Looks like we are getting chump change in health care reform rather than change of any worth.
No one starts from scratch. Medicare was implemented in a relatively short amount of time, less than two years.
The stakeholders around the table are driving a stake into the single-payer solution. Who has the guts to take on the insurance and big pharma industries? Not Obama, not Congress. It is up to the American people to make it happen. Get involved in any one of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care groups (Health-care Now, California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, or Progressive Democrats of America) and start banging away at the imperial but not impervious walls of those in the bubble of the beltway.
Obama is not the one we were waiting for--we are the ones we were waiting for!
Organize, Mobilize, Be Loud, Be Incessant, and Demand Single-payer.
About a minute in I wanted to vomit. I had to pause about every 40 seconds because the doublespeak was too sickening. There is so much to comment on..where to begin...
supposed "defense"(which came third or fourth) in his little makeshift speech is in reality more than 50% OF THE ENTIRE FEDERAL BUDGET!!!!!!!!!!!!HELLO!!!!
These politicians stick together better than flies and s--t. They are all corporate whores.
Entitlements are bankrupting our country indeed! Our entitlements would be in fine shape financially if these whores would keep their hands off the earnings of our "entitlements" in order to fund their mischeif. We worked hard for our entitlements and they are for us not them or their wars or corporate cronies.
This president that I worked my ass off to elect lies. He didn't even have the decency to give that poor lady an honest answer. More Obama BS! Not only does our health care system need to be flushed; the government should quickly follow down the tubes.
I'm sorry you promoted that fraud progressive Obama, and hope that you have now learned what Democrats really are.
The overdue flushing of this government down the tubes is emotionally attractive, but impossible without alternative leadership. Where is it? Better to pose a positive solution rather than a declaration of (absolutely appropriate!) rage. If you want universal peace, sustainability, equality and affluence - including free healtcare for all, there is no lasting plan out there because the capitalists cannot and do not want to build such a just world. The only way out is through organized labor action under the leadership of a internationalist communist party.
Old Coyote Knose that a cure for cancer (or anything else) is NOT PROFITABLE. Health care in corp-rat fascist Amerika is a lie! We have a corrupt corp-rat HEALTH INSURANCE $ystem... not a HEALTH CARE system. Yesss... the Knose knows that everything ewe folks thought ewe knew about Amerika... is a damn lie. I rest my case with Iraq-nam.
Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, has discovered that there are $trings attached to the job. The $trings make him a puppet for the Amerikan ruling class, namely Wall $treet in Newe Yawk... K-$treet in Sewertown (Washington D.C.)... and AIPAC, the ethno-racist Zionist lobby (a.k.a.: the tail that wags the dog in Amerika for the $ake of Israel).
Sorry! There will be NO universal single payer health care system in corp-rat fascist Amerika for the peasant class (a.k.a.: Joe Sixpack). Now get your faster poo food asses back to the boobtube tell-lie-vision set... or you'll missed the footballing game.
I am convinced that my wife's death in April of 2008 would not have occured if we had had a national health systyem in place years ago. As it was she and her doctors had many twists and turns in pursuing her illness. Her "health" insurance company, connected with one of the larger membership groups for retired people, played the usual wait and see games with her, and is itself closely owned by one of the larger money institutions to which we middle class people have provioded golden parachutes and bailout billions. A national health system for all run through the structure of medicare and medicaid are what the people of this country need and want. There is no moral precept which holds that illness and death should be profit-making for statisticle bean counters. Such would cut the cost of real health care by one-third.
That's the way 'hope' is employed by the dastardly and devious -
take the crap we are giving you now in the 'hope' that things will
get better (but we know they won't). Barack Obama is a purveyor of
'hope' because his masters want the people to accept what they are
given now in the hope that good times will come.
Just do what we demand, oops, sorry, Barack demands, and in
return he'll inspire you to hope that it is all leading to the Promised
Land. It isn't, but, by the time you realise that, it's too late.
What terrifies the manipulators is that people will abandon hope, as
a future, sometime-never projection, and start to demand fairness,
justice and freedom now. To avoid this nightmare they need to keep
those desires as something to aspire to, not to actually have.
Thus, their man, Obama, sells 'hope' as a diversion technique, a
holding position, to keep the masses from truly rebelling. We have
no job, no food on the table and our home has been foreclosed, but
at least we have 'hope'. Phew, thank goodness for that.
'I'm hungry, mum, can I have some hope, please?'
'I'm so sorry, darling, you can't have hope today, only tomorrow -
hope is always tomorrow.'
'So will I eat tomorrow, mum?'
'We can hope so now, dear, but when we get to tomorrow, we can
only hope it's the next day.'
On and on it goes. That's how 'hope' works. Or rather doesn't.
Obama's predominant mantra has been 'change'. Indeed, his
massively-funded, record-breaking campaign was based on that one
word - change. This is a technique used by
Bill Clinton and many others and it is highly effective because, at
any point, the system ensures that most people are not happy with
the way life is. So, when you don't like the status quo, 'change' can
be a potent message, even if, like Obama, you don't say what it
means.
