Observer-Reporter forum

Cylinsier · Master Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Posts: 13229 Location: Oh shi-

You had to know I would respond to this.

SSSS · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:28 pm Post subject:

I am not pissed Cy-you know me better than that.

1. Will read the link later-thanks
2. again, I do not know
3. pretty braid statement that wellness programs are sub par when you do not know what they consist of.
4. You answered for me-I look at how inefficiently the Post Office and Am Trak are run and assume it will be the same. remember the 400 dollar hammers?
5. I stand by the answer.
6. see # 1
7. see# 1
8. I have never one argued against environmental protection and in fact belong to conservation organizations that support it.
9. The line about republicans not caring if babies die was childish and irrevelant.
10. Keep up on current affairs. Government computers get hacked, For the Dems to say healthcare networks would be completely safe is drinking the kool aid.
11.Fair question. Maybe I thought I could make it a litle better-but it is that experience that makes me so cynical when it comes to the government running anything.
12.I hear what I hear-talking to the people means more to me than reading polls.
13. It didn't deserve an answer. I am growing increasingy weary of hearing how good it is in France.
14.n/a
15.see # 1
16. " "
17. No-but facts are facts. Who charges more labor-Joe the Mechanic or a Porsche dealer?
18. n/a
19. I stand by the statement-it is hypocritical for any emocrat to talk about raising the deficiet.
20. n/a
21. They do
22. Both parties have talked about it but only one made it a campaign platform
23. OK-still a doubtful statistic
24. Agree
25. n/a
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busdriver · Journeyman Joined: 16 Mar 2009 Posts: 3497

Cylinsier · Master Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Posts: 13229 Location: Oh shi-

tetriS, please tell me "emocrat" was intentional! That was hilarious! Laughing

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Ron Christman · Amature Joined: 02 Nov 2009 Posts: 56

Sorry to get back so late but here's my take along with your answers. It's a little long, sorry. Your comments are in italics.

well I am sure it has already been decided that my answers are worng Ron becuase I am a conservative, but I will pick up the gauntlet here.

SSSS - You are wrong about several things here with the assumption that I would pre-judge you and your answers and with your assumption that I am a ‘wild-eyed lib’. I’m an old time conservative who has been around long enough to remember what conservatism really meant. By today’s standards that would be fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. . . we didn’t care what you did behind the closed door of your bedroom and we weren’t going to tell women what to do with their bodies for starters. Goldwater supported gay rights, for example.

While I never voted a party line, I have to admit that I voted only for Republicans for president until GWB’s second election. Voting for Bush II is something I’ll regret until my dying day. I served during Viet Nam and my son served in Iraq during Desert Storm but I was one of the one’s who knew that Bush/Cheney never made their case for going into Iraq and I also realized that what Republicans were calling fiscal conservatism was really ‘we don’t want to spend it if it’s your idea or it doesn’t benefit me right now’. It wasn’t just GWB who didn’t know how to balance a checkbook but virtually every Republican in office (from little Washington to big Washington).

I left the Republican Party after 45 years so I could vote for Barack Obama in the primary. I became interested in him when he spoke at the Democratic convention in 2004 and I started following his career. Two weeks after he announced his run for president I met him in Cleveland and I became a big supporter. We can talk about how a conservative ends up supporting President Obama later but never the less it happened (and I can tell you about many others who do also, some very prominent).

I am on my third career (and could be retired). I worked many years in middle management for a large corporation, started a partnership, and went into business on my own. I am now having more fun (and making less money) than any time in my life. I am a tennis teaching pro, a small college tennis coach and I teach a class or two at a small university. I love working with young people and my biggest claim to fame is not the conference champions and all-conference players nor the academic All-Americans I’ve coached but that virtually 100% of my players for the last twelve years have gone onto the grad school of their choice or a good job in their field upon graduation.

I guess it is the teacher and researcher in me that really finds it hard to do all the leg work for others. I rarely tie in links for those who ‘pick up the gauntlet’ but will provide some direction on where to find things. As it turns out, while I was doing actual work and offline, Cylinsier did a fine job of responding to your questions with commendable speed and accuracy. I’ll fill in only where I can add something of value to Cylinsier’s work.

Health care is a major concern of mine and I've spent some time researching it.

First of all, thanks for taking the challenge. But, you should know, I don’t go easy on those who make inaccurate statements when they really don’t know what they’re talking about and are only responding from an ideological position.

1. We are not. I ask for a link proving your statement. Cylinsier provided a link but there are others you can find to support what’s there.

2. Do not know if this is true or not. Cylinsier’s answer is right on. Some would say it was a trick question because a universal system does not deny care.

