<p>Yeah uc_benz
I will be an economics major and plan on being an Econ professor so I am also well versed in this subject and what you said is exactly right. Losses in jobs do not reflect the overall performance of a President. FDR created, or WWII actually, millions of jobs, but look at the long term consequences of his policies. Does that make him a great president, or was it the circumstances (WWII) that dictated the economy. I would argue the latter as would most Roosevelt scholars.<br>
At the rate Bush is going, there will be a net job gain and it is important to remember that Congress is also to blame for any mistakes.</p>
<p>hey, uc_benz, since you know much about president Bush, please explain to me his HEALTHCARE plan. </p>
<p>Its been four years now and I’ve still don’t think he cares much to deal with the health issues in the U.S.</p>
<p>Well of course you’re not going to agree with it; you’re a liberal, and you won’t agree with any healthcare plan that isn’t national (aka socialist).</p>
<p>President Bush has presided over the largest expansion in Medicare in the history of the United States. He added the prescription drug benefit that helps out those who cannot afford the drugs. He helped implement health savings accounts that can be taken anywhere, regardless of job status. And he is working to inform medical insurance and medical litigation which will further lower the costs of healthcare.
[ul]
[li]The president wants to create association health plans, where individuals, families and small employers can band together in pools to secure more affordable healthcare options.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]The president wants to expand the tax credit for health insurance to those who purchase health insurance outside of their place of employment.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]The president wants to create national and regional health insurance markets.[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Wow. That doesnt sound like anything Bush said in his debates. </p>
<p>Although he WANTs all these plans to happen, he isnt doing much to get them into PRACTICE.</p>
<p>“we dont need Canada or France or any other p***y ass country on our side” - El Commando</p>
<p>No wonder why the world alienated us.</p>
<p>It doesn’t sound like anything from the debates? I got those exactly from all of his speeches and/or debate sessions. You were probably too stuck on your losing canidate to even listen to the other side. And the bulleted ideas that are listed are new initiatives that HAVE TO PASS THROUGH CONGRESS, so of course they aren’t implemented yet; its only March of his first year!</p>
<p>If you want to attack records, I can go at Kerry all day. Would you really like to do that? I doubt it. I would win. I would win by a lot.</p>
<p>Let’s talk more about Bush’s healthcare plan. This is pretty much specific and accurate:</p>
<p>President Bush promised to help more uninsured Americans obtain affordable health care. But his key proposals are dubious health policy, waste taxpayer dollars, and are unlikely to increase coverage. They deserve more attention because they epitomize Bush’s utterly cynical approach to governing.
Here’s what Bush would do.
First, he relies on tax credits. A family earning $25,000 or less could receive a “refundable tax credit” (that is, a government payment) of up to $3,000 toward the purchase of health insurance. The trouble is that the average family health insurance policy provided by employers in 2003 cost $9,000, and individually purchased policies cost even more.
A family with $25,000 income, even with a $3,000 subsidy from Bush’s plan, would still have to pay $6,000 out of pocket. Families with $25,000 or less are just scraping by. How many can afford to spend almost a quarter of their total income on health insurance?
Worse, individual health insurance policies are the least efficient way to provide health coverage because they are more costly than group plans to administer. And they leave families with any history of illness vulnerable to denial of insurance on grounds of a “preexisting condition.” (About half of the uninsured have histories of serious medical problems.) So, few people currently without insurance would actually benefit from Bush’s tax credit scheme.
About two-thirds of workers earning under $25,000 already have employer-provided insurance. For them, the tax credit would be a windfall; it would not reduce the number of insured. Younger and healthier workers would opt out into low-cost individual plans, raising the cost to other workers. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the net effect would be a loss of employer-provided insurance.
Second, the president, working with the National Federation of Independent Businesses (the very conservative small-business lobby), proposes something called Association Health Plans. The idea is that small businesses can organize themselves into associations to purchase health insurance collectively at lower rates.
This sounds like a good idea, except that small businesses are already free to do that.
The new and insidious wrinkle in the Bush proposal is that it would exempt such associations from regulations that currently prohibit discrimination against individuals based on health status. With this new provision, insurers could offer very favorable rates for health plans whose members were limited to the young and the healthy.
As younger workers bail out of larger insurance pools, middle-aged workers and their dependents, as well as those with histories of illness, would face huge rate increases. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that some 20 million Americans would face higher insurance costs if this proposal were enacted. Both The Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, not exactly lefty news organs, have published articles pointing out the serious flaws in this approach.</p>
<p>Why would the business federation support such a scheme? One reason is that it stands to make more than $100 million a year organizing and selling such plans.
Bush would also increase the tax benefits of so called Health Savings Accounts. Under this scheme, taxpayers can set up tax-sheltered accounts similar to IRAs and then use the proceeds to pay out-of-pocket health costs. Bush wants to expand these so they can also be used to pay premiums.