It has been vital to his success, and that of his controllers, that he
has never specified what his 'hope', 'change', and that other
mind-control trigger-word, 'believe', were referring to in terms of
policy and the way society in general will be affected. Hope for
what? Change what? Believe in what? To answer those questions
with specifics would have been fatal to Obama's appeal.
I watched the whole thing. And he basically says YES a single payer system is a good idea, and that is what I would do if we were starting this country from scratch. But since I have to deal with congress, it ain't gonna happen folks. But I do agree with you on the IDEA.
Thats all you get from this guy is Good IDEAS, and HOPE for TOMMORROW.
BUT NO ACTION.
'I'm hungry, mum, can I have some hope, please?'
'I'm so sorry, darling, you can't have hope today, only tomorrow -
hope is always tomorrow.'
'So will I eat tomorrow, mum?'
'We can hope so now, dear, but when we get to tomorrow, we can
only hope it's the next day.'
On and on it goes. That's how 'hope' works. Or rather doesn't
It's nice to sit back, throw bombs and let Obama do all the work. But why should he help us? All we cheap bastards do is give him grief and call him names while the oligarchy gives him anything he wants.
From opensecrets.org:
Max Baucus (D-MT) received from Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate $4,633,243.
During Baucus' 2008 campaign when he ran against Bob Kelleher who raised $0, Max sucked in a cool $11,602,479 and SPENT (on what?) $9,305,359.
Baucus' career payoffs from industry are as follows:
Insurance $1,170,313
Health prof 1,016,276
Pharmaceut 734,605
Sec/Investmt 1,458,035 PLUS A WHOLE LOT MORE
On the individual contributors:
AIG $91,000 (and they got HOW MUCH with no strings???)
Citigroup 72,000(Hey, let's ask for that to be returned to taxpayers)
Bank of America 50,250 (wow, the 3 great corporate welfare sisters)
BlueCross 64,699 (sure, he'll keep single payer OFF THE TABLE for this $$$)
Goldman Sachs 87,900 (wonder about that fast vote for the bailout?)
On Obama, he was in favor of single payer BEFORE he was against it. And, the surest way for him to FALL as did LBJ is to continue to be a CAPTIVE of the corporate INSURANCE industry and Wall Street. Right now, his former organization of volunteers (renamed "Organizing for America" OFA) is going around the country on so-called "Listening Tours." Actually, they expect US to be listening to them and following their orders. In both of the local meetings in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica (CA) SINGLE PAYER and STOPPING THE WARS were the major topics the attendees demanded to be heard.
THERE WILL BE NO REFORM as long as the INSURANCE companies RULE and choke off the healthcare to the people. WHY should we pay the 30% administrative costs (the PROFIT MOTIVE)when EVERYONE COULD be covered under a single payer system LIKE MEDICARE? With TRILLIONS being wasted on WARS and payouts to the unregulated banking system, it is NO WONDER Obama is whining now about a need to "control health costs." He just had Congress pass $92BILLION MORE for his WARS. It is a matter of his priorities and that HIS are not OURS.
THIS IS NOT THE CHANGE WE VOTED FOR. And the sooner he acknowledges this message, the better. ###
Sad to say I couldn't even take the bs for 2 minutes. He should know by the crowd's response that single payer is popular, but he completely blows off the woman's question, and so quickly! I thought I was cynical before . . .
The sick thing is the CONSUMPTION of resources that is going on in health care has to do with fascist collusion with bribed congressmen and presidents allowing for criminal lack of regulation and completely allowing the drug companies and other facets of medicine to price fix and overcharge as well as committing outright fraud with improper tests and procedures. Health care has ballooned not in terms of benefits as the USA is ranked at the bottom of industrialized nations in health but the costs have gone out of all control. They know people will pay BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO or they die. Many people fully insured find out every day that their insurance doesn't even have to pay for life saving procedures. They can keep the money and let people die and they do so every single day.
This is a criminal conspiracy just exactly like the giant ponzi schemes in banking the Republicons created. And politicians just say oh we can't do anything or oh we can't make the radical changes that are needed. IT IS A LIE TO SAY THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WON'T SUPPORT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE IF THEY ARE MADE FULLY AWARE OF WHAT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE IS THEY WOULD SUPPORT IT PASSIONATELY. IT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE TO SAY OTHERWISE. WE NEED TO CRIMINALIZE DECEPTION IN POLITICS AND CORPORATE EFFORTS AS WELL. The American people could easily end up with a much better system than there is anywhere in the world with proper and radical changes to our current system. This could be done and anything less then this will only self destruct as the criminals in the health care mobster community will just go bribe more politicians to get every small step undone.
IT IS CRITICAL TO OUR NATION THAT HEALTH CARE BE COMPLETELY OVERHAULED!! WE NEED TO STOP COMPROMISING BY WATERING DOWN THE GOOD POLICIES AND METHODS WE HAVE. WE NEED TO GO FULL SPEED AHEAD AND LET THE REALITY OF OUR GOOD WORKS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. TODAY YOU HAVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHICH ARE THE LARGEST LOBBY IN THE WORLD AND THEY HAVE ALL THE SENSE AND INSIGHT NEEDED SO LONG AS THEY ARE FULLY INFORMED.
