My town made international news! Obama/Hitler Tea Party sign

[IsaacMahomie]

In my opinion, the Tea Party is a thinly constructed platform of"political activism" for people who can't believe a black man is President.

I think the race thing is a red herring.

The Tea Party came out of Conservatives being fed up with the Republican party, namely Bush and McCain. I'm very concerned about healthcare reform, I think its a terrible idea. Four of my family members work in medical care and they're pretty worried about what will happen.

[logosmonkey]

I'm always curious about that when it's mentioned. What are their concerns?

I'm honestly asking this, I've read the majority of that bill (my god.. I have too much time on my hands) and outside of some pretty strict insurance reforms it's not making any major changes to the overall health care system (no matter what the Dems or Repubs. want to say). I've heard concerns about the changes in medicare payouts, but those seem to be based almost exclusively on worst case scenarios for a single digit % of medicare patients.

I work in the health care sector and my company had no real complaints with the legislation. We expect it to increase our revenue overall. (we provide medical supplies).

[The Bodyguard]

Most doctors and health care workers expect to see a sizable decrease in revenue per patient. I know I do and my dad has the same concern.

[logosmonkey]

From the medicare changes or insurance regulation changes or something else? (or a combination) Also, what kind of drop are we talking about? Like, halving your overall net or 1/3 or 1% or what?

-edited to add

Do you expect to see any increase in revenue on medicaid patients after the 2013 payout increases? If so does that offset the loss you expect to see in whatever the other area is or is that patient set too small to provide any actual benefit?

[knives]

Honestly the only complaint a doctor would have for this is the selfish one of less money for themselves. I've spoken to several practicing relatives, and my sister who is going through med school right now, and most of them seem pleased with the concept, though a reasonable chunk are upset with the bill that passed for various reasons, and (paraphrasing) say that it will make no difference in their practicing or will make them be able to carry on for more patients and have less paperwork. The ones that mention paperwork are incidentally the ones that are upset with the present bill.

As for the tea partiers, it is a movement made very much so out of a mixture of insecurity, their home is becoming foreign to them, and racism. It's the same sort of psychology that makes a juggolo.

[IsaacMahomie]

Its more to do with the fact that anything run by the government is inefficient and the opposite of user-friendly. Title 19 is pretty ridiculous, so adding more things that the government is in charge of is not a good idea.

[Tom Brazelton]

The Tea Party came out of Conservatives being fed up with the Republican party, namely Bush and McCain.

If conservatives were fed up with the Republican party - so much so that they formed their own splinter group - why did they wait until after Barack Obama was elected President to reveal themselves?

No one knew what the Tea Party was until after he took office. I can't help but feel the genesis of their party wasn't born party out of racism or fear.

The fact that Tea Party leaders are reluctant to do anything about the racist element in their midst essentially confirms that. I mean, when you have Sarah Palin blaming the NAACP for being racist, something is wrong.

[knives]

What The Brazelbomb said. The tea party movement was developed and raised to prominence after Obama won. The only thing you can blame the Republicans on in this regard is that losing to a pigmented man which offset that distrust. Also if you look at the classic usage of conservative, basically like the tories in England, you would see that the most prominently used rhetoric, as seen through Palin, Fox, and a few other examples has nothing to do with conservatism. It's much closer to radical libertarianism and that, to be frank, is an insane ideology born out of selfishness and naivety.
Would you want to live in a society without medicare, public libraries, public police force, public firefighters, public education, or the several dozen other socialist (and these are all socialist products) items that the government has given us. If you say yes on any of these than to say no point blank to socialized medicine and medical care without a very strong argument to set it apart from the others than you are wrong. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the argument I'm hearing is that the government can only handle this incompetently, or at least moreso than the public companies, and i have to call bullshit on that. If that were the case most of Europe (I'm not sure what system Australia uses) would be dead in the water.

[Valatan]

Its more to do with the fact that anything run by the government is inefficient and the opposite of user-friendly. Title 19 is pretty ridiculous, so adding more things that the government is in charge of is not a good idea.

Yes, because CIGNA and BC/BS have been the epitome of efficiency over the past 20 years. The US has the world's most expensive health care system, and has the lowest health outcomes of any OECD country.

The health care refom bill won't work because it doesn't actively do anything to actually contain costs or to rein in the pharma and insurance industries, not because it is a socialist takeover of the economy. Joe Lieberman killed the only socialism in the bill.

[LincM]

We're somewhere in between the US system and many of the European ones. We get by mostly based on the fact that despite the health system being shitty (though not as bad nor corrupt as yours), the actual practitioners are the best in the world, and there's a degree of free services available. They're about to release a website over here called YourHospitals (.gov.au or something), which will give a bit more of an insight into the whole thing.

The good:
We do have a sort-of socialised hospital care called Medicare, and there are a handful of doctors (GPs, not specialists) who bulk bill on Medicare so you don't have any out of pocket expenses seeking basic treatment.

The bad:
The big problem you have over here is that we have private health cover which if you take it up, you reduce your tax rate marginally, if you earn over 77K. The problem with private health is that it's not all inclusive. It's not even mostly inclusive. If you need to see a specialist who isn't a hokey fucking witch doctor, you have to pay their full $200 or so fee. If you do want to see a fucking naturopath or a remedial reiki services kook, they're rebate you. What the fuck is wrong with that picture? For instance, if you need to see an endocrinologist, which 20% of Australians do need to due to diabetes, thyroid, kidney or other conditions in the prime of their lives, and over 50% of elderly patients for the same reasons, you have to pay about $175 per half hour consultation with them which has no subsidy.

[knives]

The bad sounds like it lives up to its name. (I can't believe I'm saying this) Luckily I have military health care so basically everything except good dental is covered. Sub-average doctors in some cases, but at least everything's pretty cheap from my end of things.

[LincM]

I have a good dentist in the family, so dental's pretty good, and that's partly covered by my private health.

[Mongbert]

If someone hasn't mentioned race surely then the only racism involved is the people who say "you only think that because we have a black president" ? I bet most of them haven't even noticed. (Besides, if the sign shows us anything about their beliefs surely HITLER=BAD is a prominent one, which goes against labelling them racist...)

NHS works great but people like to bitch so it gets a pretty hard time, lot of the problem is the amount of people who don't contribute anything but use the NHS, but thats a complex/contraversial issue in itself. All this "Oh shit we're poor" stuff at the minute is threatening to shake it up a lot though, and they've been saying about basically letting smokers and fat people die for a while now, but thats because Britain is generally pretty conservative (as in tossers). I'm sure things are better in Wales and Scotland though, they have their own mini-governments which basically award themselves and their 'countries' added perks, or so the press tells us.

[logosmonkey]

If someone hasn't mentioned race surely then the only racism involved is the people who say "you only think that because we have a black president" ? I bet most of them haven't even noticed. (Besides, if the sign shows us anything about their beliefs surely HITLER=BAD is a prominent one, which goes against labelling them racist...)

There have been a number of pretty high profile instances of direct racism at Tea Party rally's. Also, I live in an area of the United States that has a great deal of Tea Party supporters, I know these people... and trust me, a lot of them are very racist. That's anecdotal, to be sure, but whatever officials exist within that movement have done nothing to repudiate the overtly racist elements in their movement.

[IsaacMahomie]

I think the strong disagreement with Obama has provoked people to be more racist. When you're butting heads with someone, it's easy for people to say "oh they're just being a stupid ______" (fill in the contextual blank).
Also, most libertarians were behind candidate Ron Paul. So when he failed, and a few months later Obama won, that was the last straw for hardcore conservatives. Racism is not the only explanation.