Democrats are too nice and take the high road. They don't realize the conservatives and Christians have declared war on all that is liberal. That means war on liberal churches, war on liberal politicians, war on unions, war on public education, war on science that doesn't agree with their view. This has been going on for forty years. The Democrats, Obama and Clinton kept taking the high road when the conservatives have been fighting a street brawl and winning.

The conservatives now have the vast majority of the states, both Houses of Congress, the President and shortly will have gained 1-3 more seats on the Supreme Court plus fill 105 federal judgeships. Additionally, most of the states are gerrimandered to support the conservatives.

As Arlen Spector said, "The Republicans are intolerant and the Democrats are incompetent." Neither you nor the Democrats realize that the conservatives have been at war for forty years. Though, you seem to be waking up.

You can jump up and down and scream cross check all you want. If the 1% owned and operated mainstream media does not want to report it, it is not reported. The public does not know what you are talking about.

As usual Dianereynolds is completely off subject.

No I cannot be friends with people who hurt me by the way they vote. When I vote for something or someone I don't harm them at all. They believe all the propaganda they hear and have no problem repeating these lies. When I try to talk about facts they won't listen. Trumpism is the worst thing for everyone except the one percent.

The Democrats that would speak out might be intimidated by DJT's revenge tactics. No one will say anything about that either! So--mum's the word.

@20

It's amazing, each time I believe I've seen the epitome of stupidity, you lefties manage to top it. You say the ACA was the Republicans fault. Even though not one Republican voted for it. The then speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, admits no one knew what the bill contained when she said, "we have to pass it to see what's in it". As you pointed out, Obama and his advisors picked out this plan. Neither you nor anyone else knows what their motivation was for picking this particular plan. Stop lying.

Until you realize you (Democrats) are the cause of your problems, you'll never be able to fix them.

Most of the problems with the Affordable Care Act, which Diane listed, were baked into the cake primarily for the profitability of the insurance industry and wall street investors rather than for the benefit of patients and taxpayers. If one digs into the archives deeply enough, one will discover that it is based thoroughly on Republican concepts, from Nixon to the Heritage Foundation to Romney-care in Massachusetts.

Obama and his advisors deliberately chose this particular plan, to give the bill a better chance to pass, precisely because it had the stench of Republican dogma, thinking, wrongly, that they wouldn't go against their own ideas. Obviously, he vastly underestimated their unlimited depravity.

Before the Affordable Care Act, nearly 45,000 fellow citizens were dying every year for lack of access to healthcare, while Wall Street insurance conglomerates -- principal donors to political campaigns -- were skimming up to thirty, sometimes forty percent profit for their shareholders. Medicare runs with only an average of three percent overhead, which is why the lobbyists for the insurance industry and the for-profit hospital chains fought shamelessly to exclude any public option.

Dr. Miklashek in post #5, Thom, and the majority consensus in this thread have it exactly right -- the citizens should push for a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit healthcare system. It should be available from birth to death. It should cover the myriad medical conditions inflicting humanity, hospice, and basic funeral expenses. Since everyone would pay into it, with no skimming of profits, it would be cheaper. Since everyone is going to get sick and die, it would be humane.

Right now, as always, Republicans are just groping around in the dark, secretly plotting to increase the profits of their donor class while further dismantling -- instead of fixing -- our flawed healthcare system. Now is the time to push for the ultimate fix: Medicare for all! If nothing else, perhaps they'll be exposed for the frauds they are.

I'm with you. The Israeli's and Palestinians use to live harmoniously. The present occupation is patently illegal. An occupying force, according to International Law, is required to respect the occupied land, and, furthermore not harm them. It is illegal to attack the occupied, but it is not illegal for the occupied to fight back if they are (hence, I get fired up when Hamas is called a terrorist group). The fact that the US supports Israel in the sense that they provide Israel with obscene amounts of money is a disgrace. If another country was perpetrating the kind of oppression, theft, and land takeover that has been done to the Palestinians, we'd go to war to protect 'human rights' (especially if there was some financial gain to be had). But there is a lot of Israeli money backing our government.....Zionists (I am not an anti-semetic) don't have to 'hack' our elections, they buy them by donating to candidates who will stand by them.

Obamacare made the US healthcare system unaffordable for most middle class Americans. If one wants to go back through the archives here they would see that many conservative posters here correctly predicted the demise and the dates when horrific cost increases were going to be passed on the the consumer.

Things like,

Mandate everyone must purchase? BS

The young enrollees would offset the elderly? BS

After the 100% Fed to state subsidies for exchanges would end and the states would be profitable? BS

Small Clinics would survive? BS

Less paperwork? BS

Rates would drop? Double BS

You can keep your doctor? Triple BS and earned Obama the title "Liar of the year"

Next time, read the bill before you vote on it.

They may not accept "Thom's decision" but if Americans could engage nationally and start demanding it, we might have a chance. This certainly is a 'Good for All" campaign which we should be 100% behind. I had a colonoscopy a month or so ago and actualy saw the bill. I have 2 healthcare policies and they neglected to bill one them. The bill for 4 hours at the hospital, with almost 3 of those hours waiting, was $8000!!!! I shared that info with a friend and he shared this: his partner had his gall bladder removed laporoscopically--1/2 incision and the laproscope essentially sucks the gall bladder out (I used to be an OR nurse) and is a same day surgery. His bill was $64,000.

Americas health care is excellent, if you have money. Truth is Obamacare is just redistribution of wealth. If it was sold that way it probably would have worked. Most people care. But instead middle class working families where told nothing would change for them which of course is impossible. How do you add 20 million people who can't afford healthcare to the system and costs stay the same. If you want to reduce costs in America, reduce to payout outs on lawsuits for doctors, they are only human and will make mistakes. None of the countries Thom mentioned above allow them. Reduce the cost of medications, you pay way more than you should. Probably because of all the payouts insurance companies hand out as well. When I visit America I can't believe how many commercials law firms have on TV.

There's a reason that education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions.

Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.

Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.

They’ve got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by a system that threw them overboard 30 years ago.

They don’t want that, you know what they want?

They want obedient workers, obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly lousier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now they’re coming for your social security money.

They want your retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you in the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to believe, what to think and what to buy.

The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged.

Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people, white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich jerks who don’t care about them. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all.

And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.

That’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans are and will probably remain willfully ignorant. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.