The health care industry CONSUMES 1 out of every 6 dollars but it is not accurate to say that it produces that much in product or even to say that it is 1/6 th of the economy although I understand the simplified logic used to come to this conclusion. It is much more truthful and proper to say that "health care costs have balloned to consuming 1 in 6 dollars."
If we brought health care costs down to a third of what they are today we could do so by INCREASING the quality, quantity and productive value of the health care industries contribution to our net productivity as a nation. It is absurd to refer to the size of an industry as the dollars it consumes especially when it is so improperly structured. We could, for example decrease the net costs of health care so that it consumes less than 1 in 21 dollars but improve our health product as a nation and the quantity and quality of surgeries and medicines as an example. Thus in real goods and services terms the health care industry would be much more productive for two major reasons: they take less from the available cash resources of other businesses thus allowing them to produce more and two by producing more and better products which would cause them to seem to shrink in percentage of the US economy if you only go by dollars and cents. We must break free from Econ 101. By contracting the COSTS of health care you DO NOT contract health cares net contribution to productivity or net product nor do you in ANY WAY contract the productive potential of the greater economy in fact quite the contrary which itself proves the vast size of the health care industries footprint on our GDP is not representative actual of actual productivity or real value but, as I've made clear, the result of health care's simply bilking the country. Thus reducing the cost of health care would INCREASE the size of the US economy as the money would quickly be used in all manner of other productive enterprises. The health care industries consumption of so much of our countries resources is not productivity but anti-productivity as regards the greater economy. This is the natural way non-competitive sectors and industries function. The more monopolistic or oligopolistic, the more collusive in pricing, the more they become anti-productive forces and the less their consumption reflects production, they become generally negative factors with respect to our broader economy.
Health care is a very tiny percentage of our nations productive output, it vampirishly consumes the wealth of our country in a very destructive and even disabling way. They are crippling businesses from large to small and making it impossible for people to afford health itself. We need to reduce the percentage of dollars literally wasted on very poor quality health care and end up with the money being spent on overpriced health care used instead at helping to boost the greater economy.
There must be every measure put forth allowing people to easily import drugs from other countries and making it so the prices for drugs and services are brought down using all methods available to assure that Americans pay no more for drugs or surgery than other countries.
Thinking all the way back to John Kennedy in 1960, I would say that Brock Alabama's sell-out is the fastest and most complete of any Democrat in 49 years, certainly faster than Bill Clinton's. Breathtaking! I'm as sick of looking at this guy as I was of George Wanker Bush. Hope and Change! I've got a greeting card pinned to the wall of my cubicle that says: I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER NOW THAT I'VE GIVEN UP HOPE.
I am so disappointed that President Obama has abandoned his position on transparency in government, including Congress, and Max Baucus' conflict of interest.
He should be on "Dancing with the Pols" they way he avoided answering her question and laid the blame for the national debt at the feet of Medicare and Medicaid.
Male bovine excrement!
It is not complicated changing the health care system. What we need to do is to CHANGE the health care system. It needs to be changed into a heallth care system, not a disease treating system.
Obama is so wrong in having the Health Insurance industry involved. Also, all of the Congressional whores to the Insurance industry and big Pharma need to be excluded from taking part in the debate.
Obama does not want people to go to the ER whereas Bush wanted them to go there.
That is the only difference I can see so far.
It would be nice if someone called him out publically when he lies, distorts and avoides questions. He is becomming a disappointment everyday as i see him becommoning beholding to special interests over the people's interests. He will be a one term failure unless he becomes true to his base. Change we can believe in seems to have become no change we can believe in. It seems as if a wheel has come off of Obama's straight talk express. It is not becomming of the office of the Presidency to see Obama spread his legs in the air so all the special interests can have their way with him. He has become their Boy so easily and willingly. i for one wish i had not wasted my vote and effort on this slick two faced one we call the president
I think it should be pretty obvious by now that Obama was always in Corporate America's back pocket. Goldman Sachs was one of his biggest donors along with many others in the financial sector. They saw his slick speechs and expertise at double speak for what it could be. A huge asset to them. He gets power, they get power. The people? They continue to get screwed. I can't recall him ever directly answering a question. I wish we could get better speakers to ask him questions at these townhall meetings.
Woo Hoo! Health care is bankrupting us! God I feel stupid. Here I am thinking it was war(spending) that was breaking us ( or "defense" as Obama calls it).
Well, whether it's health care first or wars first, they are both bankrupting us.
Since health care is the subject here, maybe Obama at least recognizes that the current generation, the boomers, who are aging and starting to retire, will drain Medicare and all of health care like we've never seen before. So, while the wars and banking scams may be more tangible, health care is a HUGE drain on our system, and I agree that it will be number one very soon.
