Yes, I am a patriot.

It occurred to me, while reading the reactions to the passage of the Health Care Reform Act, that finally, after the previous nine Presidents of the United States failed to bring healthcare reform, we now can make the U.S. citizenry take personal responsibility, for their own heath care.  I will never understand why people take any news publication, or opinion at face value especially when the position is tenuous at best.

For the first time in the history of this great country of ours, we are putting an end to those that have taken advantage of the people that take responsibility for themselves, and forcing those without healthcare to at least pitch-in some money which should go toward the healthcare expenses incurred by every single tax payer.

I'm not sure if people just don't understand that we, as health care consumers have been paying for those that don't take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, or if there is such hatred for the President that if he were to come out for Oxygen, people would begin to suffocate themselves.

The conservative position is that everyone should take responsibility for their own well-being, which is exactly what will happen with "Obamacare". The conservatives are now against this law.

The individual mandate was the idea of the Heritage Foundation in 1996, one of the most conservative "think tanks" that exists. As Governor, Mitt Romney was for it then, and modeled his states healthcare reform based on the individual mandate. Now he has come out against it because it is a "new tax". Again, you and I have been paying that money in the form of higher healthcare costs for years. The individual mandate, shifts that cost from you and I and places it rightly so, on those without insurance.

As a proud citizen of the United States, I would like to proffer a suggestion. How about instead of having a non-thinking, knee jerk reaction built on misinformation and spin from "news" organizations like Fox news, stop and do some research on what the bill actually does for America. I'm not sure if that is possible for some because some people never learned to research a topic, and find both pro's and con's then make a conclusion based on their own original thoughts.

Again, I come back to the fact that as a tax payer, I'd rather my dollars go to educate all of the people in this country, rather than corporate welfare, for those not willing to pay the price for their mistakes born of greed, and worshiping money as their god.

Yes this country has problems, and both sides of the ideological spectrum have ideas on how to fix them. How about we focus on the good things about the USA, and not the fear mongering, and hate speech creating the divide which only seems to be growing. Find some common ground, be open to new thoughts, and both sides of an issue. You may find that when all is said and done, you aren't as far removed from each other as you thought.
God Bless America!!