Politics: United States Democratic Primary

[butterfly]

So, the total number number of delegates needed to win the nomination is 2,025, yes? That's the lowest number for a majority. Obama is currently leading Clinton by 143 delegates, with his total number at 1,631 and hers at 1,488. That's... not insurmountable by any means. Certainly not a good reason for her to curl up and go home.

Pennsylvia's primary is on the twenty-second of this month. Then Indiana and North Carolina on the 6th. West Virginia on the 13th and, finally, the 20th of May, Oregon gets to vote (along with Kentucky). The fact that my primary is so far away is a source of frustration to me.

I like Clinton's health care plan. When she and Obama talk specifics about issues and votes, I tend to find myself agreeing with her more often than with him when they differ (many times, they don't). Of course, in any race between Obama and McCain, Obama would get my vote in a heartbeat, but between him and Clinton... yes, I plan to vote for her.

The world that we live in is not post-racism or post-sexism (or, for that matter, post-classism and it certainly isn't post-homophobia). Either Clinton or Obama as our President will be a major step forward for this country. I'll be proud to call either of them my President.

Comments

[radioreverie.livejournal.com]

Government-operated healthcare is the only way to ensure that everyone can not actually just afford healthcare, but actually be accepted for it.

I can afford healthcare. However, I don't have any because there is not an insurance company in the entire country that will take me. Not even for a catastrophic plan. This is the problem with corporations running insurance. I am seen as a risk to their profits, not as a human being. And economically, healthcare should never have been a privatized business in the first place, just like fire, police, etc. Healthcare is a public issue with public concerns (infectious diseases, unemployment, etc.) which is ill-served by private corporations with profit motives and ultimately costs everyone more in the long-run.

Part of the reason that some government-run things don't run as well as they should right now is because they have been gutted, underfunded, and deliberately rendered incompetent over the past 8 years so that the people in power could say, "Look, government doesn't work! Only privatization works! Plz sell my friend here a contract to run this privately."

And even though privatization results in even more incompetent operation, it matters little to them, because they can manipulate it for maximized profits without once pausing to think about how it serves anyone they're supposed to be serving.

And government is never going to be perfect. There will always be issues and unfairnesses. But the issues and unfairness of PRIVATE CORPORATIONS far outweigh these issues. The fact that unemployed and already disabled or ill Americans cannot get insurance is unconscionable. The way most HMOs function is unconscionable. The fact that insurance companies seek the slightest loophole to deny coverage is unconscionable. The way people can go into millions of dollars of debt or bankruptcy if they become ill while uninsured is unconscionable. Tossing those who cannot pay out into the street is unconscionable.

I don't see how, given all these things, government-run health insurance is the bad alternative or a big and scary thing. Almost every other country in the world, even third world countries, has public healthcare. And it has its problems, but it still works better than this.


P.S. I am not a Clinton supporter, but for other reasons.

[spiletta42.livejournal.com]

There need to be laws. I don't have health insurance either, because I was paying a fortune for it, and it didn't cover any of my actual needs. I was giving up my ability to see a chiropractor, buy groceries, etc., so that I could give money to a health insurance company, who then made me go see a doctor who demanded a two thousand dollar test, told me I had a problem I already knew I had, and then did absolutely nothing to treat it. In the meantime, the health insurance company refused to pay for the test. So trust me, I know the problems with the system as it stands.

The very notion of health insurance is absurd, actually. For any insurance system to work, the incoming premiums must outweigh the outgoing claims. That works with car insurance. It doesn't with health insurance, because almost everyone who has it is going to use it, pretty much regularly. Which means it's not really "insurance" at all, is it?

Insurance should be there for the big stuff -- the really big expensive stuff that nobody who works for a living could afford -- and we should pay out of pocket for the rest. It would actually be cheaper. (Think about what "insurance" costs per month, and then imagine having 75% of that money to spend on doctors yourself, while paying a much smaller premium for catastrophic insurance.) Then the portion of the population that needs additional help could be eligible for a government program that works like food stamps. That's the type of plan I would view positively, but the last I looked at Hillary's plan, it was nothing like that.

Granted, I haven't paid attention lately, as primaries are over where I am, and I avoid unnecessary stress, usually.

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

So true. There's also the problem that it's often much more profitable to treat symptoms when you can sell a product to people that they depend on for their lives over a long period of time, rather than to actually cure disease. (Prozac, blood pressure medication, the AIDS cocktail, and diabetes paraphernalia are all hugely profitable - so profitable that it may not be in a company's best interests to cure any of the underlying issues)

And then, too, just the notion of profiting on human misery is distasteful.