I really respect your ability to articulate your positions, as well as your willingness to post on a site whose participants most likely disagree with at least some of your positions.

That being said, I figured I'd chime in about about universal health care.  Basically, we already pick up the tab for people who cannot afford health care.  These hidden costs, in the form of taxes, actually end up costing Americans more because instead of taking care of small medical problems as they arise, we end up taking care of big problems in the emergency room.

There's a report (well, five of them) by the non-partisan Institute of Medicine which outline why universal health care makes sense for Americans.  You can check it out at here, and they can make a hell of a better argument than I could.

Awesome diary Dickie and welcome.  I look forward to more of your writings.

No one ever agrees fully with a candidate on every issue, but what impresses me about Obama is the same thing you see.  He has a vision and has been consistent on that vision, change occurs from the bottom up.  I also admire him because he notes how difficult some of the issues are (i.e. abortion) and he tries to be empathetic to both sides.

Glad you're here!!!

support Obama for the General Election. I hope you'll be also voting for the downtickets including Mark Warner.

Some of your thoughts are fine with me with balance of free markets and foreign policy. I do not agree with your stands on opposing abortion, universal healthcare, doing away with income tax and capital gains tax completely (at least flat tax would have been alright with me) and no benefits for legal immigrants.

I pay attention to Virginia, because what is happening there these days politically is fascinating.  I have relatives in Farmville.  Actually meeting people who were involved in the closing of the schools there after Brown vs. Board of Education, and in particular one family split right down the middle, gave me an appreciation for the functioning of race in a community, and its evolution over time to where things are now. Are you finding many others like you and your family in the Farmville area?  My brother is a Dem and so are most of his friends, so he can't quite take the temperature of how many are crossing over this time.

I am so glad to hear that you are willing to support a candidate who you don't have to agree with on every issue, just because you know it will be better for the country.  Hear, hear.  I also don't totally agree with Obama, but I think we are in a Constitutional crisis over executive power, accountability and the loss of checks and balances and I am thrilled that not one, but two Constitutional scholars, who are also masterful politicians with good values and who 'get it' about how far we are off track are available to get my enthusiastic vote.

I actually have never believed that anyone who shares my political positions could ever get elected president, so I don't get affronted at the differences I have with Obama or Biden, nor do I expect miracles from them.  Just very hard work on our behalf.  I expect that we have to work pretty hard too, to keep giving them the will and the backing (and the kick in the butt) to get things done.

to help us make this a more perfect union.  I hope you noticed the many Republicans who stood up for Barack at last week's convention.  This is no accident and Obama has courting people like you since the beginning.  

Three things about your points of view and Obama:

1) pro life - we have to agree to disagree but know that you're still welcome.  See Bob Casey, a major Obama surrogate and pro lifer;

2) on immigrants and rights/benefits.  I assume you meant illiegal or undocumented immigrants.  This is a tough one because it is our position that once they get into the US, you have to treat them as human beings.  Say an undocumented worker gets into a bad car accident- what are you going to do let them die on the side of the road?   Obama is in favor of strict border security, a path to citizenship for those already here and fining employers who hire undocumented workers.   Immigration reform will pass in 2009 under Obama or McCain.  This is a huge issue out here in the West.  I don't want to put words in your mouth, but your suggested strict position on immigration has devastated the Republican Party in California, except for freak candidates like Arnold, a classic liberal Republican;

3) eliminate income and capital gains taxes - you're going to have to explain that one because it seems pretty nutty.  

Thank you for making the effort to understand Obama and your support.  Obama is a big fan of Warner too and it seems that Obama may well have picked him for VP had Warner been willing.    

Welcome, Dickie.

It's nice to hear another perspective, particularly when it is polite.  Discourse is important for growth, unlike flame wars.  

With regard to the health care problem, a young woman tried to explain her side of it to a couple of older Republican men at a local restaurant yesterday.

She calmly said the following, with a wry smile.  "I'm a good person.  I played by the rules.  I've worked hard. I was even a good teenager.  I finished high school at age 14, started college, got my degree.  I then worked at a corporation, making my way up the management ladder, working 80 or more hours a week.  At age 23, I got cervical cancer and after a long, ugly battle, it is finally in remission.  Now, due to the economic downturn, I'm laid off.  I've used up my savings on medical bills.  All the stock I've accrued is now worthless.  I have no health insurance because I was laid off, I'm 25, and I have a pre-existing condition.  So you find me here waiting tables, praying my cancer doesn't come back.  I worked hard.  I played by all the rules.  Do I deserve to die for that?"

Dickie, I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do know one thing:  the system we have is NOT working.
 

because all players have an incentive to corrupt it. This is why small businessmen like regulators. They're the people who keep the big fishes from muscling them out entirely.

Regulation is the only thing saving the free market.

75% of our stock market is held by 200 companies. Opportunities for collusion abound.

Healthcare is more than 10% of our GNP, a figure that has continued to grow, sucking money out of more productive enterprises...