I'm of two minds: I want to see single payer, universal coverage ASAP. OTOH, this is a huge, byzantine, bureaucracy and it most likely won't be changed overnight. What really pisses me off, though, is that we won't get to single payer by aiming low. I can understand needing to do it in concise, well-planned stages, but his rather mealy-mouthed attempt to dance around it doesn't leave me with a lot of...um...hope.
Aim high, Mr. President! Plan for the stages, but aim high!
(Note 1: For the record, I am a baby boomer. Didn't choose to be - I was born into it. So, before anyone goes on a tangent about how boomers are screwing the world, consider the choice YOU had in when you were born. Note 2: I voted for Obama.)
"Note 1: For the record, I am a baby boomer. Didn't choose to be - I was born into it. So, before anyone goes on a tangent about how boomers are screwing the world, consider the choice YOU had in when you were born."
I like to tell people I didn't choose to be an American. Only choice is whether we act and think like a typical American, or a typical boomer.
Obama is so full of it. The biggest drain on the federal coffers is not health care. It is the corrupt Wall Street bailout that is pilfering the U.S. Treasury. It is the ongoing illegal occupation and war againstd the Iraqi people. It is the ongoing illegal occupation and war against Afghanistan. It is the for-profit drug companies and insurance comapnies who have monopolized tghe health of America.
Obama, if he had integrity and was honest, would let the proponents of Single Payer system to enter into the debate.
A few years ago all the Democracts were outraged that Energy Policy was dictated by the Oil industry, this is no different. Obama invited the HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY to "reform" instead of changing the completely broken system.
Obama blatantly misleads people by blaming Health Care for the national debt, while simultaneously supports and advocates bailing out the Banking industry.
He never answered the question about Baucus' conflict of interest. Aside from that observation, I just kept watching, expecting people would either begin to throw their shoes at him or someone would push a cream pie in his face.
In a couple of years, the Audacious Hoper will be more despised than Bush.
Again, you got that right. My experience was, I think, early in 2008 when he assured both corporate america and the american izraeli public affairs committee of america's unwavering support for what ever either wanted and at the time I was looking at voting obama except he went with those 2 assurances and I knew that nothing would change except we traded a bow-legged dwarf chimp with a big chip on his shoulder for a slick suited black man with a messiah persona on a billboard.
Checkmate, stalemate for the status quo and he hasn't proved me wrong but for the fact it was still impossible to get a 3rd party elected as president.
Okay, I only made it to about the 2 minute mark. Blah, blah, blah. Lookie over there! Platitudes and drivel like "work hard" (completely different than GWB's 'hard work')"complicated" "difficult" and that we have to be "practical, not ideologically pure." Does he ever get around to answering the woman's question about Baucus' conflict of interest? Do I care if he does. What comes out of his mouth means nothing, absolutely nothing. He's like a damn windsock. I can't stand to listen to him. He reminds me of GWB.
I listened carefully and then turned it off. NO ONE may tell me that he did not purposefully avoid that Baucus question.
The rest was a cow tow to the insurance industry. In cute, unoffending language, he basically said they have us by the cahones and that the medicare program was bankrupting the US.....like the banks and mortgage companies are great philanthropists! He's Bush with a vocabulary....and better teeth.
Thanks to you and some other of the commentors, I did not have to torment myself by listening to his covering up for those insurance crooks and that traitor baucus' whirly whig snake oil show for the insurance industry.
Indeed, the $2,000,000,000,000.00 preimum cut of the upcoming 'health care plan' is trivial at best because those 'premiums' will within a year start to go up, every year on the year then it will be back to the same old game.
It all has to do with 'control fraud' and that is the key area for these crooks in the insurance industry, financial industry, oil/energy industry, well just the whole damn corporate industries where the ceo's and the rest of the higher ups and 'best and brightest' get to play the lobby game to bribe the regulators to NOT do their job so the criminals can steal out in the open with no fear of being caught, prosecuted and punished for their crimes.
It is comparable to the conservative media industry which is the biggest lobbying group in washington, to dictate the FCC agendas to their benefit to mostly keep the really higher ups out of the news and report or not report what these 'elite' are up to or doing.
And congress and our new 'brand' of president are complicit but that new brand now is really beginning to stink to high heaven every time the box is opened and it just seems to drift further away on that opening everytime.
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37 Comments so far
Show AllLooks like we are getting chump change in health care reform rather than change of any worth.
No one starts from scratch. Medicare was implemented in a relatively short amount of time, less than two years.
The stakeholders around the table are driving a stake into the single-payer solution. Who has the guts to take on the insurance and big pharma industries? Not Obama, not Congress. It is up to the American people to make it happen. Get involved in any one of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care groups (Health-care Now, California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, or Progressive Democrats of America) and start banging away at the imperial but not impervious walls of those in the bubble of the beltway.
Obama is not the one we were waiting for--we are the ones we were waiting for!
Organize, Mobilize, Be Loud, Be Incessant, and Demand Single-payer.
Phasor's comments are "right on", even if the spelling is a bit off. It's just common sense to get the profit motive out of health care.
