After reading the comments about Medicare, it's obvious that most commenting thereon do not understand what Medicare is. My husband and I are both on Medicare...every month more than $200. is taken from our Social Security Checks for Medicare Insurance. Neither Medicare nor Social Security is a 'free ride'. All our working life we had Social Security payments taken from our pay checks - insurance for our old age. We get barely enough for basic living expenses. Had the funds Social Security received been deposited into an investment fund perhaps our final retirement nest egg might have been enough to supply our needs and a little more. Instead, the Government put it all into the fund with taxes and spent it as fast as it came in and even in advance thereof. The only medical freeloaders are those on Medicaide and those who go to Hospital emergency rooms for treatment they never intend to pay for.

Something needs to be done, true. But don't think Medicare is a free ride. It's an insurance with premiums taken up front. Also, Doctors cover some of those medical costs by accepting less for their services than they charge other patients. Medicare decides how much a Doctor gets paid for service rendered, pays that much only, sometimes it's a fraction of what the charge was, then the Medicare patient has to pay the Doctor 20% of what Medicare paid the Doctor. So, again, having Medicare is not a free ride.

Shooting off one's mouth takes little energy. Taking the time to get the facts - not from those who choose to make them up, but from the source of origination of costs to the people of this Country. That would enable each one to have a sound base on which to vote for the right person for the Presidency, Congress and Senate. Do it for your own future and those you love.

Get the facts as they truly are - not from attention grabbers and those who build themselves up on lies.

I wonder if he is wearing his racist based level 39 cleric class magic Mormon underpants.

More important...why is socialized government healthcare good for Bush, Cheney and Congress but bad for uninsured children?

Freudian Slip: Great Insurance....um I mean Progress! Clearly, for him, private sector insurance = progress!

Freudian Slip: Great Insurance....um I mean Progress! Clearly, for him, private sector insurance = progress!

Hey Social Security worked, so why not try Social Healthcare. Maybe we could even call it Social Healthcare Security.

Hey, the more the government can take over everything in my life, the less I will have to think at all about anything and I can still live with my parents till I am 50.

Calling health care for all "Castro care" to demonize it will never work again, since we all saw our heroes getting the help that the U.S.A. denied them... in CUBA!!!!!

He forgot to mention that the world is flat.

Hey "Mitt" ! Guess What !

There are more individuals right here in the United States who receive their health coverage on what you call "socialized medicine" than there are people in the entire country of France.

Add up all the people on Medicare and the Veterans Administration.

Did you forget about that interesting little nugget....Medicare and the VA ?

Or is it that you repeat the brainlessly transparent talking points your handlers stuff in your hands assuming nobody will realize that salient fact ?

If right-wingers love the troops so much, why do they pick them specifically to be tormented with this horrible "socialized medicine" ?

Why do rightwingers hate our troops....to punish them in such an evil fashion...putting them at risk of the evil "socialized medicine" ?

Why, Why?

While we're at it, can you tell me something about what kind of health care we inflict on all the ardent rightwingers in congress and the senate ?

Yup, you guessed it.

How come all the wonderful, "Freedom" loving dedicated rightwingers in congress....every last one of 'em..how come They don't give back their "socialized medicine" in indignant protest !?

How noble they are to Suffer so !

And. "Mitt", I dare you to answer this....Do we see in the day to day reality of the way Medicare works any of the perils you guaranteed in your polemic that would afflict the poor victims of public health care ?

We don't !

Medicare works fine and you know that. And so do the recipients of Medicare.

Compare it to any for profit HMO !

And knowing this, you persistently repeat the lies....purposefully, as a scare tactic, and as rank propaganda.

You deliberately set out to mislead people by repeating material falsehoods.

Fine work there....very patriotic indeed.

The founders would be so proud of you !

Our boys dead in Iraq can rest in peace now knowing they died at age 18 to save grandma from "socialized medicine" and to restore what to you is, no doubt, called "freedom".

Moreover, since you're so busy sounding the alarm sirens to "save" us from this "socialized medicine", then how is it you're not writing even one column describing the "horrors" of the already existing Medicare and demanding that the congress and the president restore "freedom" to Americans by abolishing this blight of Medicare ?

And why don't I see you or any of your Republican colleagues scampering for president...also denouncing Medicare even as they inveigh against the godless assault of "socialized medicine" ?

Why are they....and You....silent in the battle to save America from Medicare and the VA !?

How can that be....that you make terror speeches about "socialized medicine" and never even hint at the existence of Medicare and the VA right under our noses !!?

I'll tell ya how !!

Because you know....and every single Republican in congress knows it too....as do the other Republicans vying for the '08 nomination, that the minute even one of 'em would be Dumb enough to say they were going to "save" the millions of millions of moms and pops and grand-moms and grand-pops all over America from this dastardly Medicare that is stealing their "freedom", that it would be the end of them !

Don't believe me ?

What happened when Bush tried to play games with Social Security when he was feeling tumescent after his "mandate' which gave him all that "political capital" ?

Need a reminder ?

No one....NO ONE !...Not even the hardest line right-winger in congress would dare to say he was going to abolish grandma's Medicare to save her from socialism !

Wanna Bet !

And guess what....neither would you....Because you haven't and you won't !

You know better than to make that mistake. You know that if you dare to call Medicare what it is....what Republicans called it back in the mid 1960's when it was being debated....that people would do two things: They would stop the rote association of socialism with everything evil and threatening in life, thereby ending the power over them of individuals like yourself working malignant hidden agendas, And...better still, never fall for that crap again.

That is why neither you, nor any Republican will ever associate Medicare or VA health care with the your detested "socialized medicine".

Because you know well, that you can scare the spit out of them....trick them....fool them.....hustle them....with you dire invocations of "socialism" right up until the minute that somebody telling the truth shows up to remind them that they already HAVE "socialized medicine", they LOVE their "socialized medicine, and that you want to euchre them out of it !

How proud the founders must be looking down from Joe McCarthy's heaven.

And how proud you must be right down here on earth.....or is it earth ?

It's what we make it !

Jay Diamond