Americans need to experience the Holocaust personally.

You know that people have lost all sense of reality when they are proudly showing up to anti health care reform rallies with this nonsense.

The sign reads "National Socialist Health Care Dachau, Germany – 1945" and shows a large pile of naked, dead bodies.

When your rhetoric becomes so poisonous that you openly compare universal health care with the holocaust, you have earned yourself a trip back in time. At some point we have to accept that the only way these uneducated monsters will appreciate the vast differences between genocide and public policy, is to have them watch their family members ripped from their homes, screaming and kicking as they are dragged away to a hole and tortured to death.

This is repulsive and inhumane.

In an earlier post I said that it was incredibly hard to offend me…consider this one of those times. These people are bottom of the barrel and they are spitting in the face of millions of families who experienced the horror of this atrocity.

There are no more words.

Affordable Health Care for America Act… kinda

Well it is official, congress has released a health care reform bill and it’s kinda, sorta, a little bit of what we were hoping it would be.

Nancy Pelsoi, along with a gaggle of Democrats, stood outside the capitol building this morning to unveil upon the world, their much touted Health Care bill. It’s not all bad, but it’s not the bill that progressives were hoping for. One major problem with the bill is that the single payer option is no where to be seen, although there was little doubt it would have been a part of the final package as it was taken off the table the moment negotiations began. An odd strategy for people who have the majority of Americans behind them.

The public option is, however, a part of the bill, even after it was loudly declared dead by the MSM. Although, it is not entirely the public option that many of us were hoping for and instead it comes across as a Frankenstein version of a good idea. The government will able to offer insurance to the 36 – 50 million Americans who have none, but they will have to negotiate with insurance providers in the first place – a move that is expected to cost an extra 85 billion dollars over the next 10 years. Medicare, a similar plan that many progressives where hoping for, does not require the government to negotiate with insurance providers, effectively allowing them to rope in costs and eliminate excess waste. Being that the bill will not be voted on immediately, there is still plenty of time to change this act, whether for the better of Americans or corporate ideals.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus had pushed hard for a “robust” public option that would have reimbursed providers using Medicare rates. Blue Dog Democrats beat back that effort, costing taxpayers $85 billion over ten years — money that will go to hospitals, doctors and drug makers, increasing the cost of health care.

The bill also prevents insurers from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions, caps the financial responsibility that insured individuals will face when medical emergencies strike, bans insurers for dropping folks because they get sick, and proposes a host of other insurance industry reforms.

It should be noted that the last line of that description of the bill is very important. Denying people, based on pre-existing conditions, has long been a boon to the insurance industry and been a major cause of fraud and misuse. Just recently a woman was denied coverage because her rape was seen as a pre-existing condition, as well as a woman who was beaten by her husband. The bill may not be what we had all hoped, but it makes a lot of important changes, hopefully meant to steer the insurance sector back to its main duty. Which is and has always been, the public well being.

You can read the entire Huffington Post article here.

Harry Reid claims to have the votes needed for the public option. Still can’t find his balls.

We may possibly have SOME PART of the health care reform we had originally wanted. Time will only tell.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is just one or two Senate votes shy of having a filibuster-proof majority in favor of a public option for health insurance coverage with a provision allowing states to opt-out, multiple sources tell the Huffington Post.

The Nevada Democrat, according to Hill sources, is furiously working the phones today to ensure that 60 Senators (including him) will back the provision. The work will continue through the weekend and comes despite the president’s indication in a meeting Thursday evening at the White House that he prefers a public option that would be triggered in by certain conditions over the “opt-out” alternative.

Advocates of the public option consider the trigger an industry attempt to kill the public option because it likely would never be triggered. Obama’s support of the insurance industry position saps momentum from the public-option drive.

Once again, the president is on the wrong side of history and on the right side of the industries that have led us to where we are now. Way to lead sir… way to lead.

We removed the option of a Single Payer system before negotiations had even begun and in the process took out one of the best options for our health care system. It’s been like pulling teeth to get Washington to consider fighting for the public option until now, even though nearly 80% of the public wants a choice for the public option. Ultimately we allowed far too many uneducated twits and fear mongers to go screaming in the streets, calling out fears of socialism and fascism, which they ironically never understood were mutually exclusive. Screaming something is socialist and fascist is like screaming “Hey, you black guy over there, why do you have such soft and flowing blond hair?”That’s racist.

I have had several close friends who have, themselves, used these scare tactics in order to fear people away from the public option and none of them have properly understood or used the term socialism in their fear mongering correctly. Oddly enough, they were usually very intelligent and articulate, they were simply wrapped up into something they took little time to educate themselves about. In the end, their concerns all came down to one thing, not wanting to pay for people they felt were below them.

What was that Jesus? You wanted to say something?

Indeed Jesus, indeed.

So, with hands clasped in a non religious fashion, I pray that Harry Reid is telling us the truth.  We will find out soon enough if America is capable of taking care of her huddled masses and cancer victims. I am just hoping we turn out to be nicer people than that asshole Jesus.

Read the entire article on The Huffington Post