About a minute in I wanted to vomit. I had to pause about every 40 seconds because the doublespeak was too sickening. There is so much to comment on..where to begin...
Mr. President:
Single payer health care is:
1) too big to fail
2) what the majority of Americans want
If costs are the issue, then:
1) remove profit from health care insurance
(Why should insurance company CEOs take home millions of dollars by denying health care thereby causing people to die.)
2) single payer is the most cost efficient insurance mechanism - just ask doctors, your HHS secretary, other countries.
Employer based health care is a scam:
1) Employers use health care to exert there will over employees
2) People stay in jobs because they're afraid to loose their health care
3) Help free American employees, don't encourage employers to treat their employees as chattel
Finally, by all means take a practical perspective:
1) fulfill your duty to the majority of American people and democratic principles.
2) Extend medicare to all people.
Another corporate shill, masquerading as a progressive. Arrest him!!!
and while i'm at it, stop hacking my computer, N=s-0a peace of s(hi)t
continued...and he tries to say that medicare is bankrupting america!!! boooo...hisssssssss......
supposed "defense"(which came third or fourth) in his little makeshift speech is in reality more than 50% OF THE ENTIRE FEDERAL BUDGET!!!!!!!!!!!!HELLO!!!!
These politicians stick together better than flies and s--t. They are all corporate whores.
Entitlements are bankrupting our country indeed! Our entitlements would be in fine shape financially if these whores would keep their hands off the earnings of our "entitlements" in order to fund their mischeif. We worked hard for our entitlements and they are for us not them or their wars or corporate cronies.
This president that I worked my ass off to elect lies. He didn't even have the decency to give that poor lady an honest answer. More Obama BS! Not only does our health care system need to be flushed; the government should quickly follow down the tubes.
I'm sorry you promoted that fraud progressive Obama, and hope that you have now learned what Democrats really are.
The overdue flushing of this government down the tubes is emotionally attractive, but impossible without alternative leadership. Where is it? Better to pose a positive solution rather than a declaration of (absolutely appropriate!) rage. If you want universal peace, sustainability, equality and affluence - including free healtcare for all, there is no lasting plan out there because the capitalists cannot and do not want to build such a just world. The only way out is through organized labor action under the leadership of a internationalist communist party.
Old Coyote Knose that a cure for cancer (or anything else) is NOT PROFITABLE. Health care in corp-rat fascist Amerika is a lie! We have a corrupt corp-rat HEALTH INSURANCE $ystem... not a HEALTH CARE system. Yesss... the Knose knows that everything ewe folks thought ewe knew about Amerika... is a damn lie. I rest my case with Iraq-nam.
Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, has discovered that there are $trings attached to the job. The $trings make him a puppet for the Amerikan ruling class, namely Wall $treet in Newe Yawk... K-$treet in Sewertown (Washington D.C.)... and AIPAC, the ethno-racist Zionist lobby (a.k.a.: the tail that wags the dog in Amerika for the $ake of Israel).
Sorry! There will be NO universal single payer health care system in corp-rat fascist Amerika for the peasant class (a.k.a.: Joe Sixpack). Now get your faster poo food asses back to the boobtube tell-lie-vision set... or you'll missed the footballing game.
I am convinced that my wife's death in April of 2008 would not have occured if we had had a national health systyem in place years ago. As it was she and her doctors had many twists and turns in pursuing her illness. Her "health" insurance company, connected with one of the larger membership groups for retired people, played the usual wait and see games with her, and is itself closely owned by one of the larger money institutions to which we middle class people have provioded golden parachutes and bailout billions. A national health system for all run through the structure of medicare and medicaid are what the people of this country need and want. There is no moral precept which holds that illness and death should be profit-making for statisticle bean counters. Such would cut the cost of real health care by one-third.
We could be pushing for a binding referendum on single payer.
That's the way 'hope' is employed by the dastardly and devious -
take the crap we are giving you now in the 'hope' that things will
get better (but we know they won't). Barack Obama is a purveyor of
'hope' because his masters want the people to accept what they are
given now in the hope that good times will come.
Just do what we demand, oops, sorry, Barack demands, and in
return he'll inspire you to hope that it is all leading to the Promised
Land. It isn't, but, by the time you realise that, it's too late.
What terrifies the manipulators is that people will abandon hope, as
a future, sometime-never projection, and start to demand fairness,
justice and freedom now. To avoid this nightmare they need to keep
those desires as something to aspire to, not to actually have.
Thus, their man, Obama, sells 'hope' as a diversion technique, a
holding position, to keep the masses from truly rebelling. We have
no job, no food on the table and our home has been foreclosed, but
at least we have 'hope'. Phew, thank goodness for that.
'I'm hungry, mum, can I have some hope, please?'
'I'm so sorry, darling, you can't have hope today, only tomorrow -
hope is always tomorrow.'
'So will I eat tomorrow, mum?'
'We can hope so now, dear, but when we get to tomorrow, we can
only hope it's the next day.'
On and on it goes. That's how 'hope' works. Or rather doesn't.
