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• Anonymous

  I didn’t know we needed his permission to exercise our Constitutional Rights?

• tag

  I didn’t pay taxes so that you could spend it on illegal aliens, California and NYC. Of course we will take as much back as we can get until we can put a stop to your continued corrupt use of our money.

  PS – my insurance premiums have not dropped by $2,500, as you promised they would by the end of your first term. 

• Anonymous

  PS That’s because the Republicans would not let Obama put forth the plan that he wanted.

• Anonymous

  Constitutional right to get 6 million dollars from the Federal government?

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q4AP5EYCYRCGZGIJGWI6TLIUEA Tom

  The White House is pretty with all the holiday trees.

• Anonymous

  We don’t and he didn’t suggest we did.  He simply said that while this is in the courts, it would be prudent to act to make sure the state is well positioned should the law be upheld.

  I’ll bet you feel that Occupiers need to ask permission, though, and get permits!  Situational ethics are the hallmark of modern conservatism.  Cognitive dissonance be damned.

• Anonymous

  The health care law does not provide benefits to illegal immigrants.  That is factually challenged.  The law does force insurers to spend at least 80% of your premiums on care, not executive compensation. The law incentives efficiency thus reducing costs while increasing coverage.  We really need the conversation to be based on facts, friend. 

  As to the presidents “promise”, I am sure you got your wires crossed.  The law does not go fully into effect until 2014 so the president would never say what you suggested.  How gullible are we supposed to be, tag?

• Anonymous

  The Dems passed this nightmare Obama care with a super majority in house and senate, that is why they do not have this super majority anymore. The only reason they blame Repubs is to deflect responsibility from themselves. Dems don’t want to be held responsible for forcing Americans to buy a product against their best judgment. We need to get rid of this big, bloated, money pit of a government next year or we will have to buy whatever Obama wants us to.  

• Anonymous

  Whoa, calm down!  Who said he was giving us permission to exercise our Constitutional Rights? He was asked a question during an interview and he answered it.  Period.  And could he possibly have been more gracious in his answer?  I think not!  It’s not like he said he would withhold funds pending the lawsuit.  Geez, give the guy a break.  No matter what he says or how he says it, you guys throw stones!

• Anonymous

  Bonny, you’ve no idea what the Affordable Care Act is actually about.  You simply say no because Pres. Obama is a democrat.  If the president did everything you wanted, you would still complain. You are what’s wrong with the system.

• Anonymous

  some news today on the health care initiative,

  WASHINGTON — The number of young adults lacking medical coverage has shrunk by 2.5 million since the new health care overhaul law took effect, according to a new analysis the Obama administration is to release Wednesday.That drop is 2 1/2 times as large as the drop indicated by previous government and private estimates from earlier this year, which showed about 1 million Americans ages 19-25 had gained coverage.Administration officials said they now have more data. They say they’re also slicing the numbers more precisely than the government usually does, trying to pinpoint the impact of a popular provision in an otherwise politically divisive law.Under the health overhaul, children can remain on their parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 26, and families have flocked to sign up young adults making the transition to work in a challenging economic environment. But the fate of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment remains uncertain, with the Supreme Court scheduled to hear a constitutional challenge next year, and Republican presidential candidates vowing to repeal it.”The increase in coverage among 19- to 25-year-olds can be directly attributed to the Affordable Care Act’s new dependent coverage provision,” said a draft report from the Health and Human Services Department. “Initial gains from this policy have continued to grow as … students graduate from high school and college.” A copy of the report was obtained by The Associated Press.HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is scheduled to release the findings Wednesday.The health care law’s main push to cover the uninsured doesn’t come until 2014. But the young adults’ provision took effect last fall. Most workplace health plans started carrying it out Jan. 1.Using unpublished quarterly statistics from the government’s ongoing National Health Interview Survey, analysts in Sebelius’ policy office determined that nearly 36 percent of those age 19-25 were uninsured in the third calendar quarter of 2010, before the law’s provision took effect.That translates to more than 10.5 million people.

• Anonymous

  He’s saying that a state doesn’t need ANY permission to start planning, and actually commended the effort.

• Anonymous

  And when the SCOTUS hands down it’s decision that Barry’s health care boondoggle is unconstitutional, I have no doubt that Augusta will be first in line to return the 6 million.

• Anonymous

  No wonder we are broke

• Guest

  What Bonny was saying is that this passed under President Obama’s watch while he had a super majority in both houses of Congress.  The only ones who could have stopped it were Democrat defectors.  In regard to Bonny having, “no idea what the Affordable Care Act is actually about”, wasn’t it then Speaker of the House Pelosi who said, “we need to pass it to find out what’s in it”?

• Anonymous

  Here we have our president who is working to provide affordable health care to all Americans, while governor Lepage is working to do everything he can to kick 65000 people off the only affordable health care they have.  Keep it up LePage, just keep adding to the people who will vote your incompetent tail out of office.

• tag

  Actually, the Dept. of Health and Human Services has stated publicly that they will not check immigration status before treating people. Therefore, to quote Joe Wilson: “You Lie”.

  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/hhs-obamacare-funded-health-centers-migrants-wont-check-immigration-status

• Guest

  So since we have been forced to implement the law already it is right to take the money to pay for what we MUST do?

