Nobody, I don't think you've been around long enough to know me very well. Most of the old-timers here will agree, I think, that I am characteristically polite and civil even in discussions with someone with whom I disagree. I generally do not lose my civility until the same person showers me repeatedly with gross personal insults.

Songwronger, for example. Whenever I disagree with him (which is most of the time), he tries to imply that I am too stupid or ignorant to understand the subject he is discussing, even when I am something of an expert on the subject. Rather than addressing my points of disagreement, he resorts to personal abuse.

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Regarding your delivery truck analogy:

Most people pretty much know what the Affordable Care Act is about and what it does. There are a few wrinkles to be ironed out, teething problems, if you will, but this is the case with any new and far-reaching bill. They ARE being addressed by President Obama.

There is a great deal of material out there simply telling lies about what the ACA will and will not do—especially what it will not do—by those who are opposed to ANY form of government supported health care. Republicans, "Tea Party" proponents, Libertarians, and anyone else for whom anything government sponsored and not pure "Free Enterprise Capitalism" is "Socialism" or "Communism."

Or "Fascism," about which Benito Mussolini said consists of a system in which the government and the corporations act as the same. He pointed to the "Fasces," from which Fascism gets its name:   a bundle of sticks tied around a battle ax (illustration). "The sticks," said Mussolini, "represent the corporations and the ax represents the power of government. The two act as one entity."

Benito Mussolini, I think you will agree, was something of an expert on the subject.

And MY worry is that following the Right Wing path in this country is taking us down the road to Fascism.

NOT Socialism. And certainly not Communism, although both Fascism and Communism operate essentially as a dictatorship.

The fact that the United States is one of the few countries in the world that does NOT have a single payer health care system for its citizens is the shame of the entire nation.

Any and all attempts to move toward this kind of system in the U. S. has been vociferously—downright savagely—opposed by arch-conservative forces every time the subject has come up.

Who are the opponents? Largely health insurance companies who want to write their own ticket, and some health care providers that would rather let people die if they can't pay their exorbitant charges. There are the real "Death Panels" that Sarah Palin warned about. How, I ask, can European or American trained doctors in Thailand perform the same procedures for a quarter of what they would cost in the U. S.?

AND—people like Songwronger, who obviously hate President Obama for reasons that are open to speculation. In many cases it's because he's a Democrat and, to them, anything a Democrat proposes is to be opposed—and in a high percentage of cases, particularly in certain parts of the country, the opposition is for no reason other than that Barack Obama is a black man.

Mixed race, actually, but in the parts of the country of which I speak, many people consider any mixing of races "against God and Nature." For example, to them, an "octaroon" (someone who is one-eight Black) is a "nigger." And is regarded as sub-human. Until remarkably recently, in these states it was illegal for two people of different races to marry.

Those, Nobody, are the ugly FACTS behind this dispute over health care.

Note:   I have a wide number of friends, relatives, and acquaintances and none of those I have talked to about this matter say that they will have to change their current doctor or health insurance. And I have checked with my doctor and my insurance company and they both assure me that I need to do nothing.

Don Firth