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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (381315)	4/29/2008 6:57:05 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 1574002

Just watched a Fox News report comparing how the candidates stack up on the gas tax. McCain and Hillary want to have a gas tax holiday over the summer. Obama is against it. Obama wants to address more structural, root cause issues with high gas prices. The Fox news guy said Obama is exactly right on these issues. I agree with Fox news on this.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (381315)	4/29/2008 6:59:41 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574002

Mindmeld, > Obama's plan on the other hand is to use the government's collective bargaining power to negotiate better deals on prescription drugs in order to bring the costs down. And how is this any different than price controls, Hugo Chavez style? Better to push for generics than to treat Big Pharma like Big Oil ... Tenchusatsu

To: RetiredNow who wrote (381315)	4/29/2008 7:10:21 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574002

"His solution is to give every family at $5,000 health care tax credit." (R)'s LOVE solutions involving tax credits. You have to file the long form to use them, which the people that NEED them don't, generally. They count on that.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (381315)	4/29/2008 7:24:20 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1574002

Both ideas suck, IMO. But the idea that you can bring costs down by cutting better deals on drugs and services is BS. You can bring down cost if you bring down quality. The reason this country has the best health care in the world is that we spend more on it. The reality is that a particular procedure requires some number of RVUs and a physician (or other provider) is capable of cranking out only so many RVUs in a year. If you do ANYTHING to cut the amount of cash a physician can bring in for those RVUs, you cut the quality of health care. There is no getting around it. The same principle applies for prescription drugs (although, obviously, RVUs isn't he proper metric). As to me, I couldn't care less about health care as an issue. The same way I feel. It is an emotional issue that a presidential candidate is expected to have a position on, but the reality is it is not a pressing issue for Americans. When you have Obama talking about "Americans without health care", he isn't addressing a real issue, he is trying to connect on a emotional level with voters. It is a bogus issue, IMO.