Steve Deace this afternoon - best smack-down on current health care

[rurallib]

situation I have EVER heard! I do not see a way to get a podcast of it. Someone with more talent than me can check it out (12/21/2007).
I dance around the dial when I exercise. I turn Deace on, get the blood boiling then go elsewhere. (NPR gets mighty boring sometimes). So today I turn his show on and Deace is gone on vacation. His replacement (woman named something Lee) has a health care expert on named Jack Shapiro. Shapiro is shooting down every RW talking point like Cheney shooting hunting companions. The Lee woman is torn because her sister had some kind of injury or illness that either killed the sister or bankrupted her, yet she is a winger through and through.
I was only able to give full attention at the end when callers were allowed to attack Shapiro. And boy did they. And boy oh boy did they ever get smacked down.
At one point Shapiro got exasperated and said "Look, all I hear from your callers is 'I've got mine and screw everybody else'". Later he challenged one caller by saying "I can't believe I am hearing this at Christmas time. If any of these callers were real Christians they would embrace universal health care".
When the caller asked why he should pay health care for those who don't take care of themselves, Shapiro said "I hope you realize that more and more companies are dropping health care. If your company drops health care you better hope you can buy health insurance and you better hope it will cover that new dread disease that invaded the US because so few people had preventative health care."
And another one- "Britain pays 8% of GDP and covers everybody, we pay 17% and it will soon be over 20% and we only cover about half of our citizens adequately."
One more - "The Republicans don't have any health care plans to talk about at all. Really all they can talk about is stopping health care in this country for 50 years and putting us 50 years behind everyone else."
He had high praise for Edwards plan, a little less for Clinton's and was somewhat confused by Obama's
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Hope someone can figure out how to get a stream of this show.
BTW here is Shapiro's web site. He is truly bipartisan:
http://www.jackshapiro.com/

[rurallib]

1. Let me add one more piece of discussion

Shapiro said that Americans should be outraged, OUTRAGED that we are giving Iraqis universal health care yet our government does everything it can here to stop health care.

[petersjo02]

2. Interesting post

I've been lucky enough to have health coverage through my jobs throughout my working life. However, I retired at 62, so had 18 months of coverage thru COBRA, then had to find something for the next 18 months until I reached 65 and could go on Medicare. I have a lousy health history. Right kidney removed at 29, two heart attacks in my early 50s, cataracts in early 50s, two spinal surgeries on cervical and lumbar spine, borderline diabetes, etc. No insurance company would take me. I finally had to turn to HIP Iowa, which is a state sponsored program to provide health insurance for those not insurable through regular channels. It wasn't such great coverage either, mostly catastrophic, a very high deductible before coverage would even kick in. For the privilege of having HIP Iowa insurance, I paid out almost $10,000 in premiums over 18 months. Thank goodness for Medicare and my BC/BS supplement that had to cover me after I turned 65. It's good to know there are people talking about this. I didn't realize until I saw John Edwards on IPTV last night that Obama's health plan leaves a significant chuck of people without coverage.

[pstans]

3. Thanks for posting

Some interesting info and it is always great to see RW's smacked down.