Because, like many publically traded companies, the perception has been that insurance companies must make more money each year. And they've been doing a bangup job of that. 5.9% increase in health care costs for the consumer (not the corporations they work for) this year.

You gotta ask yourself -- how are they cutting costs?

It's by denying coverage. There is a vast network of people whose only job is to make people jump through hoops, try to deny care for any reason. A woman who had a miscarriage in an emergency room... was told that she had had a voluntary abortion, and thus wasn't covered. Why? The company had a policy that any bill above a certain amount was to be denied.

But that's only half the story. Because hospitals have to care for everyone, they develop elaborate safety networks -- employing many people just to try to stop the hospital from being ripped off by insurance.

I've been in doctor's offices, with about ten doctors and at least three 'receptionists' to make sure that people have insurance or can afford to pay for it.

It is a collossal waste of effort. The problems with health care are not fixable through price management.

We need streamlining. There is an obvious benefit to treating health care like a fire department -- it isn't something you need very often, but you do need it, so spread the risk around.

This will save small businessmen -- who routinely look at their workers, who they regard as family, and lay out the health care that they can afford. "Do you guys want the $1000 plan, or the $2000 plan?" Per Month. This is why small businessmen are turning Democratic.

Health care is the death knoll for entrepreneurism. If you can't offer health care, who will take your job but the desperate??

Health care is the death knoll for a free market of labor -- if you're worried about your health, how can you look for a new job?

Finally, as in all things political -- look at who the movers and shakers are. Joe Shmo don't get the politicians moving.

Here it is Big Auto from Detroit, struggling to be competitive in a global marketplace. They could use the cut from the massive bargaining that having everyone on the gov't plan would bring.

This is really a great debate about the hole between the rich and the poor -- where the middle class lives. People who could afford affordable health care, but who are not able to get it because it isn't affordable.

I believe that a nopremium health care plan would be something even the most skeptical of consumers would sign up for. If there is enough choice, a mandate can work, I think. What say you?

As a newly-reminted Democrat who rides the center line on many  things, I welcome you and your perspectives.

o  I'm right there with you on free markets.  I think Obama gets it.

o  UHC I think you and I might find common ground on.  I've lived in Canada off and on all my life and can appreciate universal access, but the fact is that the system has deep flaws as well.  Most folks here have heard my holding-forth on this at great length, but in the end I like Obama's approach of trying to improve access by working with everyone involved.  It's just hellaciously expensive on a personal or national scale and true single-payer UHC may kill the golden goose that creates the medical technology we need, but we should be able to improve access and lower costs if we honestly work together on it.

I think this guy gets it:

Thanks for posting!

-chris

You pose this question:

''Why do you love the idea of Universal Health Care, and want a mandatory one, when you can't even make the same commitment for English as the Universal Language?''

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Universal Healthcare should be listed under inalienable right along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But to impose English as a "universal" language or state sanctioned language reeks of cultural imperialism.  It's discriminatory.  Should people who immigrate to this country learn it?  Probably, but making it the official language of the United States, sorry.

and one worthy of a considered response.

1. I believe the best argument in favor of universal single-payer healthcare is not some egalitarian ideal, but efficiency.  Paul Krugman's columns do a great job of popularizing the number-crunching on this.  Among the highlights are:
   a. Medicare overhead costs represent 2% of premiums paid by the government; for private plans the figures quoted were something like 37%.  There's too much paperwork and beaurocracy involved in getting someone else to pay the hefty treatment bills.  Also, while US doctors are overpaid, they have to spend way to much of their time fighting with insurers.
   b. The Canadian government (Federal and Provincial), despite guaranteeing "free" basic healthcare to ALL its citizens (including things like heart transplants but not completely covering prescriptions), spends less per capita on healthcare than the US government, who leaves many uninsured and relies on private insurance for the non-poor non-elderly.  The difference was something like 2,200$-2,100$ per citizen, not huge but not insignificant either.

2. As for universal healthcare being affordable, my response to #1 partly answers this.  The evidence provided by every other industrialized country would suggest it's affordable too, although all their systems have significant drawbacks.  I would agree that healthcare, if not managed carefully and dispassionately, is a voracious money pit.  But a competent government can set and enforce a set of uniform standards in accordance with its budget.  But other countries have free-market ideologues too; ever wonder why no significant political factions in their Governments want to emulate the US healthcare model?

A few crude examples to illustrate market success in some areas vs. market failure in others:

- The private sector is the right place to handle something like like making iPods.  Huge profit motive, faster adaptability to market demands and healthy competition.  Above all, nobody really needs an iPod, and any company who overprices or makes a crappy product simply fails.

- Things like national defense, water supply, healthcare (and to a lesser extent, electrical power) don't work that way.  Reliability of service is much more important than adaptability and innovation.  There are often huge capital or crisis-management costs that no private company would want or be able to absorb (hence all the healthcare beaurocracy).  People cant't simply stop using tapwater or healthcare simply because it gets too expensive.  And of course, as a society we refuse to let people die because they can't afford medical care.