3. We do-that is why most successful US companies have employee wellness programs. Mine does. Most employee wellness programs are less than adequate and when you consider that there are few companies large enough to have a real one, it doesn’t help much for our total population. Health care reform will not solve all of our problems obviously because we do have to change our life-style also. Both are badly needed.
4. Because we know what the admin costs of most government run programs becomes. mediocare is the exception rather that the rule. We need somewhere to put political patronage hires. This is nothing more than an ideological response with no basis in fact. You can do better than that.
5. Can you say AmTrak. I’ve used this list on other sites for months now and your response was just as dumb as any I’ve gotten from every other ‘conservative’ respondent. Why???
6. DO you have a link to prove your numbers? Cylinsier again provided a link but these numbers are very easy to find if you are willing to go into responsible and verifiable sites.
7. Those numbers have been widely disputed. I do not know what the truth is. The numbers come from the WHO study, the only study that has stood the scrutiny of professionals around the world. Those who dispute the numbers do so with absolutely no supportable evidence that the numbers are wrong. My position on it is: even if the numbers are off by some degree, we are still very low on the list for the money we spend. Dismissing it because you “don’t know what the truth is” is the typical red herring response that I get from those who don’t want to admit that we may not be the “greatest country in the world” in all things or we may actually learn something from someone else.
8. More likely they do not have the poor air quality that we have. There is no evidence pointing to better health care as a cause. I have to admit, this answer is a new one to me. What can you point to that even begins to support your statement.
9. This is a stupid statement-who is for and against abortion as a whole? Very childish accusation. You completely missed the point. It is not about abortions but about deaths in the first year of life. Please be careful with your response here. This is personal for me. I have four grandchildren; I should have five.
10. Even the CIA and the Pentagon have not been able to keep records private. Why should I believe that the US Government would get it right in health records? Another red herring response; again, I would hope you would be better than that.
11. I agree-except the government is so inept I do not want them in between ANYONE and me. FYI – The government isn’t getting between you and your doctor in any of the bills that have been proposed so far. The bills try to take the insurance companies out of the loop!!!
12. As I have stated here before, I go to Canada every other year-the people I have talked to do not much care for their health care, no matter what Harry reid says. I too have a little personal knowledge of Canada. I lived close to the Canadian border for twenty-five years, spent a lot of time there, and flew out of Toronto on vacations (It’s easy to justify a tennis vacation to the Caribbean or Hawaii once or twice a winter because of all the snow coming off of Lake Ontario, even if you didn’t have a lot of money). I know a lot of Canadians, and I don’t know one who would trade their system for ours.
13. Sounds like you would be happier in France. Spent two years there on a NATO project and I must say it was nice. But that’s not the point. The point is they are doing the job on health care better than anyone else in the world and they are doing it for far less money than we spend. Two examples of how they are different. A. While they have about the same number of doctors per 1000 that we do, they have far more GPs and family practitioners. B. They have visiting nurses who make, first monthly, then weekly visits to pregnant mothers to help guide them through their pregnancy and then visit more for the first few months after birth. C. On those digital/exchangeable health records; President Obama put enough money in the stimulus bill to take care of half of our records by 2014. The French had all of theirs done in 2005. Yes, they have fewer people but the real problem here is the number of different forms, procedures, storage systems that we have to deal with. Johns Hopkins deals with over 900 different insurance companies every year and every one of them has different forms and requirements. I guess that was three things. Oh, BTW, France will be on their third or fourth upgrade of their digital system by the time we get ours half done.
14. They don't Do you really believe that?!?!? Do you not see what they have done with our money. Let me give you just one example and that is the one thing that they did with health care. The Republicans wrote and passed the Medicare Drug bill. Didn’t provide a means to negotiate drug prices (corporate profits) and didn’t provide a means to pay for it (Our taxes or should I say, my grandkids taxes).
15. Let me see your statistical fact-becasue you are wrong. Do you read at all or do you just watch Fox?!?!? The CBO just pointed out that tort reform would affect less than ½ of one percent of our annual health care costs. Other studies put tort costs between 1 and 2%. Again, if you look up legitimate sites, not the Cato Institute, not the Heritage Foundation, not AEI, and don’t take info from Fox, the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner; you may actually find the facts.
16. Link? Cylinsier did it again. . . Thanks Cylinsier.
17. Absurd statement. Doctors who cater to the upper crust charge more Again, wrong premise based on what, ideology?
18. agree Thanks, I knew there was something we could agree on.
19 Any Democrat has a lot of nerve talking about increasing deficiets. Would you care to look into the actual cause of the deficits and who caused them? Check into when Seymour Durst installed the first national debt clock on one of his buildings in Manhattan. Hint – it was because of Reaganomics. The clock never stopped spinning except when Clinton was in office and it never spun faster than under GWB.
20 I wish we didn';t-they are annoying. Again, we agree on something, but what annoys me more is the cost is built into the price of the drug.
21. They do. I know, Boehner said last week that they were going to take eight or nine ‘ideas’ and bundle them into a bill (after first claiming a long time ago that they were going to produce a bill last July). I guess the fact that he can’t count up to nine explains why he doesn’t want to attempt to read any of the 1990 pages of the Democrats bill. BTW – I checked, it was only eight things. And yes, I could have pulled this question out because, technically, even if you slapped a few pages together, you can call it a bill.
22. You need a history lesson-it was CLinton that was going to fix health care. Again, Cylinsier makes the correct point; the Republicans totally ignored the problem when they had a Republican president and congress.
23. all other nations? You really need to spend some time in the library. Please point me to the library but take another look at the question first. I will not argue that some other nations may not have as high as quality health care but even third world nations feel it is wrong to make a profit on ill people.
24. Left wingers are getting a lot of campaign funds from them too-glass houses? It’s not just Baucus and it ticks me off, but at this point even the Democrats who are on the take are working for health care reform. Please name one Republican who is legitimately working for reform.
25. You just contradicted yourself with this question. You have a point, but come on, who has the audacity to say a bill that leaves 95% of the uninsured, uninsured is a health care reform bill?!?!? And the fun part, the GOP bill does less to reduce the deficit than the Democrats bill according to the CBO. Got to love those fiscal conservatives. . .

