Political quote

I don't discuss politics much here, but regardless of anyone's stance on health care, I'd think any rational person should agree that some of the doom and gloom rhetoric has been downright silly (or would be, at least, if not for the extra dosing of threatened violence). So in that spirit:
"So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling or some cracks opening up in the earth," [Obama] said to laughter and applause. "Turned out it was a nice day; birds were chirping, folks were strolling down the mall, people still had their doctors."
quoted from FirstRead

Comments

Lauren Michelle said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel Ausema said…
It certainly looks childish at times. I try my best to see it through their supporters' eyes too, but... Doesn't help my attempts that most of the comments section on my local newspaper gets filled with tea-party libertarians who've accepted as gospel the wildest claims out there. I would guess at least a third of my Facebook friends self-identify as Republican/conservative (a natural result of where I grew up), and I don't think most of them fit the wild-eyed, conspiracy-theory-swallowing stereotypes. You wouldn't know it by listening to their elected officials, though.

Moving away from politics... Good to hear your experiences with the e-reader. I was just talking to a friend the other day who'd bought a Sony for her teenage daughter. Maybe I'll take a look at that sometime and see how it feels to me. She was lamenting the lack of e-library resources that she'd found--the local library isn't part of any of the groups in OverDrive, so there are silly hoops to jump through to participate there...and even then, most of the books are audiobooks, not ebooks. But oh well, hopefully that kind of thing will expand in the next few years.
Lauren Michelle said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel Ausema said…
My wife is in primary care, so as I understand it, the bill will probably work out well for her. Not if insurances start paying the equivalent of today's Medicare payments, but from what I've read and heard, I don't think that'll be the outcome. The main danger is that it could overwhelm her with patient numbers.

Certainly more will need to be done to bring in more primary care docs, and my hope would be that that entails restructuring the balance of the pay for primary care vs. specialists, which would also work in my wife's favor, of course. Specialists will howl, though. It'll likely also involve increased numbers of mid-levels (PAs, NPs, etc.), which is fine, and probably a good way to keep costs from rising too fast.

I'm mostly pleased with the plan, especially just the fact that it's finally passed and we can move on, but I agree it isn't perfect at all, and a more progressive (which is to say socialist ;) ) bill would have done much more to rein in costs.
Lauren Michelle said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel Ausema said…
"the tippy-top of specialist entitlement"

Hah =)