Free-market libertarianism in its purest form leads to us all going back to subsistence farming.  I'm convinced that it's important for us to realize the contribution of public institutions to our quality of life, and to recognize when some responsibilities are better handled by our sometimes inefficient and choice-curtailing governments.  Even when we have to wait on line at the DMV, read about pork-barrel waste in government and plow through needlessly complicated tax returns.

So, when I hear about Republicans railing against "big Government" in all its forms, I see not only hypocrisy (because of their porky ways), but intellectual dishonesty.  They refuse to acknowledge market failure, and their solution is always to make government smaller rather than better.

and for being an Obamacan. One of the things that drew me to Obama early on was a belief that he will make this country less divided. You being here reaffirms this belief.

I am Reaper0Bot0.  I greet you in the spirit of comity and cameraderie.  I have an Obamacan friend or two, and you seem to share a similar outlook to them.

I find it rather amusing that the RNC was spent repeating the phrase "country before party" in a way that was obviously meant to further their party.  For those of my friends on the other side of the aisle who take such things seriously, well, it was an affront.

The Obamacans I know want America to prosper.  None of them are happy to admit that a President Obama offers a better chance at that than would a President McCain.  I don't blame them.  It can't be easy to admit that the best vehicle for American prosperity is the one you've opposed for some time.  That doesn't always mean that Obama is a positive good, on his own merits, through the eyes of a libertarian Republican (though it may).  This speaks to how far the Republican Party has sunk of late.

I applaud my party for focusing on actual solutions to our problems.  I am shocked and amazed that our friends on the other side of the aisle have mostly forgotten that the best way to get out of a whole usually starts when you stop digging deeper into the whole and then plan your escape.

Oddly, Newt Gingrich actually focuses on "solutions."  I'm not sold on very many of his, but I'll give him credit for focusing on policy.  I'm open to ideas, whatever their source.  In all fairness, I suspect Senator McCain is sincere when he says the same.  However, his party lacks the necessary active brain trust these days.  

Our democracy, our very republic suffers when one of the major convergences of the electorate ceases to aggressively represent and serve the people.  Again, I think John McCain honestly gets that.  That's to his credit.  I just don't think he has a clue as to how to get that back, or a chance in hell of getting his party on the ball.

The best chance the Republican party has to ever really regain power or dominance is to spend some time in the wilderness.  They've earned it.  I want them to come back leaner, more focused, more pragmatic, and more open than before.  Their party does have some interesting intellectual underpinnings.  I agree with the basic premise that personal freedom of action will tend to be more efficient than collective action.  I don't think that all of our problems can be solved that way, but I do think it's a good starting point.
Sadly that philosophy is desperately under-served these days by either party.

Barack Obama is talking about the issues in a very real and pragmatic way.  My more intellectually honest Republican friends will acknowledge that Barack Obama is talking about what he would actually do as our next President.  John McCain has done far less of that, and ironically enough, has spent more of his time establishing a narrative of a reformer, a warrior, a man above the fray.  I'm not voting for a messiah, nor a warrior-chieftain.  I want someone to lead us, to channel our energies, to pragmatically see further ahead than the rest of us do.  I am certain that Barack Obama is that man.

Again, howdy.  This should be fun, no?

Cheers for reviving the name of my 45th favorite Chicago Bull of all-time: Dickie Simpkins!  That is, unless you are actually Dickie Simpkins; then I'll say you're my favorite Bull, since you're on myDD.

I remember during the dark, post-Jordan years, whoever made the Bulls jerseys misspelled Simpkins as "Smipkins" on the back of his jersey; Simpkins wore it for an entire half.  

Good points in the diary, though I can't say I agree with them all.  Rec'd.

You made your differences known respectfully, and I appreciate that you have found good reasons to vote for Obama over McCain.  You may get a few confrontational responses, but after all, a lot of us Obama supporters knew early on that there was something different about our candidate, the way he seemed to appeal to independents and Republicans in a way that Hillary Clinton (while a great Democrat) never could.  Obama isn't going to change minds overnight, but I felt one of his main strengths was the way he could present progressive policies and viewpoints without seeming overtly partisan, and I believe that was directly responsible for the Republicans for Obama groups that began to spring up, and for politicians like Linc Chafee and Jim Leach endorsing Obama.

I have several friends who are former Ron Paul supporters, and come down on most of the same issues you do, and have similarly decided Obama (while they disagree with him on a lot of issues) is better than McCain.  We welcome everyone who wants to help Obama win, regardless of their personal views, and I'm glad you've chosen to diary this.

You may not consider yourself a Democrat, but we are a "big-tent" party open to people of all political persuasions, united by a few common beliefs.  I myself happen to disagree with most forms of gun control, and while I do occasionally debate other Democrats here and in real life about it, for the most part I agree to disagree.

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