Forums | MacLife

..perfect way to pick crops down in Florida, California, and deal with the bane of illegal immigration all in one shot. For we would be sentencing people to do the work that no one else wants to do.

That seems to be the real clincher.

omg RickRollRedirect

The Pawzservative must not be infatuated with you. He seems MIA.

Aaron_R wrote:

Holy crap, I knew the U.S. healthcare problem was bad enough for a reform but I didn't know the U.S. lagged behind this much.

From my Senator Herb Kohl (Wi-D) wrote:

Consider this: The United States spends $7,290 on health care per person, per year - while the average spent by the 30 most developed countries is $2,960. It is unacceptable that we have so much more of our money tied up in health care, yet we are not delivering demonstrably better health care than many of these countries. Studies show that the U.S. ranks below average on major health indicators, including infant mortality and life expectancy, when compared with the rest of the world.

We currently rank 44th in infant mortality and 30th in life expectancy, with the average American living to 78 years of age. By comparison, Japan spends $2,550 on health care per person each year - just over a third of what the U.S. spends - and boasts a life expectancy of 83 years.

It'd be interesting to find out people who support the American Family Association & National Right to Life but not healthcare reform stand when that infant mortality fact is presented to them.

The infant mortality number is quite remarkable, but I don't think its comparable.  I don't know who did the ranking, but many nations don't count infant deaths in the first week after birth in their numbers, while I believe America's count includes premature birth baby deaths.

Meanwhile up north:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/artic … alth_care/

A health plan linchpin commands respect
By Lisa Wangsness
Globe Staff / August 18, 2009

BANGOR - For many Washington lawmakers, it’s been an angry August: returning home for the summer recess, they have faced put-downs, shout-downs, and worse at the hands of some constituents seething about the proposed health care overhauls before Congress.

But Senator Olympia Snowe, a pivotal player in the health care drama, has seen nothing of the kind since she came home to Maine last week.

Mainers are treating their popular senior senator with characteristic Yankee restraint. Public meetings are respectful, protesters virtually absent. Special-interest groups on the right and the left that have helped organize mass protests elsewhere are treating Snowe gingerly. Even President Obama mentioned how much he likes her at a town hall meeting he held in Portsmouth, N.H. - just close enough to Maine to get her attention without seeming too aggressive.

No one, it seems, wants to risk offending the slight, genial senator who is one of the most influential voices in the Senate in deciding whether a health overhaul bill passes.

Snowe is one of three Republicans on the powerful Senate Finance Committee trying to work out a bipartisan deal. And based on her voting record, she is the most likely of the trio to break from the GOP and vote with Senate Democrats - who may need at least one Republican to get a bill passed, especially if Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, is unable to travel to Washington and cast a vote in the fall.

Snowe met with Obama twice the week before the August recess, and she has plans for several major conference calls on health care with the other Finance Committee negotiators. She also shares a state with Senator Susan Collins, another moderate Republican who could be a crucial vote on any compromise that emerges.

“Maine is ground zero for health care,’’ said Dennis Rivera, chairman of health care for one of country’s most powerful unions, the SEIU, who flew to Maine to speak at a recent event in Auburn.

Snowe has not held any open meetings on health care recently, but protesters in Maine have not crashed her public events, as they have other lawmakers’ elsewhere. The free market group Americans for Prosperity has held a few events in the state, but the state’s primary conservative group, the Maine Heritage Policy Center, is focusing on arguing its case in white papers and meeting with Snowe directly and with her staff. On the left, the SEIU has a dozen operatives on the ground in Maine; they and other liberal groups held a large rally for health overhaul legislation earlier in the summer, but they are mostly focused on getting Mainers to tell their personal health care stories to the delegation in handwritten letters, press conferences, and meetings.Continued...

Puzzling.

Baucus in Montana and Snowe in Maine. What's that ... total of 3 congressional districts dictating the deal?

Last edited by daemon (2009-08-18 5:17 am)