Obama's predominant mantra has been 'change'. Indeed, his
massively-funded, record-breaking campaign was based on that one
word - change. This is a technique used by
Bill Clinton and many others and it is highly effective because, at
any point, the system ensures that most people are not happy with
the way life is. So, when you don't like the status quo, 'change' can
be a potent message, even if, like Obama, you don't say what it
means.
It has been vital to his success, and that of his controllers, that he
has never specified what his 'hope', 'change', and that other
mind-control trigger-word, 'believe', were referring to in terms of
policy and the way society in general will be affected. Hope for
what? Change what? Believe in what? To answer those questions
with specifics would have been fatal to Obama's appeal.
I watched the whole thing. And he basically says YES a single payer system is a good idea, and that is what I would do if we were starting this country from scratch. But since I have to deal with congress, it ain't gonna happen folks. But I do agree with you on the IDEA.
Thats all you get from this guy is Good IDEAS, and HOPE for TOMMORROW.
BUT NO ACTION.
'I'm hungry, mum, can I have some hope, please?'
'I'm so sorry, darling, you can't have hope today, only tomorrow -
hope is always tomorrow.'
'So will I eat tomorrow, mum?'
'We can hope so now, dear, but when we get to tomorrow, we can
only hope it's the next day.'
On and on it goes. That's how 'hope' works. Or rather doesn't
It's nice to sit back, throw bombs and let Obama do all the work. But why should he help us? All we cheap bastards do is give him grief and call him names while the oligarchy gives him anything he wants.
From opensecrets.org:
Max Baucus (D-MT) received from Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate $4,633,243.
During Baucus' 2008 campaign when he ran against Bob Kelleher who raised $0, Max sucked in a cool $11,602,479 and SPENT (on what?) $9,305,359.
Baucus' career payoffs from industry are as follows:
Insurance $1,170,313
Health prof 1,016,276
Pharmaceut 734,605
Sec/Investmt 1,458,035 PLUS A WHOLE LOT MORE
On the individual contributors:
AIG $91,000 (and they got HOW MUCH with no strings???)
Citigroup 72,000(Hey, let's ask for that to be returned to taxpayers)
Bank of America 50,250 (wow, the 3 great corporate welfare sisters)
BlueCross 64,699 (sure, he'll keep single payer OFF THE TABLE for this $$$)
Goldman Sachs 87,900 (wonder about that fast vote for the bailout?)
On Obama, he was in favor of single payer BEFORE he was against it. And, the surest way for him to FALL as did LBJ is to continue to be a CAPTIVE of the corporate INSURANCE industry and Wall Street. Right now, his former organization of volunteers (renamed "Organizing for America" OFA) is going around the country on so-called "Listening Tours." Actually, they expect US to be listening to them and following their orders. In both of the local meetings in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica (CA) SINGLE PAYER and STOPPING THE WARS were the major topics the attendees demanded to be heard.
THERE WILL BE NO REFORM as long as the INSURANCE companies RULE and choke off the healthcare to the people. WHY should we pay the 30% administrative costs (the PROFIT MOTIVE)when EVERYONE COULD be covered under a single payer system LIKE MEDICARE? With TRILLIONS being wasted on WARS and payouts to the unregulated banking system, it is NO WONDER Obama is whining now about a need to "control health costs." He just had Congress pass $92BILLION MORE for his WARS. It is a matter of his priorities and that HIS are not OURS.
THIS IS NOT THE CHANGE WE VOTED FOR. And the sooner he acknowledges this message, the better. ###
Sad to say I couldn't even take the bs for 2 minutes. He should know by the crowd's response that single payer is popular, but he completely blows off the woman's question, and so quickly! I thought I was cynical before . . .
The sick thing is the CONSUMPTION of resources that is going on in health care has to do with fascist collusion with bribed congressmen and presidents allowing for criminal lack of regulation and completely allowing the drug companies and other facets of medicine to price fix and overcharge as well as committing outright fraud with improper tests and procedures. Health care has ballooned not in terms of benefits as the USA is ranked at the bottom of industrialized nations in health but the costs have gone out of all control. They know people will pay BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO or they die. Many people fully insured find out every day that their insurance doesn't even have to pay for life saving procedures. They can keep the money and let people die and they do so every single day.
This is a criminal conspiracy just exactly like the giant ponzi schemes in banking the Republicons created. And politicians just say oh we can't do anything or oh we can't make the radical changes that are needed. IT IS A LIE TO SAY THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WON'T SUPPORT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE IF THEY ARE MADE FULLY AWARE OF WHAT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE IS THEY WOULD SUPPORT IT PASSIONATELY. IT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE TO SAY OTHERWISE. WE NEED TO CRIMINALIZE DECEPTION IN POLITICS AND CORPORATE EFFORTS AS WELL. The American people could easily end up with a much better system than there is anywhere in the world with proper and radical changes to our current system. This could be done and anything less then this will only self destruct as the criminals in the health care mobster community will just go bribe more politicians to get every small step undone.
