moving away from socialized medicine in an attempt to lower their income taxes. Do you want to give half of your paycheck so that everyone can have, albeit extremely limited & difficult to schedule, health insurance?
This is definitely a question of Democracy or Socialism. Best put by Adrian Rodgers in 1931:
“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”
It was true in 1931 & is 10,000 times truer today, if you look at the budget deficit.
I don’t understand why people say we have the best health care system in the world. There are many procedures and specialists where you have to wait 2 to 12 months for an appointment. That sounds like the rationing that many are afraid of. Also, if you don’t want everyone in the country to get coverage (legal or not) you are adding extra money out of your pocket for covering the costs of them using the emergency room unless you want to let them die which I am not about to do as I am a Christian. I am tired of people talking about how they don’t want to pay for others health care and calling themselves Christians. Didn’t Jesus tell us to take care of the least among us?
About how our health care system rates, you should check out the following article:
http://ezinearticles.com/?France-Has-the-Best-Healthcare-System-in-the-World&id=2643603
It shows that our country actually ranks 37th in the world. France is actually number one. They have a single-payer system that pays for the basics that everyone needs. People can then buy additional insurance to cover what it does not. As the article says, they ranked high in efficiency, meaning that you do not wait long for anything that you need, unlike here in the United States.
I also have heard polls on how satisfied people are in different plans. It is true that many countries that have socialized medicine or single-payer systems are not fully satisfied with their systems. However, polls have found that even most conservatives in those countries would not even think about taking our system over theirs. In the United States this can also be seen. A recent poll has been taken asking people that have had to USE their health care how satisfied they were with the experience. Do you know who rated at the top? Hint, they are not privately run companies. That’s right, the VA and Medicare ranked higher than any of the private for profit insurers.
I have one more comment which is about taxes. Some have stated that raising taxes would be unacceptable as it is taking from someone who earns it and giving it to someone who didn’t. While somewhat true, it is not the whole story. First, most of the people that would be affected by raising top tax rates are ones who actually do not work. Instead they own lots of stock and just wait for a dividend check to arrive. They are collecting money on others sweat. The same is true about many top executives. They are making overall decisions, but the people that produce the products are actually the ones that are creating wealth and they are often the least compensated. So by taxing the upper tier and giving it to the bottom tier, you are actually sharing the wealth that was created in the process.
Lastly, there are the rich welfare queens that actually benefit from one of the biggest welfare scams out there, patents and copyrights. Now, I do agree that we do need copyrights and patents, but they last way to long. Could Bill Gates have created such a powerful company as Microsoft without government involvement. If we actually had the free system conservatives preach, people would have copied his software years ago and he would be a nobody. I do agree that he created a great operating system and deserved compensated, but he did not do it alone. Many people created things that he needed to actually create Windows. Without the people before him, Windows would not exist. So because of these things, people like him also deserve to pay a higher tax burden.
Mark Anthony: You’re really not saying much but price controls don’t work. Nothing to support your argument. More ‘death panel’ talk really.
Let’s see if there’s any precedence for price controls. Oh, yes…Canada, whose citizens live longer than those in the US a nd whose citizens love their health care system. I’m not talking polls here, but first hand evidence since I lived there a few years. They have extreme price controls on alcohol. A typical fifth is 40 to 50 dollars and look how it destroyed the free market in their country. lol. They have health care for all and the citizens can go about their lives worrying about something other than “What if I get sick, eh?”.
Price controls on “sin items” is good in my opinion. Many people will avoid what’s bad for them. And please don’t say that the govt shouldn’t tell people whats good and bad for them. Otherwise let’s legalize all drugs because there is a market for them.
There’s a little lesson in street smart economics that I think Adam Smith would agree with.
I feel the free market works best in small doses.
Check out this. “Money or Life” on Alternative Radio.
