I'm not a big Sarah Palin fan so no I wouldn't want her leading the country. Personally I could care less whether the next President is a Republican, a Democrat, or a Tea Partier. What I would like is some carefully thought out programs, not let's just throw massive amounts of money, that we don't have, at a problem. Take Obama's health care for example. I think it was an incredibly ill conceived idea that will result in health care for only those who do not work for they will be the only ones who will have the time to wait for an overburdened system to take care of them. Again, it was a program that was ill conceived and it did not attack the problem, but only exasperated it. The deficits have got to be put in line. We, as a nation can not continue to spend way more than we take in. The answer there is both tax increases and spending reductions. Will he or anyone else have the guts to put that into place? I really doubt it. Obama does have a long history of public service. On the one hand that can be a very big asset, but on the other hand it shows someone who has no administrative experience and will, and has made, many major mistakes. Who would make a better President? I would really have to research it to see. Personally I'd like to see someone who is more mainstream than the very left Obama and the very right Palin. As for you comment about Republicans being responsible for most of our wars, well, I'm not sure where you got your history, but if you look over the last 100 years you will find that the majority of the wars were under Democratic Presidents, not Republicans. On the Democratic side you have World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs-Cuba, and Bosnia. On the Republican side we have Afghanistan and Iraq-twice, Grenada and Panama.
Two major components of Obamacare went into effect on October 1. One was the requirement that all children up to the age of 27 must be covered by insurance companies under their parent's policy. The second major item is that no child can be refused coverage for a pre-existing condition. The estimate of the cost of just adding the children under age 27 to a family policy is around $3300 per year. There's a good chunk of our health insurance increase in costs.
Well that's kind of true.. it does require that insurers allow (like many already do) DEPENDENT children (ie:unemployed students, handicapped, etc..) be eligible for insurance under a parents policy up to age 27 where as before some carriers would have insisted they get separate (more expensive) policies... The bit about "preexisting conditions" for kids is an interesting one.. so if they can't "refuse coverage" does that mean they can't charge a royal fortune or severely limit benefits for those children either or just that they just can't outright refuse to take them on anymore?
Life, my understanding of the law is that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and they can no longer put a cap on either lifetime or annual benefits. I'm not aware of any restrictions on what can be charged for this type of coverage. I think the insurance companies will address what this will cost using their standard actuarial methods and charge accordingly. Someone will end up paying for the excesses and it will fall on the American consumer and taxpayer. As a wise man once said, "It is easy to be generous with the wealth of others."
TWINIMINI, in response to my reply, I in no way suggested that the Republican Party started any war in which the USA took part. What I did say, and what is a proven fact is that the Republican Party is well known for sending government contracts during war time in the direction of those companies who just happen to make large donations to the Republican Party thereby enabling them to make extremely large profits during a war time environment. Just trying to make a point about the character of the men we are sending to Washington. And we ALL send them there. I think its time we started to send more women (with the exception of Palin) to Washington, shake things up a bit, and they certainly can't do any worse than the men have done over the last 200 years or so......J
Jafik, you may very well be right on the contract issue. It really wouldn't surprise me at all. We have much the same on the other side of the aisle with the Dems pandering to the unions, and in particular the teachers' unions. Somewhere we need to have some serious campaign reform. Right now we have government that is available only to those with the cash to spend. Here in NY State we are in severe financial problems on the state level. So who's going to be our next governor? None other than a career politician who's father spent three terms making the mess we are in now. On top of that he has the audacity to say he's going to change things. In California where the problems are even worse than NY the next governor may be a retread of the same guy who got them into much of their mess. I really don't have an answer unless we just cap campaign spending and see if that can't get us accountable politicians.
I say we switch to 3 person panels to run everything.. and the requirements are; one member must have an economics background, one must have a humanities and social studies background, and the other must have a management background... so instead of "the governor" we'd have the "governing panel" for each state... preferably elected separately so they're not in bed with each other from the start... yeah I know.. keep dreaming...