IT IS CRITICAL TO OUR NATION THAT HEALTH CARE BE COMPLETELY OVERHAULED!! WE NEED TO STOP COMPROMISING BY WATERING DOWN THE GOOD POLICIES AND METHODS WE HAVE. WE NEED TO GO FULL SPEED AHEAD AND LET THE REALITY OF OUR GOOD WORKS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. TODAY YOU HAVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHICH ARE THE LARGEST LOBBY IN THE WORLD AND THEY HAVE ALL THE SENSE AND INSIGHT NEEDED SO LONG AS THEY ARE FULLY INFORMED.
The health care industry CONSUMES 1 out of every 6 dollars but it is not accurate to say that it produces that much in product or even to say that it is 1/6 th of the economy although I understand the simplified logic used to come to this conclusion. It is much more truthful and proper to say that "health care costs have balloned to consuming 1 in 6 dollars."
If we brought health care costs down to a third of what they are today we could do so by INCREASING the quality, quantity and productive value of the health care industries contribution to our net productivity as a nation. It is absurd to refer to the size of an industry as the dollars it consumes especially when it is so improperly structured. We could, for example decrease the net costs of health care so that it consumes less than 1 in 21 dollars but improve our health product as a nation and the quantity and quality of surgeries and medicines as an example. Thus in real goods and services terms the health care industry would be much more productive for two major reasons: they take less from the available cash resources of other businesses thus allowing them to produce more and two by producing more and better products which would cause them to seem to shrink in percentage of the US economy if you only go by dollars and cents. We must break free from Econ 101. By contracting the COSTS of health care you DO NOT contract health cares net contribution to productivity or net product nor do you in ANY WAY contract the productive potential of the greater economy in fact quite the contrary which itself proves the vast size of the health care industries footprint on our GDP is not representative actual of actual productivity or real value but, as I've made clear, the result of health care's simply bilking the country. Thus reducing the cost of health care would INCREASE the size of the US economy as the money would quickly be used in all manner of other productive enterprises. The health care industries consumption of so much of our countries resources is not productivity but anti-productivity as regards the greater economy. This is the natural way non-competitive sectors and industries function. The more monopolistic or oligopolistic, the more collusive in pricing, the more they become anti-productive forces and the less their consumption reflects production, they become generally negative factors with respect to our broader economy.
Health care is a very tiny percentage of our nations productive output, it vampirishly consumes the wealth of our country in a very destructive and even disabling way. They are crippling businesses from large to small and making it impossible for people to afford health itself. We need to reduce the percentage of dollars literally wasted on very poor quality health care and end up with the money being spent on overpriced health care used instead at helping to boost the greater economy.
There must be every measure put forth allowing people to easily import drugs from other countries and making it so the prices for drugs and services are brought down using all methods available to assure that Americans pay no more for drugs or surgery than other countries.
Thinking all the way back to John Kennedy in 1960, I would say that Brock Alabama's sell-out is the fastest and most complete of any Democrat in 49 years, certainly faster than Bill Clinton's. Breathtaking! I'm as sick of looking at this guy as I was of George Wanker Bush. Hope and Change! I've got a greeting card pinned to the wall of my cubicle that says: I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER NOW THAT I'VE GIVEN UP HOPE.
I am so disappointed that President Obama has abandoned his position on transparency in government, including Congress, and Max Baucus' conflict of interest.
He should be on "Dancing with the Pols" they way he avoided answering her question and laid the blame for the national debt at the feet of Medicare and Medicaid.
Male bovine excrement!
It is not complicated changing the health care system. What we need to do is to CHANGE the health care system. It needs to be changed into a heallth care system, not a disease treating system.
Obama is so wrong in having the Health Insurance industry involved. Also, all of the Congressional whores to the Insurance industry and big Pharma need to be excluded from taking part in the debate.
Obama does not want people to go to the ER whereas Bush wanted them to go there.
That is the only difference I can see so far.
It would be nice if someone called him out publically when he lies, distorts and avoides questions. He is becomming a disappointment everyday as i see him becommoning beholding to special interests over the people's interests. He will be a one term failure unless he becomes true to his base. Change we can believe in seems to have become no change we can believe in. It seems as if a wheel has come off of Obama's straight talk express. It is not becomming of the office of the Presidency to see Obama spread his legs in the air so all the special interests can have their way with him. He has become their Boy so easily and willingly. i for one wish i had not wasted my vote and effort on this slick two faced one we call the president
I think it should be pretty obvious by now that Obama was always in Corporate America's back pocket. Goldman Sachs was one of his biggest donors along with many others in the financial sector. They saw his slick speechs and expertise at double speak for what it could be. A huge asset to them. He gets power, they get power. The people? They continue to get screwed. I can't recall him ever directly answering a question. I wish we could get better speakers to ask him questions at these townhall meetings.
Woo Hoo! Health care is bankrupting us! God I feel stupid. Here I am thinking it was war(spending) that was breaking us ( or "defense" as Obama calls it).
Jaysis.
Fricken fast talkers these politicians....