But very few low-income people use such accounts. They are beneficial mainly to people in higher tax brackets. They also create incentives for people to buy policies with very high deductibles, which defeats the goal of preventive medical care.
Taken together, Bush’s new plans would cost the Treasury more than $100 billion over 10 years in lost revenues. He proposes to make up that loss by cutting two proven programs that actually do help more people get health care – Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
So this is how our president proposes to “help the uninsured.” If the United States is a democracy worthy of the name, we the voters owe it to ourselves to look beyond the photo-ops and misleading rhetoric to the real details.</p>
<p>" its only March of his first year! "</p>
<p>What about in his first fours years of term in office? what happened then?</p>
<p>Like what are you gonna say about Kerry? That he’s a flip-flopper (this was the stupid campaign that the Republians ran on). Are you gonna say that his attendance rate is low? Or are you gonna talk about the votes he made as Senator? If thats all you are gonna talk about, then I am ready to debate about records. If you wanna talk about records, I am ready to blast you.</p>
<p>But before you make any response, please dont forget about the problems of Bush’s healthcare problems as I just posted above.
Republicans have the habbit of forgetting their faults quickly.</p>
<p>Are you Generals still at it whos winning the war for the soul of America?</p>
<p>Dont get offended, but you all sound like a bunch of party-apparatchiks verbosely battling it out to make the world safe for your party ideologues and fearless-leaders.</p>
<p>This is simply a debate, kalidescope.</p>
<p>I’m a canadian, although not born here, I think what el commando said was perfectly understandable, the us doesn’t need canada, cause canada sucks ass, but the us does need great britain and china. </p>
<p>If i lived in the states, i would be a radical left winger. I agree that Bush isn’t perfect, but wouldn’t you rather have him than phony two-faced John Kerry? What’s that he said about military funding: I actually voted for it before voting against it? I hear he spoke it with proud indignation too. Bush’s ideologies aren’t all beneficial, but at least he has will power, strenghth of character, as seen in last election, high moral values, evangelical as they may be, and condi, and donald, who make up a hell of a cabinet. Anyway, point is bush won people, deal with it. forgive if i’m off topic, but i was just tempted to comment because of all the bush bashing.</p>
<p>btw, primitivefuture, i sent you a PM.</p>
<p>btw, newsweek provides a very insightful look into bush’s healthcare plans.</p>
<p>i think what i posted is enough info. for everyone to get the idea.</p>
<p>What website did you copy and paste that piece from? Once you supply the site I can look at it and comment on it if it is from a respectable organization. Probably from some whacko left-wing blogger though. (There are many deficiences in the argument due to misunderstanding of the tax credits and associations. Of course I wouldn’t expect anything less from a liberal).</p>
<p>where did you get your sources from?</p>
<p>Who gives YOU the right to determine the validity of my sources. But anyway, now lets talk about Bush’s social security plan, and my sources are so valid that YOU can’t go against it.</p>
<p>Vice President Cheney has joined the Bush administration’s Social Security privatization tour, and he’s being surprisingly honest about Bush’s risky plan at least he’s admitting it’s a gamble:</p>
<p>Cheney said the performance of stocks and bonds over the course of history proves those younger than 55 should “bet on America” and fully expect to win. “In effect, what we are saying is we are going to tie your future as you retire to the overall health and function of the American economy,” he said.</p>
<p>Look, every American wants our economy to grow and stay strong. But the entire purpose of the Social Security system is to provide a guaranteed safety net that seniors can rely upon no matter what happens. We shouldn’t bet Social Security on anything, no matter how small the risk.</p>
<p>Another rare bit of Republican honesty on Social Security came from the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), who was traveling with Cheney. Thomas went off the GOP talking points when he said that Social Security wasn’t in a “crisis situation.”
These were good first steps for Cheney and Thomas, admitting that the risky Bush privatization plan is akin to gambling and that Social Security isn’t in crisis. Perhaps as Republicans tour the country to talk about the Bush plan, they’re learning from the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose it.</p>
<p>I propose that we give primitive the Unoriginality Award and commend him for his Copying and Pasting skills.</p>
<p>Well I’m not going to criticize you personally if all you’re doing is copying and pasting from other sources. I should be arguing with them, not you. When I’ve taken quotes directly from another place I’ve noted the source, so until you provide your sources I am not going to argue against any of “your” points.</p>
<p>Here’s what the Democrats have done with Social Security throughout history:
[ul]
[li]Converted it from an independent fund and put it in the general fund so that Congress could spend it. </p>[/li]
<p>[li]Put a tax on Social Security.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Increased the tax again on Social Security.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Allowed Social Security for immigrants. So if an immigrant moved into this country at 65, they got Social Security without ever paying a dime into it.[/li][/ul]</p>