Now-having answered and having acknowledged already that I am wrong becasue of my political leanings, let me state that I am NOT against reform but I am not sure that a reform bill that is being rushed into just to make a President;s personal agenda is the way to go. What’s the rush, some of these people have been working on this for 20-25 years. . . Oh, it’s not the GOP though, is it.

As I said, I’ve put these questions out before on other sites. You are not the worst responder SSSS, but you really do need to do a little work before you try again. You surely wouldn't want to be in one of my classes.

Cylinsier · Master Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Posts: 13229 Location: Oh shi-

Yeah, didn't mean to steal your thunder but my OCD was like, "you must type a response to this post." I couldn't help it.
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OndinitaAKALibchit · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 9:29 pm Post subject:

OndinitaAKALibchit · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 9:40 pm Post subject:

Ron Christman · Amature Joined: 02 Nov 2009 Posts: 56

Cylinsier - You can steal my thunder anytime, especially when you do such a good job. Actually, I would much rather see sensible words from someone than the typical rants that my posts and questions too often generate. And I can always use help in responding to those who go off the tracks because of logical posts like yours.

Amphikalein · Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:17 pm Post subject:

Excellent list of questions Ron, and thank you TetriS for stepping up and attempting to answer them, however inaccurately.
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SSSS · Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:27 am Post subject:

Well gee Ron-I am sorry I am just not up there with you MENSA members. I guess I am just too dumb to respond. But here is a parting thought-YOU would not do well in MY classes either. You need a more open mind.
As for your bio both you and your son may have chewed some of the same ground as me so that buys you something with me. You are entitled to your opinion but I assure you that you do not hold the patent on intelligence. But you like so many democrats since 2004 feel that anyone who has a different point of view from yours is stupid, uneducated, and a redneck.
Oh-and you read a lot into my response that I did not type. Closed mind?
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SSSS · Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:30 am Post subject:

CY-I saw that t shirt on nasty tees but I could not get it to copy as an avatar.
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OndinitaAKALibchit · Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:46 am Post subject:

Even though I don't agree with your answers, I too appreciate your efforts, SSSS...And you are a smart guy! Smile

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dick · Journeyman Joined: 28 Jan 2009 Posts: 3134

Love the emo obama. That chit is hilarious.
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Ron Christman · Amature Joined: 02 Nov 2009 Posts: 56

SSSS - My comments were not meant to be a slur or slam on intelligence but the expectation of the very thing that you are looking for, an open mind, plus (and this is most important) a willingness to do a little of the work necessary to find the correct answers so you do not regurgitate the misinformation that is currently being put out by right wing pundits and the 'leaders' of the GOP.

My response to you was based on your answers such as #5, #7, #9, #13, . . . You are obviously intelligent enough and I suspect smart enough to know that you should expect a retort like mine when you throw out BS instead of answers.

When you say things like, "But you like so many democrats since 2004 feel that anyone who has a different point of view from yours is stupid, uneducated, and a redneck." you are falling back on a typical right wing response and completely wrong in your assumption. All I look for is some basis in fact to support your point of view and not right wing rhetoric based on the misinformtation that so many on the right thrive on these days. You might find that you can have good conversations with people who have a different point of view if you actually come forward with facts and opinions based on facts instead of answers like "Can you say AmTrak."