Hawaii may delay payments to Quest health plan - Democratic ...

"Responding to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists, the State Supreme Court initially struck down a permit that the administration of Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, had granted Hawaii Superferry to operate its boats without an environmental assessment. After that ruling, Ms. Lingle persuaded the Legislature to pass the act exempting the company from the requirement. They made it work under a Kaiser (like a king), under democracies and even under the NAZIs. It really isn't that difficult to provide universal health care for everyone. Make it all single-payer and non-profit and presto, you have great, affordable health insurance for all. The reason it doesn't work here is that we have all these greedy middle-folks -- called for-profit insurance companies. They don't work. Universal, single-payer health care works. This would be a problem under a (R) or (D) administration here. Our State is suffering. We have the largest percentage of the population working for Government, second only to DC and our State just doesn't have any money. Raising taxes failed (tax revenue DOWN 14%), even the Republican Gov has told the counties to raise taxes (property, GET, etc) to make up for their own budget shortfalls. We can't even make payments on TAX REFUNDS ( http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article... ). Our economy rises and falls with the tourism industry. Our economy is bad because nobody is coming to Hawaii and spending money. Period. Without tourists to spend money Union workers across the board don't get paid. Hotel workers (Unite Here - Local 5, ILWU - Local 142), Tour bus drivers (Teamsters - Local 996) and many others suffer. i know, I'm a employment/labor attorney who works for Union workers jobs everyday!