Well, whether it's health care first or wars first, they are both bankrupting us.
Since health care is the subject here, maybe Obama at least recognizes that the current generation, the boomers, who are aging and starting to retire, will drain Medicare and all of health care like we've never seen before. So, while the wars and banking scams may be more tangible, health care is a HUGE drain on our system, and I agree that it will be number one very soon.
I'm of two minds: I want to see single payer, universal coverage ASAP. OTOH, this is a huge, byzantine, bureaucracy and it most likely won't be changed overnight. What really pisses me off, though, is that we won't get to single payer by aiming low. I can understand needing to do it in concise, well-planned stages, but his rather mealy-mouthed attempt to dance around it doesn't leave me with a lot of...um...hope.
Aim high, Mr. President! Plan for the stages, but aim high!
(Note 1: For the record, I am a baby boomer. Didn't choose to be - I was born into it. So, before anyone goes on a tangent about how boomers are screwing the world, consider the choice YOU had in when you were born. Note 2: I voted for Obama.)
"Note 1: For the record, I am a baby boomer. Didn't choose to be - I was born into it. So, before anyone goes on a tangent about how boomers are screwing the world, consider the choice YOU had in when you were born."
I like to tell people I didn't choose to be an American. Only choice is whether we act and think like a typical American, or a typical boomer.
"Note 2: I voted for Obama."
Yeah, that one was definitely a choice.
As Ralph Nader said, "Where's My Change?"
Obama is so full of it. The biggest drain on the federal coffers is not health care. It is the corrupt Wall Street bailout that is pilfering the U.S. Treasury. It is the ongoing illegal occupation and war againstd the Iraqi people. It is the ongoing illegal occupation and war against Afghanistan. It is the for-profit drug companies and insurance comapnies who have monopolized tghe health of America.
Obama, if he had integrity and was honest, would let the proponents of Single Payer system to enter into the debate.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
A few years ago all the Democracts were outraged that Energy Policy was dictated by the Oil industry, this is no different. Obama invited the HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY to "reform" instead of changing the completely broken system.
Obama blatantly misleads people by blaming Health Care for the national debt, while simultaneously supports and advocates bailing out the Banking industry.
Obama the great Bullshitter in Chief...
He never answered the question about Baucus' conflict of interest. Aside from that observation, I just kept watching, expecting people would either begin to throw their shoes at him or someone would push a cream pie in his face.
In a couple of years, the Audacious Hoper will be more despised than Bush.
A better title for his book would have been "The Audacity of Empty Campaign Promises" or..."The Bush Regime...to be continued"....
Again, you got that right. My experience was, I think, early in 2008 when he assured both corporate america and the american izraeli public affairs committee of america's unwavering support for what ever either wanted and at the time I was looking at voting obama except he went with those 2 assurances and I knew that nothing would change except we traded a bow-legged dwarf chimp with a big chip on his shoulder for a slick suited black man with a messiah persona on a billboard.
Checkmate, stalemate for the status quo and he hasn't proved me wrong but for the fact it was still impossible to get a 3rd party elected as president.
Okay, I only made it to about the 2 minute mark. Blah, blah, blah. Lookie over there! Platitudes and drivel like "work hard" (completely different than GWB's 'hard work')"complicated" "difficult" and that we have to be "practical, not ideologically pure." Does he ever get around to answering the woman's question about Baucus' conflict of interest? Do I care if he does. What comes out of his mouth means nothing, absolutely nothing. He's like a damn windsock. I can't stand to listen to him. He reminds me of GWB.
No he never answered the womans questions on Baucus, if he did he would be breaking the code of the pimp, to never rat out a brother pimp.
I listened carefully and then turned it off. NO ONE may tell me that he did not purposefully avoid that Baucus question.
The rest was a cow tow to the insurance industry. In cute, unoffending language, he basically said they have us by the cahones and that the medicare program was bankrupting the US.....like the banks and mortgage companies are great philanthropists! He's Bush with a vocabulary....and better teeth.
Thanks to you and some other of the commentors, I did not have to torment myself by listening to his covering up for those insurance crooks and that traitor baucus' whirly whig snake oil show for the insurance industry.
Indeed, the $2,000,000,000,000.00 preimum cut of the upcoming 'health care plan' is trivial at best because those 'premiums' will within a year start to go up, every year on the year then it will be back to the same old game.
It all has to do with 'control fraud' and that is the key area for these crooks in the insurance industry, financial industry, oil/energy industry, well just the whole damn corporate industries where the ceo's and the rest of the higher ups and 'best and brightest' get to play the lobby game to bribe the regulators to NOT do their job so the criminals can steal out in the open with no fear of being caught, prosecuted and punished for their crimes.
It is comparable to the conservative media industry which is the biggest lobbying group in washington, to dictate the FCC agendas to their benefit to mostly keep the really higher ups out of the news and report or not report what these 'elite' are up to or doing.
And congress and our new 'brand' of president are complicit but that new brand now is really beginning to stink to high heaven every time the box is opened and it just seems to drift further away on that opening everytime.