Conservatives express outrage over Reid slavery remarks -- yet routinely claim progressives enslaving America

It only becomes servitude if it is done unwillingly. If the service provider provides the service to meet the needs of the people AND gains a profit from it and does so out of choice, then it is not servitude. If the doctor provides medical services because it both fulfills a need in the doctor and the community, then it is not servitude. If the farmer grows food, because he loves to and it provides food for everyone, it is not servitude. We say you have a right to food. We do not say the farmer must provide it free of charge. We say you have a right to health care, we do not say it must be provided free of charge.

It is the corporations that distort the service from one that fulfills both the community and the provider into one that is driven by profit and exploitation.

"Tell me, liberal, what have you done to actually help people? You call me callous, yet you help the government to usurp our power, take the money I would otherwise use to improve my community. And for what? Because you beleive a federal bureaucracy will make health care more efficient and less costly. "

There is an economy of scale. My one dollar can do only so much. The federal bureacracy can take lots of dollars and do far more than the individual dollars ever could. If it works in business, it can work in government.

I suggest that yes, a government run health care system can be run cheaper and more efficiently. The whole concept of insurance is to minimize risk. If a corporation can get cheaper insurance than a small business, because the risk is spread over a larger population, imagine the risk spread over 300 million people. Let's see Blue Cross / Blue Shield compete with that!

Jim R.

Just because your church runs a soup kitchen and you volunteer occasionally does not change the fact that you're a cold, heartless creep 24/7.

So you know what I say is true

Don't for one second assume that I agree with you one bit. Since apparently you have swallowed the kool aid, that all things government are bad. May I suggest you should be for privatising our armed forces, the highway system, water systems, national and state parks, police forces, ambulance services, fire departments.

tell me, liberal, what have you done to actually help people?

I spent many years serving on boards and committees mostly associated with schools, general community, and health care, both in the private sector and the public sector. I donated my time, not necessarily money. I always thought just donating money to help change things as a bit shallow, although over the years I donated quite a lot of money to different organizations.

Human beings have rights to certain basic human needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care.

You appear to be enslaved by the ideology that holds most of us in servitude. All food and shelter ultimately comes from the land, and as long as someone owns the land, and thereby access to food and shelter, one must serve the master to get bread. (Or I suppose one might be the master who parcels out the bread.)

Nevertheless, if you support land ownership, you support a system of virtual slavery. Anyone can buy a piece of land and let it sit there unused and unproductive while other people go in want of work or food. That's not what I call freedom.

The reason I ask is because the last CEO of General Motors was a moocher. He took $15 million a year by feeding on the production of others. Right?

"Also, I don't own a water source, so I pay for it. I bet you do too."

You pay for your water because where you live doesn't allow you to dig a well.

My drinking water is provided by a well, because my county hasn't provided a water source and therefore can not require to pay for it.

"I suppose you think welfare is dignified."

Welfare is not supposed to be dignified. It is supposed to be a helping hand, not something aspired to. Is it abused? Of course it is, but I accept the waste in the system, knowing that it helps keep children from starvation.

"Free-market Capitalism is the natural way of things"

Ah, no. Might makes right is the natural way of things. It is our thin layer of civilization that allows the markets to be free.

As you implied, GalaHGL. Other infer, based on your statements. What they mostly seem to infer is that you would rather just let people starve. If you want to talk about welfare, why don't you bring up corporate welfare, which costs us more, as taxpayers, than social programs do? You know, like the giant welfare checks cut to large oil companies, as an example? Keeping us addicted to crude through these 'subsidies' has discouraged research into alternative energy ideas that the rest of the world now leads us in. Happy about that?

Welfare is more dignified than eating out of garbage cans, not that I suspect you've ever seen times that hard. I was homeless for a month and living in a tent while holding down a 40 hour/week office job. Think hard work always pays off? Think hard work is enough to keep you in food and shelter?

Free-market Capitalism is not the natural way of things. Living in trees and flinging crap at each other is the natural way of things. Capitalism, like all other -isms, were created by Man, and in his image.

Free-market Capitalism is the natural way of things. - Gala

Pure nonsense. Free-market capitalism is not the natural order. Your simple mind has been led astray - most likely by entertainers whom you believe are political leaders. There has to be regulations to even ensure a free market. Survival of the fittest is the natural order of things. That means if I can kill you and you have what I want, then I get it and I kill you. Perhaps you would rather advocate that since it is the "natural way of things". Whomever attempted to explain the free-market to you has failed miserably.

Productivity in this country has risen at a much greater rate than wages. Corporate profits are still very high. They are taking the production of the workers and claiming the profit from it. By your own logic, doesn't this mean we are being enslaved by corporations?

Knuckledragger love...How cute and disgusting.

Really? you sure it was the progressives who pushed these issues? Really? Do you know the republican party was created as an abolitionist party? Do you know that the slaves were freed by a republican president? Do you know that all the civil rights issues were being bogged down by, yup, you guessed it. The democrats, the party of the "progressives".. Sen. Robert Byrd ring a bell? (hint KKK)...

Look up progressives. It means nothing about a political party. I am neither a democrat or republican. Progressives is a person or persons who believe in changes that benefit the middle class people. Also do the history on political parties and you will see progressive movements all through history regardless of political parties. Besides if a progressive tried to fall under the republican party he or she would kicked out the party.

So racism magically disappeared when slavery was outlawed and civil rights were passed. How about you stop bogarting that joint and pass it around?

It is not our governments place to save a business

Let 'em fail. That's the ticket. Let's just eliminate in one fell swoop an industry (auto sector) that employs 1 in approx. 10 people in this country.

Why do you hate the economy so much?

I can refute your MMfA fed liberal spew all day as well. So bring it on.

