These "blue dogs", or "moderates", are nothing more than rudderless organisms looking for a deal.  We are to assume Cardoza and Costa were thinking of voting against Obamacare - except they were given $500 million taxpayer dollars to waste at the giant money pit called UC Merced.  These two cannot be trusted and should be voted out.

The Californian inferred the $500 million will have a "local" benefit.  Yeah, right.  The benefit will be just another sign on Highway 99 crowing about the "American Recovery and Renewal Act".  

What's your plan, savvydude? Do you back Rep. McPartisan McCarthy and reject $100 billion per year for ten years to achieve near universal coverage, wipe out the practices of rescission and pre-existing conditions and stop bankruptcy for accidents and illness? How do you propose to solve the spirtaling costs of health care, savvydude? Open up competition across state lines for the insurance industry and allow the 5 biggest insurers to consolidate down to two in the name of efficiencies while totally deregulating the industry?  How do you control retirement costs in both the private and public sectors if each year the cost to do health business goes up 20%? How do justify spending twice as much as an individual in America for health care than do all of the individuals in the other industrialized nations currently do?

Rep. Cash-for-the-Valley Cardoza wrote a reasoned response on why he voted the way he did. Nobody seemed to mind when Bill Thomas provided a windfall to the lower San Joaquin Valley in road money, or defense money for Ridgecrest. Why the boo-hoo and outrage over the effort to get a first class medical school in the Central Valley going with grant money from the Federal government?

adam

If past performances by the government are your standard for a federal take over of the health system in the US, then you need to readjust your reasoning.  The past and proposed spendthrift promises of the Demos will bankrupt our nation and then we won't  have any health care at all, except perhaps a painful DRE by the local Imam.  The existing system is terrible and escalating more and more out of control, but the Demo's fix with all of the political earmarks to get the votes is a disaster.  By the way, what need is there for another gargantuan med school program in Merced?  Maybe they can fix the flu vaccine fiasco.

The 2000 page Pelosi quagmire is not the answer, and I don't think the belated ideas of the Repubs will do it either (after all, they didn't fix it when they were in control).  Our nation is in desperate straits because we really don't have a government that is operating for the overall good of the people -- only vested personal and political interests to stay in power matter.  No difference between most demos and repubs.

As for a plan, how about the elimination of the IRS as it now exists, and the institution of a flat/fair tax system?  Then the unemployed would become gov't workers, CPAs and attorneys.