Azizi, your Cobra costs must be for just yourself. When my wife swiched jobs it took 2 months before her new benifits would kick in. For herself, her spouse (me) & for the 2 kids it was $1250.00 per month & the coverage sucked. No eye or dental that was all extra, co-pays went up & some meds that were tier 1 went to tier 2 & the tier 2's some went to tier 3's.
You were lucky to get away with that but still that's way to much & COBRA is there only as a temporary safety net??? Some safety net, it costs the most when you can least afford it or when you can't afford it & need it the most & it's temporary to boot, after it expires really you're fucked!

That wasn't a twitch. I see twitches all the time, my son's got Touretts & so didn't his grandfather. That weren't nothin' more than an ol shoo fly named Joe Wilson buzzing the echoes of the ghost of Strom Thurmond in the empthy hollows of his head. The talk show spinners can speak it & spin it in circles but Obama gave it the attention it so richly deserved & not recieving his call was completely apporpriate on Obama's part.

I believe, after being on medicare & an employer sponsered plan for a good few yrs that there's so much waste that it's unbelievable it's astronormical. The papers & forms I get is doubled & tripled, it's always, "your claim cannot be processed at this time please conntact your provider" who I then have to contact & explain what everything was for (this is explained in the billing process) I then have to get back to the provider of the care who's trying to get paid & have them contact the insurer, then they have to rebill after I sent back in a new form saying that my doctor authorized the treatment after I already had a pre-outhorizion sent from my Doc. Unbelievable, always a fight for coverage & nearly a full time job to stay healthy dispite them trying to kill me.
Saving the system would not only IMHO pay for the new reform it would also save on the enviorment, less trees, less human energy, less air pollution (tons of trucking mail & the postage)less useless jobs that produce carbon die.

"Not a dime from medicare", medicare & medicade would also prosper under the new bill, again the savings alone in waste cutting would be tremendous, steaming lining & trimming it, oh how I could go on.

I would love to see the reform take away the employers playing/paying a part in this but that doesn't seem to be, so be it.
As it stands, the unions are getting dumped on with the responsibility for heath care by the manufacturers & corporations. Someone has to carry the burden (why is it the unions who are always the ones to fight the losing battles?). They (manuf, & corps) know what a nightmare & burden it is & they'd rather shift that burder over to the unions whereas if the government took it on as they do in all other democratic & advanced nations it wouldn't be such a nightmare & it would be a fare share for everyone. (and the auto & steel industries might once again have a fighting chance to survive).

To listen to Obama talk was first & foremost a sweet pleasure after the years of double-talking confusion, words that couldn't be found in any dictionary, redundant remarks. His speech was plain & clear, the man's very articulate, doesn't mince words, makes his ideas known. I'm proud when he speaks to thenot just the nation but to the world. The world listens to him & they're not laughting this time, they're respecting what the man has to offer, weither or not they agree. That's not happened in quite a while.

I loved his speach again for his attempts to bring this reform in under a whole, united congress. He reaches across without begruging or trying to humble, he makes it clear who's job it is & who he's relying on to get the jpob done & he let us the people know here he stands & who standing with him & who's fucked it up without putting the knife in & twisting it it. He's very much "a matter of fact" man & he wiling to put the facts out there & show them for what they are,,,as well as the lies "Joe".

Did anyone catch Michelle reaching over & holding the hand of Teddy's teary eyed widow in support, while Vicky was choking back her tears? Cause this is the unfinished work of his (Teddy's) life long dream, the same health care that congress has, available to every John Q Public that lives in America. That says more for how the first family works in the human community.

I love this man!!! IMHO we have never had better and the sooner his opposition realizes it & lets him get on with "our business" the better, either that or let them get out f the way so he can do his job.

We now stand a etter chance than a snowball in hell or getting back what's been lost over the past 30 odd years. Obama is our chance to regain world respect, he's our ticket to much needed health care reform, educational reform (hopefully his next "big", actually ongoing issue), he's already proved his mettle in handling of the financial mess we're in (I've been looking at the public & government bids lately for the New England area on construction projects & the amount of road, bridges, schools, bases-anything that get public, state or federal money is astonishing in the jobs & money it's generating). We are far better off at the moment than we could have possibility have ever hoped for had someone else, anyone else, been in office right now. And we could even be further down the road if the "Begruding Right" would stop with the constant, needless roadblocks.

He does need to end the wars, that's my only gripe, well that & he needs to be a bit more of an extreme left wing radical, well more than a bit but if he were imagine the roadblocks then, he get nothing done.


Barry