Name:	copperline -	Reply
Subject:	Sandra Fluke's quote
Date:	3/4/2012 4:32:58 PM

Come on!     Contraceptives should be available thru any medical insurance plan that covers medications…it’s a critical health issue that effects huge numbers women (and men!).     Providing access to those contraceptives is far less expensive (or damaging) than an unwanted pregnancy or an abortion.  Also, i don’t see how making birth control available thru health insurance falls on the back of ‘we the tax-payers’. …that’s just wrong.    

The cost of those meds is not even noticeable to insurance companies….health insurers would gladly pay a few cents per pill rather than be obligated to expensive prenatal care, childbirth and maternity costs.   Fewer pregnancies in a benefit  group  translates into lower premiums for the employers and employees, as well as enhancing their bottom line.      This is a public health issue and doesn’t compromise anyone’s rights …. you don’t have to use birth control unless you choose to….. it benefits  insurance corporations, employers, lowers health care costs, and  ultimately helps everyone.     Birth control should be as available under insurance plans just as penicillin and flu shots.   How could you not want this?

The subtext here is the Conservative agenda regarding abortion that creeps toward a warped moral agenda about extramarital sex.   Silly.    Opposing birth control while attempting to criminalize abortion means iNCREASiNG the number of young women who become accidentally pregnant and puts them in a huge dilemma….forcing them to have children they don’t want & can’t care for.  Why would you want to do this?  

Limbaugh’s slurs are reprehensible.    This was not some welfare mother he has complained about in the past,  she’s a law student at one of the most prestigious schools in the country.   An accidental pregnancy could end her legal career & completely alter her ability to control the outcomes of her life.   Her comments were spot-on and far more thoughtful than her detractors.    

You can be a talk show host if you are a felon, but you can’t become a lawyer.  Forging prescriptions or obtaining narcotics without a Rx is a felony.   is  Limbaugh a junkie or anti-social degenerate for getting busted using illegal oxycontin?        Some icon of virtue this is…..  really…. just a showman pandering to the base instincts of his audience.

Name:	copperline -	Reply
Subject:	Two Great Quotes
Date:	3/6/2012 5:49:45 PM

i believe the underlying reason for Sandra Fluke’s testimony, and the reason why it is so important, is that we need health insurance plans to have uniform minimum standards as part of US Health Policy.   Fluke believes, as i do, that birth control should be available thru all policies... regardless of who the employer is.     Making birth control available reduces health care costs and creates social/financial/healthcare outcomes that prove to be good for everyone involved.      if Conservatives want to oppose nationalized health care & still control spiraling costs, then raising the standards & increasing the efficiency of insurance corporations by creating more uniform coverage is a pretty good idea.  Otherwise, we will continue to build a patchwork system of insurance policies that is nearly impossible for consumers to comprehend, the sheer complexity of which continues to add to the upward momentum of costs.

Right now, administrative expenses account for about 50% of every dollar we spent on healthcare…. That’s a LOT of capital that is drawn off by corporations for organizational overhead… leaving only 50% available for real services.

To me, it’s similar to mandating that insurance companies can’t deny coverage to someone for a pre-existing condition or insuring the portability of coverage.     in order to reign in health care costs, we really do need more uniformity in the health care insurance system because this will keep national costs down.  We already have hundreds, thousands, of different policies creating an inefficient system FAR worse than a single payer system could be.

When the Catholic Church comes into the marketplace and sets up a corporation, they should do so under the same rules that any other corporation has to follow….. with the possible exception of their favored tax status.     

Name:	Talullahhound -	Reply
Subject:	A bit off topic, but I'm curious
Date:	3/7/2012 5:08:02 PM

Your question is a good one, and I don't have a good answer.  Presumably, the National Security Advisor spend their time working out the issues between the Defense and State Departments to propose a coordinated national security recommendation to the President.  But, is it needed?  Don't know.  I'm not a huge fan of the NSC and whenever I have been summoned there on a issue by the staffers, as far as I was concerned it only served to muddy the water; 

In my mind, the Department of Homeland Security's biggest problem (besides its current leader) is that even years after its creation it is still not a fully integrated Department.  My observation is that a good portion of it's mission is not clear.  My interface with them had to do with some technology that they were considering buying (they look at world wide sources), but did not have the technical staff to evaluate.  It seems to me, they get a lot of money, and they are not sure what to do with it.  And from what I've heard from a few people I knew that worked over there, no one had ever been able to assimilate the cultures of the multiple agencies that were thrown together to make it up. 

I'd be the very last person to tell you that I think the government is efficient or well organized or even especially well managed.  Despite encouragement to "think outside the box" the fact is that no one really wants that, and when it happens the thinker will likely be ostracized. For the most part, the political appointees do not trust the civilian workforce, nor does the civilian workforce trust the political appointees and nobody trust the Hill or it's staffers. So a lot of time gets wasted. And the first year of any Admnistration, nothing gets done while all the "key" players are going through confirmation processes.  So the first year, nothing much of any consequence will be accomplished.

I don't feel animosity towards the government.  Despite the inefficiencies things do get done.  The government is good at coming up with frameworks under which things can operate.  I'm not a person that believes that businesses will ever be self-regulating.  It's a nice thought, but frankly, nothing I've ever seen would lead me to believe that.  Some of the biggest Defense companies in this country would sell out our technology base and advantages for quarterly earnings.  It's not that they are bad people, it's just that is the nature of business.  They focus on the short term.  Under the best circumstances government focuses on the long term.