Not everyone just get their answers from MMFA. (Some do real research before posting their comments.) People come on here to hear the latest misinformation by the right-wing (which happens to be alot!). By the way true left-wingers like myself will call out my own side as well. So you can bring it all you want we are not running.

they are a little biased

says the pot to the kettle.

By the way, I notice you didn't answer my question, so I'll ask again; what rights have you lost under the current administration?

Glad to be of help.
However, I have noticed that a lot of people that have knowledge (many based on the string of letters after their name, i.e MBA, MA, MS, PhD, etc) sadly lack common sense.

If states can continue to set minimum standards, then it doesn't help AT ALL nor lower costs AT ALL to allow insurance companies to sell in other states!

You ignorant jerk - you pretend you have a clue, but you don't!!!

And, what happened when California said, "Gee, it would be nice to breathe clean air again. Let's set a new minimum standard for car makers, and require that 15% of their sales be of zero emissions vehicles. That will be a step in the right direction, plus it will reduce oil consumption. Everybody wins!" That would have been the right of California. Except GM, Big Oil, and President Bush filed a lawsuit, complaining that California couldn't exceed federal clean air standards. Too big a burden on private industry.

So, what will happen when people are allowed to buy insurance across state lines? Well, the poorer states, where influence is cheaply purchased in the legislatures, will see graft and corruption from the insurance companies to lower standards in their state. Then, employers in other states, where minimum coverage requirements are higher, and therefore more expensive, will rush to buy insurance from the state where the game is rigged in favor of the insurance industry. The initial costs of the employer will go down, which looks like a good thing. Until one of their employees actually need their coverage. Since it was purchased 'on the cheap', and under minimum requirements set by the insurance company itself, I fail to see how the policy will be worth the paper it is written on, if it is honored at all. For surely, one of the very first things the insurance companies will purchase for themselves is the right to cancel for any reason at all. What is the employee's recourse? Bankruptcy.

You say people can vote with their wallets, but most people have their insurance through their employers, and they do not get a say in what company it's purchased from.

You speak of competition, but almost 90% of Americans live in an state served by one, or perhaps at the most two, massive insurance companies that dominate the market. Ever notice how gas prices are the same all over town, even with station owners 'competing'?

If you want to talk about tort reform, fine. But you must still allow people to bring suits for malpractice. Also, even if this cost goes down, you are naive to think that the savings will be handed along by the insurance company to it's policy holders. It's just a little more padding for the executive bonus checks. When gas jumped up to $4 a gallon, prices went up a bit at my local big box store. Then, gas dropped back down around $2 a gallon. But, the prices that had gone up just stayed the same.

It's time to take some of the profit motive out of health care, by forcing them to compete with a non-profit alternative big enough to actually have some effect on how they do business.

It is not the government or it's oversight that has driven up health costs. Government actually defrays costs for the private sector. An example? Okay, how about the H1-N1 vaccine? Did private pharmaceutical companies begin researching a vaccine as soon as the first outbreak was confirmed? No, they did not. They didn't begin working on the problem until the federal government stepped in and told them to. Once they had the vaccine, and a wildly optimistic estimate of how quickly they could produce it, the government ordered it. Noting that the vaccine was taking longer to produce than projected, did the private pharmaceutical companies get right to work on a more efficient way to manufacture vaccines in the future? Not until the federal government offered up lots of research cash to pioneer a new process through the state university research system. A new process that will be given away freely to these huge multi-billion dollar pushers to make money with. Profits they then justify because it 'pays for research'!

The private sector, when it comes to health coverage and pharmaceuticals, has utterly failed the American public.

We have not had free market health care since the "new deal. You liberals are trying something else. Its called socialism. It never works. - Gala

Actually, neither free-market capitalism nor socialism in their purest forms have ever worked. If you were even the most elementary of history students, you would know this.

"What do you call Medicade and Medicare? I call ti government interference in free market health care."

You need to go back and read the history. Medicare exists because insurance companies WOULD NOT insure the elderly in this country. Medicare filled a void.

Medicade covers people who can not afford health care.

There is no interference with the free market, if the free market isn't even there.

It's not hopeless Right ON. These people are pretty hard core, but I talk to a lot of poeple. I think we out number them.
Plus they are not entirely wrong. They just trust the government to much.
You have often backed up my points and I appreciate it. I don't post often any more but I do like to see how MMfA sees things every now and then.

I've got a heck of a lot more on the ball than you do, right ON. Always have - always will.

How about that you lack a basic understanding of economics. Healthcare has no true market price and has a flat demand curve. It always will. It is not widgets. If you ever took a freshman year macroeconomics course, or read a book, you would know this. It's silly to argue otherwise.

A true market price dictates that there will always be those who cannot afford ANY healthcare. That's the way a market price works. If I cannot afford a Porsche, I can buy a Cavalier. If I cannot afford a heart transplant, I can't go get a baboon heart. Also, if I have money, there is no price I will NOT pay to keep my son alive.

Now, that is the free-market version of healthcare demand curve and market price in its simplest terms. It is actually more complex than that, but show me you have something besides your emotional rants about slavery and the natural order of things (with, of course, the Becker inspired sprinklings of fascism, socialism, communism, etc. sprinkled in) and we'll take the next step.

What cannot be argued is that if healthcare were truly handled by the free-market then we would deny care to those who cannot afford it. That is how the free-market works. So, tell me, who would all these people that would be turned away at ERs and clinics stop to thank for not subjecting them to the slavery of medicine? You or our founding fathers?

In case you forgot, the government is us.

You're still free to start a petition drive. You're still free to run for public office.

OK, then explain to me what "decisions" the government is taking over, and in particular, in the past 10 months?