Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Nader Blasts Obamacare

It should be noted that I am writing this post less than ten days before the start of the year 2010. This fact will be important at the end of this post.
 
Earlier this evening I was over at Washington DC's Union Station. I was hooking up with a friend at Thunder Grill which is in the station.

As I passed by the newsstand, I noticed that  someone had set up a table and was selling a book at the newsstand. I had never noticed anyone selling books like this at this newsstand, or for that matter at any newsstand in America. I looked closer. It was Ralph Nader hustling his new book,"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!".


I went over and introduced myself.

 I asked him what he thought about Obamacare. He said, "It's bad."

I asked him why. He said the same groups would be in control of healthcare that are now in control and he said there were also loopholes for insurance companies that would allow them not to pay on some pre-existing conditions.

I asked him what he thought of the structure where the young would be subsidizing the elderly. He said it was a convoluted system and that the solution was a single payer system. I told him I was a free market guy. He said that under the single payer system he was advocating that patients could choose any doctor and any treatment they wanted. He said everyone should be covered from birth to death.

It wasn't the proper venue to debate with him that he would be creating another power center through single payer. A power center because someone would have to decide who was a doctor and what was a legitimate treatment. And I didn't get into how I thought it was insulting the American people when a person  claimed charity had to be put into the hands of the government.

I simply don't disrupt people when they are trying to earn an honest living, and I mean Nader was really hustling his book. I think he tried to get me to buy it three times during our conversation. The man is a closer.

Before I left, he wrote down on the back of his business card two web sites for me to check out: pnhp.org and singlepayeraction.org. But checkout the business card. It's his 2004 Nader for President card.





4 comments:

  1. simply the greatest American of the past 40 years! Did you know that he is responsible for OSHA, the EPA, the Freedom of Information Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water act, the lead apron your dentist gives you to wear when you get x-rays, warning labels on cigarettes, the refund you get when you get bumped from an airplane.. see www.anunreasonableman.com
    also, the Democrats blaming their losses on nader is like a street walking hooker blaming their v.d on Mother Theresa...

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  2. Nader is a mixed bag. Some good and some bad. I think he's honest and has good intentions. It's just that he believes government can solve most things and the reality is that it almost always makes them more complicated or worse.

    FOIA requests are great. Unfortunately, these can and have been denied.

    Lead aprons and airplane refunds are also great but don't require a government act so much as dissatisfied customers and bad press.

    Warning labels on cigarettes never stopped anybody from smoking.

    The Clean AIr and Clean Water Acts are debatable in their results.

    OSHA and the EPA are bad, bad, bad and have actually made things worse for lower skill, lower income workers.

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  3. "A power center because someone would have to decide who was a doctor and what was a legitimate treatment"

    You have described perfectly how private, for profit healthcare HMO's work

    "another power center through single payer"

    Bureacracy is an institution of the Capitalist ruling class and the very free market that you champion. Read Marx-Lenin. You will then understand why you were brainwashed to avoid reading many of their works in school and in libraries. Furthermore, what is wrong with a central administration that would facilitate giving you something you already are paying for with your taxes? Most healthcare is for profit. You only need it for injuries or if you stop breathing. Don't you get it yet? It's free market medicine and a free market government. Obamacare changes nothing, is not single payer you git.

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  4. you believe in free market medicine. you got it. crooks overcharging. bad healthcare. no healthcare. expensive beyond belief healthcare.

    ralph nader is a great american who cares about all americans.

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