Govt.-Run Health Care Isn't the Answer

HIV/AIDS is 100% preventable! 100%! But it means changing behavior, something many find reprehensible. If Nationalized Health Care/Insurance goes into effect promiscuous sexual activity, or sex with more than one partner for life could be considered reckless activity that could lead to the necessity of extra health care treatment and payment or coverage for said treatment. Be careful what you wish for.

It is amazing just how many people do not realize how much fraud is in all government run programs! Who do you think messed up Medicare and S.S.? I read once, that any foreigner that steps foot on our soil and has AIDS, gets treated for free, if this is true, then our own citizens with this disease aren't getting the treatment because it went to a non-citizen. First hand, I have seen Community Action and Welfare use fraud, in order to get more money the next year! On Medicare, if one is denied a new treatment, and you find a way to get the money to pay the Dr., Medicare will stop all payments to the Dr. for two years! So he is punished for trying to help his patient! Gov. should first stop fruad, do tort reform, allow tax deductions for people to buy ins., but they won't because they think you are too cheap and too stupid to do it on your own!

The ignorance about health reform in this thread is appalling. In every single state where a public option exists, costs have skyrocketed and coverage has been cut back. The cost of regular insurance in those states, from Maine to Massachusetts, has skyrocketed because of mandates like guaranteed issue and forced coverage that millions do not need. And to hold up Medicare and Medicaid as the ideal of what a public option should look like reveals a profound ignorance of these programs. They have unfunded liabilities of TRILLIONS of dollars and are rife with fraud and abuse. Foreign countries spend a less on health care because their governments ration it. The U.S. has far higher cure rates for cancer and better treatment of heart disease, partly because we make much greater use of medical technology like MRIs and Catscans. Once you correct for national differences in race, obesity, fertility rates, and other demographic factors, we have the best health care in the world, bar none.

Why is Barron willing to collaborate with a vicious homophobe like Coburn anyway? The influence HMO money can have on some people is frightening.

These comments are amusing, yet sad. For example: "The GOP will stop at nothing to protect the insurance lobby," Remind me again who's fighting tooth and nail to get the insurance companies to support ObamaCareless? And let's not forget all the beau coup cash liberal Congress critters take in contributions from the eeeeevil insurance companies like Pelosi. I find it strange that the gays will rail against Coburn as a "bigot", but circle the wagons around those who gave us DADT, DOMA (and refuse to do anything about either), refer to gays as "those people", call a guy "maricón" on Imus' show, refuse to offer amicus in Romver v. Evans, encourage John Kerry to support the FMA, etc. etc. And let's not forget Chairman Obama surrounding himself with many homophobic bigots. The gays didn't think twice about throwing their cash and votes at him. So it seems that the Coburn hysteria is little more than typical liberal feigned indignation.

Republicans, since getting trounced soundly at polls in 2008, have been very good at telling us what the answer is not. They have been very short is supplying viable alternatives however. If government-run healthcare isn't the answer, then what is, Mr. Coburn? Leaving our healthcare to profit-driven private insurance companies doesn't seem to be working.

Isn't it funny that when a GOP senator wants to talk to gay people, he thinks we all have the AIDS? He apparently missed the e-mail about how members of the LGBT community have jobs, buy homes, have long-term partners, sometimes have children and we get old. Like any straight American, we worry about losing our jobs if we have an accident or get sick; or that our employer will eliminate healthcare benefits; or that because an employer simply doesn't like gay people that we will get fired; or that if we get sick and aren't covered we'd lose our houses to exorbitant medical costs; or that our partners might have healthcare benefits but our family doesn't qualify for those benefits as do straight coworkers; or that maybe we do get partner benefits from one partner's employer, but have to pay income taxes on those benefits (when straight coworkers do not); or that many of us are entrepreneurial and therefore have to purchase health insurance on the open market. AIDS does not define us.

I can't figure out what's more repulsive, a gay "leader" teaming up with a loud-mouth ignorant bigot like Tom Coburn or the Advocate providing the two of them a platform. Although it is probably useful for us to see the true colors of GOProud. They seem to be much more interested in helping the GOP spread its lies regarding health care reform than standing up for gay people. Coburn & Barron's commentary is incredibly misleading. The health care reforms now being considered in the Congress would have saved thousands of gay people with HIV, and they will eventually save tens of thousands of Americans every year. Their contention that public insurance systems are costly & inefficient is belied by the model of both MediCare and the health insurance systems of every single other industrialized democracy, all of provide health care for substantially less than we do.

I can't believe the Advocate would even give the print space to someone so Anti-gay. He has pushed against the LGBT community for years, why would we believe anything that came out of his mouth.

What is nearly as stomach-turning is the co-authorship of Chris Barron, the supposedly gay chair of GOProud. I can never seriously accept the thoughts of GOPer gays and lesbians publicly writing about LGBT issues until Mary Cheney, mother-to-be for the second time, is ar least an honorary chair of GOProud or similar GOP-affiliated group.