An activist participates in a vigil to support public option in health care (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
President Obama says the federal government "will go bankrupt" if Congress doesn't pass health care reform.
In an interview with ABC News - The president warns that without new health care legislation - people's premiums will go up and employers will add on more costs. Also - he says it's possible employers will start dropping coverage all together - because they just can't afford the increase in costs, somewhere to the tune of 25 to 30 percent a year.
Mr. Obama adds that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are headed in an "unsustainable" direction... and threaten to bankrupt the government if nothing is done. The president says anyone who's worried about rising deficits or future tax increases has to support the bill - because otherwise, health care costs will just eat up the budget.
But not everyone is buying what the president is selling. Polls suggest Americans are increasingly skeptical - with support for health care reform falling... while the opposition grows stronger. One new survey shows that for the first time more people say they would prefer Congress do nothing on health care than those who want reform.
It's unclear if the Senate will be able to pass its bill by the president's deadline of Christmas. Among other things, moderate Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska - a key holdout - says the question of abortion funding still hasn't been answered to his liking.
Here’s my question to you: Can the U.S. survive without health care reform?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Lee writes:
Of course it can survive, and it will. These political idiots do their best to paint a scary gloom and doom cost scenario yet they do nothing to contain the activities of the insurance and health corporations who continuously drive up the health care costs. Au contraire, they hand them a golden nugget by requiring every citizen in the country to buy insurance.
H. from Tennessee writes:
Of course the U.S. will survive without health care reform. It may be a world some would prefer not to see, Dickensian disparities in the health and well-being between the haves and the have-nots, but the U.S. is, to borrow a phrase from the banking fiasco, "too big to fail." At least for the moment. After all, it took Rome a couple of centuries to totter into decrepitude. Surely we can hold out a few decades before the Chinese clean our economic clocks.
Cindy writes:
Yes, we can survive without this particular concept of health care "reform." Obama is using scare tactics and hyperbole in a desperate act to sell this debacle, and no one is buying it. This administration has consistently mishandled everything that lands on its plate – so much so that the media apologists are now finding it almost impossible to carry Obama's water to the masses. We voted for smoke and mirrors, and now we're unhappy that that's what we got.
Seathrun from Watertown, Massachusetts writes:
Survive? Most probably, for maybe 15 or 20 years. Thrive? I seriously doubt that. As we debate, the U. S. of A. is hurtling towards that special place in history already occupied by the ancient Greeks and Romans as well as the 18th/19th century empires of France, Spain and England.
Jim writes:
We will survive, but we will survive like a third world country, and the health care executives will be able to buy another yacht.
James writes:
Survive? I think we are about to find out.