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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (161503)	7/17/2001 3:22:00 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Your ignorance of the very philosophical foundations of our country are showing. The very foundations of classical liberalism as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, its best examplar. What you are arguing is highly illiberal, and quite unbecoming a conservative. Keep their pants up? And what principle, precisely, gives you the authority to dictate such to two consenting adults? Non-interference, personal liberty, any of that ring a bell Pro? I would never so much as dare suggest to a married couple that their desire not to have children was "selfish" and "self-serving" and that they best better "keep their pants up." Your emotion is, predictably, clouding your judgement. Arguing emotionally is one thing, arguing from emotion is an oxymoron. Emotion is not an argument. Democrats argue from emotion. I would expect more from a conservative. If you can not argue rationally, there is no reason to argue at all. Its a one-sided conversation. Derek

To: PROLIFE who wrote (161503)	7/17/2001 3:26:35 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Oh, and if one does not own one's life, then there is nothing wrong with killing them. If one's life was never one's own to begin with, another has done you no wrong by depriving you of it. You have just justified abortion. And murder. Derek

To: PROLIFE who wrote (161503)	7/17/2001 9:45:30 AM
From: ColtonGang	Respond to of 769667

WRONG AGAIN GEORGE..........The healthcare disaster that wasn't When Texas passed its patients' bill of rights law, George W. Bush warned that it would unleash a plague of lawyers and drive up health costs. It didn't. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jake Tapper July 17, 2001 \| WASHINGTON -- George Parker Young is a Fort Worth, Texas, attorney -- "not Dallas," he specifies, "Fort Worth" -- and an enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush in both of his gubernatorial runs, as well as his campaign for president. Young also just happens to be the trial lawyer who has benefited most from the passage of the Texas Patient Protection Act of 1997, which afforded Texans the right to sue their HMO or health insurance company for medical treatment denied that resulted in adverse health effects, or loss of life. "I don't think [Bush] realizes when he starts attacking trial lawyers in terms of this legislation that he's attacking one of his strongest supporters," Young jokes. But Young, who remembers how then-Gov. Bush fought the law tooth and nail in Texas, is hearing him make the same arguments as he fights its federal equivalent today, a patients' bill of rights offered by Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., John Edwards, D-N.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., that has already passed the Senate -- despite Bush's veto threat -- and its House version, offered by Reps. Greg Ganske, R-Iowa, and John Dingell, D-Mich. In 1997, he said of the Texas law: "I am concerned that this legislation has the potential to drive up healthcare costs and increase the number of lawsuits against doctors and other healthcare providers." Having vetoed a similar bill in 1995, Bush in 1997 did everything he could to sabotage the bill, to the point that two conservative Republican state senators complained on the floor of the state Senate about the various machinations of Bush's legislative aide, Vance McMahan. Eventually, faced with a veto-proof majority, Bush let the legislation become law without his signature. (That didn't keep him from trying to take credit for it during the third presidential debate last year.) And last week, as the patients' bill of rights bill made its way toward debate in the House, Bush's concerns remained the same: "How best to improve the quality of care without unnecessarily running up the cost of medicine, without encouraging more lawsuits which will eventually cause people not to be able to have health insurance." But since the 1997 Texas law that Bush opposed so strongly has taken hold, the disastrous effects he had predicted have yet to occur in the Lone Star State. In the four years since, even the law's opponents acknowledge that none of Bush's apocalyptic predictions came true. Far from becoming a bonanza for avaricious trial lawyers, the right to sue an HMO or insurance company in Texas has been exercised just 17 times. Eleven of those lawsuits have been tried, to one degree or another, by Young. "It's been very beneficial," Young says. "We've seen the HMOs back down and be quicker to approve necessary care." Young, of course, is a partisan on the topic. But when asked if there has been a rash of out-of-control lawsuits prompted by the law, Lee Jones, assistant director of the public information office for the Texas Department of Insurance, headed up by a Bush appointee, responds, "There hasn't been."