• Anonymous

  Just to be clear, are you advocating that everyone should have to bring a birth certificate to their health center before they can be treated for a medical condition? Sounds pretty authoritarian to me.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SCNJPPZDX7GEYELESV2YGQFLN4 Pat T. Riot

  Shakespeare wrote, “Now is the winter of our discontent.”  Here is part of why I am discontented.  President Obama has been trying to remedy our difficulties with medical care and medical insurance and is constantly being castigated for his efforts.  Most health insurance in Maine comes through Wellpoint whose CEO is a woman named Angela Braly.  Her compensation was $13.1 million in 2009.  Is her talent at maximizing profit on health insurance worth over $5000 an hour?  How does a company maximize profit anyway?  Maximize revenues (read premiums) and minimize expenses (read expenditures for medical care).  Why does this not seem to bother conservatives?  Just because it is “private enterprise”?  Captain Kidd engaged in “private enterprise”, too.

  As far as the much-hated mandate to buy insurance, think about it this way.  Everyone will get sick, get injured, or get old, and will in all likelihood seek medical care.  People are not going to crawl off into the woods to suffer and die.  When they are in pain and scared of what might be about to happen, they will want help.  If they have no insurance, who will pay?  I would think conservatives would be incensed at the free-loaders who will want others to pay for their medical care when they have no insurance.

• Anonymous

  Being the recipient of emergency care is not the same as being covered…..Nice try though. Last I checked the DHHS does not actually provide care. Doctors check insurance before treating except in emergencies. There was no lie there.

• Anonymous

  Bonny – you should turn off the talk radio and do a little reading.  It’s clear from your post that you are in over your head – I think my 3rd grader could do a better job explaining the legislative process that took place around health care reform.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q4AP5EYCYRCGZGIJGWI6TLIUEA Tom

  Shakespeare also wrote, “‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”.

• Anonymous

  The points you make are factual. Thank you.

  As to Obama’s “promise”, he said while campaigning in mid 2008,  “I have a health care plan that would work to try to reduce family insurance premiums up to $2,500″. So, he did say that. However, the plan Obama offered was different in many ways to the one that was passed after all the haggling and compromises in Congress, so to hold him to that campaign promise is hollow, at the very least.

• Guest

  They should provide a SS card or a green card but I’ll bet that the farm worker clinics provided by Community Health Care may not require the documentation?

• Anonymous

  no problem for me……
  yes we MUST care for the US citizens !!!!!
  perhaps you feel otherwise…

• Anonymous

  Kaycee W Stevens here. I totally agree. Kaycee w Stevens does not want to pay more taxes and high insurance. This company is going to be bankrupt in 10 years. You will be able to pay your mortgage with toilet paper. AKA us currency.

  Kaycee W Stevens here.

• Guest

  I’m fine with you using your money however you wish jut don’t tell me how I must spend mine.

• Guest

  We are but bleeding hearts like you insist that Hospitals must care for people that don’t pay.  So you set up one law to support your path to another even more intrusive one.

• OldWench

  Obama clearly cares more about providing insurance for Mainers than LePage does.  

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OA4CY7VEIB2S453LCNHIVU5DMQ Joe Johnson

  Im a right to life conservative there’s nothing right to life about obamacare. who cares if people can afford healthcare or not. If they cant let them die. As a right to life conservative I believe in endless wars, everyone should have a gun and we should pollute as much as a possible. We should also think like cavemen and blame everything on one person. also if something is to long to put on a bumper sticker its to hard to figure out.

• Anonymous

  You’re suggesting we alter our standard of care. Those without money don’t get care? Those without money just die?

• Guest

  You altered our standard of care to get where we are now!
  Back before you made these changes, Doctors made house calls and accepted much lower prices for their services.
  You know why?
  Because they didn’t have a Government funded monopoly on their services.  Any well educated intelligent lay person could help people without getting sued.
  Sure that had problems but before you say there are no charlatans in your system I would have you check the news reports over the last 10 years.
  I would say there are more snake oil salesmen now then there were then.

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7T3YNF6MG3FPEAVTFIJC44VQUI Dlbrt

  Barry’s health care boondoggle is unconstitutional

  http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/21/thomas-jefferson-also-supported-government-run-health-care/

  The only thing that was argued in the Act For Disabled Seaman by the ratifiers (Founding Fathers by the way)on constitutional grounds was the way that the Tax was collected as it didn’t tax equally.

  The Health Care Act does require Everyone to Comply or be Taxed!

• Anonymous

  Don’t doctors swear an oath to treat people if they can?
  I know someone who had to have an emergency appendix-removal. He spent the night in the hospital and had, you know, a juice box and a jello cup. He didn’t have insurance. The out of pocket bill? $18,000.
  There is absolutely no reason why health care could not be more affordable, except that huge insurance companies use money from high premiums to make stock market investments. That’s where they get their real money and that’s why they lobbied so hard against the ’80% spent on care or paid back to the consumer’ part of the health care act. Asking these companies to have, in their possession at any given time, enough money to actually pay for our care should we require it, is contrary to how they have been operating for the last 25 years.

• Guest

  I’m sorry your friend wants a free ride and isn’t getting it but how does destroying my system of getting what I need help your friend?
  Chances are that person still would not afford the cost if it were 1/4 as much or they would have been paying for insurance all along.
  The more free stuff you give out the more takers you will create.

• Anonymous

  Bonny and Oliver you are incorrect, by the time the Health care law was voted on Ted Kennedy passed away, and Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts was in the senate.  The Democrats no longer had the 60 votes necessary to prevent a filibuster, ie. What you refer to as a Super Majority.

• Anonymous

  That’s because they are human….Anyone who needs emergency care can get it insurance or not….This is how people are going to seek treatment after Maine Care is cut…..We’ll still get hit the hardest because our premiums will go up….