There’s little sacred about the free market, like the birth of Jesus etc. We live in a world of artificial economics that Adam Smith never envisioned. No longer are the producers of value, the lower and middle class benefiting from their efforts in proportion to those who organize these value systems. A rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats. The middle and lower class boats have had holes drilled in them by a perverse system. Corporate America is what’s best and worst with our economic system. It’s great for innovation if big interest will let you join the club (good luck with that) but tends to suck the life out of the lower and middle class. Abuse is rampant. What the world needs is severe deglobalization. Put the economy back into the community where all have a real investment their local economy. Let’s dismantle large corporations into a multitude of smaller businesses that the lower and middle class can then profit from based on their added value. I have yet to see a small business owner making 50 million dollars a year. I feel there is an inverse proportionality between top executive pay and fairness to the real producers of value. This applies to health care. Let’s dismantle these HMOs etc and just have private doctors and hosptials who get reimbursed by a single payer (Uncle Sam) and based not on number of procedures but on how well their patients do. And hospitals get reimbursed based on the same principals. We have absolutely no need for the health insurance industry but for one thing only. It does create jobs for administrators…but so does selling crack cocaine on the streets create jobs for salespeople.
Ben, I fear your evidence of the American health care system being 37th iand France being number one is falling on deaf conservative ears. The most radical of which will think if we do like the french, the women will not shave anymore and we will listening to Edith Piaf all day long. lol
By the way, I like Edit Piaf.
I think president Obama is going to be remembered as one of our greatest presidents of all time. And his predecessor, one of the worst. I’m suprised that conservatives are complaining about money spent to take care of people but don’t say a word about the Bush admin deficit handed to Obama, created with an unjust war based on lies. The responsibility for these deaths should be placed on their shoulders, not to mention the lesser issure of the deficit. Guess what, we are still paying a crap load of money every day on this war.
Getting off topic.
It’s good that conservatives and liberals are beating each other up on this because that’s what’ good about America. Open debate. I don’t want to squelch conservative thought on health care or have them squelch liberal thought.
Although I wish we had a higher level of debate that what I see. Talk of ‘death panels’ and other fear mongering from the right is destructive. Stick to the facts. If the president says you can keep your current insurance, what good does it do to say that maybe we can’t keep out insurance. Fight over issues that are clearly not already stated to the contrary. Otherwise I can still argue that regardless of current knowledge, the sun revolves around the earth. For those of you who didn’t know that, crack open a book on astronomy.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/14/you_dont_cut_deals_with_the
Hey everyone, I just converted to conservative! I now have some different ideas about government. This is what the new me would do if had the power to be the Uber right, free-market conservative.
Ya know, Govt can’t do anything right! We should hand the responsibilities of the IRS over to AIG for starters. We all know private industry does a better job than government. Sure, they’ll take the first 100 million for they’re corporate salaries and overhead, but hey, it’s worth it knowing that the free market is running the show. Whew…I feel better already.
Let’s see. Oh, that piece of crap US POSTAL SERVICE. How has it survived this long being so incompetent. And poor FEDEX and UPS. They have been forced out of business by the big bad US Post Office. Just like everyone predicted. Ah…they are out of business…, right?
And Medicare/Medicaid. Sorry all you kids and old people, but that’s going bye bye too. You never liked socialized medicine anyway, right? Now your fate can lay in the hands of the likes of AETNA. Oh, I hope you have enough out of pocket to pay the premiums. The CEO needs to make his 24 million dollars a year, you know. It’s your responsibility to ante up with the high premiums. No, you don’t have the money? Too bad. But don’t worry, it’s not like private insurance companies have ‘DEATH PANELS’ or anything. No panel needed. You don’t pay, you die! Simple. Much better than the evils of socialized medicine.
And as far as rationing, we won’t have that with all private insurers at the helm. The don’t ration. They call it something else. They call it “Denying for Dollars”. There’s always plenty of health care resources when you deny, deny, deny.
Rocky Shepheard
Rocky, people die under both systems. We can debate which system will work better all day long. Each side has their points. I’m an American and worked for the US Government for 22 years 8 months and 9 days. I saw nothing but waste and laziness by a good percentage of those I worked with. You don’t have that kind of inefficiency in the free market. Yes, you have profit and greed so both systems have their flaws. Will you agree to that?