Ray urges everyone to to vote Yes on Question 1, sending a message to the legislature that selfish, foolish taxation policies will not be tolerated.
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About Me
- Ray Richardson
- I live in Westbrook with my wonderful wife Dee Dee and our four children. We have been residents of Maine for a little over 22 years, moving here from Florida in 1985.
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8 comments:
Ray that is some grass roots group behinf Yes on 1
Aside from the signatures gathered( we all know most people will sign any pettition) The contributions of 3.5 million for the yes campaign have come from the beverage industry. isaw 1 donation of $100.00 on the list and none for $50. or less from any individuals.
I have not seen the beverage industry this wound up about anything since the bottle law
i am looking forward to the debate tomorrow night
Did I mention Coca Cola's contribution of $655,000 just for october.
Certainly don't want too many kids slowing down on their soft drink consumption.
Imagine if that 3.5 million could have been put to good use.
Given the lopsideness of the funding for this. Voteno has raised $190,000 I have heard.
It will probably pass, but I am hoping Mainers will surprise us on this one.
Vote NO on 1 for a healthier Maine
I don't hear you making the same comment about Barack Obama.
I guess it is okay to spend an overwhelming amount of money if it is for a cause you believe in.
The beverage money is private money, not taxpayer funds. They earned it and if they believe this is a good investment of their money, I am okay with it.
Barack Obama is not spending taxpayer money to win. I am okay with that as well.
The Legsislature is going to get a slap down I pray and they deserve it because of their arrogance and inability to provide real solutions to the issues that face Maine.
Our legislature is an embarassment.
There should be collective shame from this body for their collective ineptness, but they would have to understand the concept to feel the emotion.
They don't.
If you are really concerned about health care coverage in maine, why not push our legislators to enact free-market reform like NH.
In an apples to apples comparison of Anthem plans, NH rates are 55% lower.
Same coverage, same deductibles, two different prices, very big gap.
No need in such a situation except that our elected people want our state government to run health insurance in Maine.
They cannot even run the government efficiently or fix the roads, yet somehow they are smart enough to run our health insurance for the people of Maine.
We see just how effective DIRIGO Health has been.
11,000 people insured for a little over 110 million tax payer dollars.
Of the 11,000, roughly 4400 did not have health insurance. The others simply migrated to a subsidized plan.
It has never met any stated goals. These goals were established by the creators.
Creating competition in the health insurance industry will make health insurance in Maine affordable.
Having the government run it will only drive up the cost, lead to massive bureaucratic costs and create inefficiency.
If Maine simply adopted NH's approach, health insurance in our state would be affordable.
So, it begs a question.
Is the goal to create affordable access to health insurance for all Maine citizens, or is the goal to have the government run health insurance in Maine regardless of the cost or how well it works?
Power for the sake of power, not power for the sake of accomplishment.
I will grant you that the Dirigo program is certainly imperfect. It does not cover enough people and so far hasn't achieved it's full goal.
That said, it is better than nothing at all. We need to keep working on it to either improve it or replace it with something new and better. However, until we do that, we need to keep it in place and help those who need the help. As you said in your post, you can't predict when health problems will occur, therefore, it is vital to have a program already in place.
A few pennies on some soft drinks is nothing, especially if it benefits people that need help with such an important issue.
The "no taxes" crowd has completely distorted the importance of WHY this tax is there in the first place. To me, that is the shame of it all.
This tax was put in place because the program it funds, DIRIGO Health, does not work.
DIRIGO was supposed to be self-sustaining by now do to the savings derived by eliminating charity care and insituting cost containment measures.
This simply has not happened and there is nothing to suggest that it will in the future.
The problem with the left is that they craft well-meaning programs and then if they fail, they do not acknowledge the failure and then craft a new solution.
I certainly support helping those who cannot provide for themselves have access to health care. On this point, I am sure we agree.
I do not support, however, the constant subsidizing of a program that has never met a stated goal and will never meet a stated goal due to the flawed make-up of its existence.
Why are we so afraid of real reform that creates affordable access to health insurance for Maine families?
We can create a chronic care risk pool which removes the chronicly(spelling) ill from the traditional insurance pool and this measure along with other reforms will bring down the costs to traditional insurees.
With the chronic care risk pool, we can subsidize these folks with our tax dollars while not penalizing those who are not chronicly ill.
It does two things. One, we insure that those who need assistance get it because we subsidize their insurance which insures they can afford the coverage.
Two, by removing the chronicly ill from the regular insurance market, we bring down the cost. This allows more people to afford coverage and therefore purchase it. In doing so, we can eliminate the charity care that helps drive up the cost of health care and therefore health insurance.
Next, we must tackle the trial lawyers ..... but that is a subject to long to go into now.
Ray said "Next, we must tackle the trial lawyers ..... but that is a subject to long to go into now."
Sure tackle them like Right Wing SCOTUS nominee Bork. Then call one up when you trip over your own two feet. Regular old Right Wing hypocrisy.
Don't worry, we will have single payer health and disability for all like the rest of the group 7
Soon, if the people make the right choice next tuesday
OBAMA 08
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