I am waiting to see what comes of the immigration reform. Should a large portion of the illegals in the state become illegals this number could skew drastically.

On another note, Medicad is junk insurance and not accepted in a growing group of businesses, what happens if all business stop accepting it? What good is Medicaid insurance if one cannot use it? Sure you can say you provide insurance, but it's like hurricane insurance in Nevada...

If one puts emotion aside and looks at the goals of health care in 2009:

Government provided health care
Lower costs by removing barriers to competition
Remove pre-existing conditions
Remove being able to be denied coverage
Tort reform (limiting civil lawsuit amounts)

What was accomplished:

Remove pre-existing conditions
Remove being able to be denied coverage
Mandating coverage with private insurance or Medicaid or Medicare

I was kind of on the fence when they started as I was hoping they would bring costs down and make health insurance rules more easier. What we ended up getting was another government program forcing people to do something and those who have been covered can realistically look for increases.

I don't care if you are a D or a R, watch MSNBC or Fox News, this simply isn't what we were told we were getting, it's another government program to watch us and mandate to private companies to change the way they are doing business.

I was very optimistic when this started and didn't believe the R's when they claimed the bill was junk, but reading over 1400 pages of it now it's not a health reform bill, it's a new government program for taxation and regulation.

I read through 1234 pages of the massive bill (a little over half) and stopped due to a confusion headache. I didn't read anything about the government providing healthcare. What I did read was there is going to be a new appointed administer of the health mandate by the president, who regulates the policy of mandates upon the citizens of the U.S and the insurance companies.

The only improvements I saw for me and the other 90% of the country with health insurance was begin able to keep dependents on my plan until 26 if they are full time students and not being able have my policy canceled or have excluded pre-existing conditions. What am I going to have to pay for this? Higher taxes.

The 10% who don't have insurance and make above poverty will be taxed at 2% of their income or $6XX, whichever is higher. Those who are below the poverty level will have subsidies or be put on Medicare or Medicaid. Employers would be fined even more if they don't provide insurance for their employees.

In my opinion this bill is cr@p, it doesn't address most of the big problems with the cost of medicine and adds even more problems.

Everyone is lining up to challenge Harry, he's got to love that. In my opinion he's out of touch, I just hope this isn't an indication that all the hope for his seat to be succeeded by an actual representative who will further Nevada will be in naught because of dilution of opposition.

The real issue isn't what people make, it's the widening gap in pay between private and public sectors:

In 2000 the average wage $40,500 for private and $57,000 for public.

In 2008 the agerage was $40,350 for private and $74,000 for public.

Keep in mind that the average private employee works on average 1950 hours a year and the average public worker works on average 1870 hours. 2080 hours is what a full time worker would get paid for if they didn't recieve overtime, so it appears private workers time off is about 110 hours or 2.625 weeks whereas public have off is 210 or 4.25 weeks.

Not a bad gig, I'm not hating but I'm just saying...

What I find funny is how people can be so polarized by this and Obama in general. I've never seen a president who was so polarizing for good or bad. Bush we could just chuckle off many times as he seemed to be playing in a world with crayons and drawing books but Obama seems to polarize this entire country and Vegas is no different.

I believe Obama thinks he's doing his best, but his problem is he's from Chicago where the practice is telling the current audience whatever they want to hear. All politicans do this to a degree but not like Obama.

For those of you who give him a pass I can chalk that up to blind homerism, the fact is the guy could speak in generalities but chose to mention Vegas (or his speech writer did) for whatever reason. He DID mean to make a point but he also DID mean to mention Vegas. Anyone who has ever written a speech knows that each word is selected carefully for impact, clarity and to the audience they are talking to.

For those of you who bash him, it's no different than other politicans, but Obama's writers seem to like to use Vegas as a punching bag for whatever reason, and he allows it. I can understand your frustrations and he really needs to stop mentioning Vegas all together.

Water de-salinazation plant?

Wow, I see why most people end up working for substance pay their entire life...

Innovation is the key, we won't rebound until the next great innovation comes along. The predicotrs of the economy are just forecasting the historical probibility of this happening.

The information age didn't necessarily bring jobs in the beginning, but most of the jobs it did came through worker effeciency. I'd guess that the next is in energy, mobile communication enabling industry improved effeciency or like technology.

Just a guess, then when it does happen all the doomsdayers on here will think it's time to party like it's 1999 again until the bottom falls out again and they are laid off for not developing their skills and they go back on here ranting how bad life is and how it's never going to get better.

The world changes, those jobs shipped overseas became too expensive here, and healthcare isn't that expensive if you shut your pie hole and get on a treadmill 3-6 days a week...

Seems to me there are several issues at hand here:

1. Dealers don't like change and want to maintin security over their jobs, which doesn't force them to adhere to the service standards of Harrah's if they don't agree to them
2. Harrah's wants to make sure it's not taken over by this group in running it's business as they have some of the best service standards in the industryand have to make sure they can maintain them.
3. The tip sharing seems petty, it seems to me like Harrah's is negotionating this as a want.
4. 80 minutes between breaks seems reasonable, but I would think the industry standard might win out here. Maybe if the standing area was more comfortable (padding) and less hazardous (better venehaltion) it might be possible.
5. Paid time off. I think they should be under the same policy as everyone else in the company.

I propose to do what makes sense, give Harrah's the control over service standards and ability to discipline people who don't adhere to their policies and have Harrah's leave the tip control alone. If nothing else dealers will protect their tips like a their children, as that's what feeds their children.

The break policy change means that an employee would work an extra 40 minutes a shift, from 360 minutes to 400. For those math inclined a dealer gets 2 hours off of a shift in todays world, and after the change they would get off an hour and 20 minutes, by no means slave labor. The cost savings to Harrah's would be negligible as they make minimum wages plus insurance, and the dealers would actually make more money havig less dealers; there would just be 5% less of them. If it were me I'd let the dealers decide.

In any case, I believe both sides have a winning arguement.

Last time I checked the pledge was open to democrats too. Obama care is about government being your father and taking care of you because you cannot, not a Democrat or Republican ideal per se. Just because more democrats are liberal and want to be your father doesn't mean the whole party is bad.

This is about Obama and the rest of the liberals, and I hope they all get booted out.

On a side note, we need balanced Republicans and Democrats, let's just hope we get more moderates who can actually discuss and HAVE to come to a concensus.