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Nothing to Fear Except No Health Care
Fifty million Americans are without health insurance, and 25 million are "underinsured." Millions being laid off will soon be added to those rolls. Medical bills cause more than half of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. Desperate for care, the under- and uninsured flock to emergency rooms, often dealing with problems that could have been prevented.
The U.S. auto giants are collapsing in part due to extraordinary health care expenses, while they are competing with companies in countries that provide universal health care. Economist Dean Baker calculated how General Motors would fare if its health care costs were the same as costs in Canada: "GM would have had higher profits, making no other changes ... that would equal $22 billion over the course of the last decade. They wouldn't have to be running to the government for help."
GM is sometimes referred to as a health care company that makes cars. Former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca said in 2005, "It is a well-known fact that the U.S. automobile industry spends more per car on health care than on steel." He supports national health care.
Barack Obama said in 2007 that "affordable, universal health care for every single American must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how. ... Every four years, health care plans are offered up in campaigns with great fanfare and promise. But once those campaigns end, the plans collapse under the weight of Washington politics."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his March 1933 inaugural address, famously declared: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself. ... This nation asks for action, and action now." Deep in the Great Depression, a flurry of ambitious policies followed, detailed by New York Times editorial writer Adam Cohen in his new book, "Nothing to Fear." He writes that FDR developed the New Deal with key, visionary advisers and Cabinet members who enacted bold policies, among them Frances Perkins, the United States' first woman Cabinet member. Perkins, FDR's secretary of labor, pushed for a rapid, national relief program that formed the basis of the welfare system, and for regulations on minimum wage, maximum hours and a ban on child labor.
But Perkins failed to achieve universal health care. Cohen told me: "She really was the conscience of the New Deal in many ways ... she chaired the Social Security committee. And she wanted it to go further ... to include national health insurance, but the AMA (American Medical Association), even back then, was very strong and opposed it. And she and a couple other progressives on the committee said, you know, 'We better just settle for what we can get.' They didn't want to lose the whole Social Security program."
Obama appointed former Sen. Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, and director of the new White House Office of Health Reform. Daschle's health care book, "Critical," recalls historical failures to achieve universal care: "Like Clinton, Truman had reason to be confident. His fellow Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and polls showed that Americans were anxious about the high cost of health care and eager for change. But both presidents underestimated the strength of the forces arrayed against them ... (s)pecial-interest lobbyists -- led by doctors in Truman's time, and insurance companies in Clinton's."
Obama knows well the issue -- while his mother lay dying of cancer, she still had to battle the insurance industry. He said in that 2007 speech, "Plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday ... we can't afford another disappointing charade ... we need to look at ... how much of our health care spending is going toward the record-breaking profits earned by the drug and health care industry."
Yet Daschle proposes not much more than tinkering -- improving Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration, all examples of "single-payer health care" -- in which the government is the single payer for the health care -- while preserving the inefficient, multi-payer, for-profit insurance model.
In December 2007, the American College of Physicians compared U.S. health care with other countries', writing, "Single-payer systems generally have the advantage of being more equitable, with lower administrative costs than systems using private health insurance, lower per capita health care expenditures, high levels of consumer and patient satisfaction."
Michael Moore, in his film "SiCKO," includes a recording of John Ehrlichman speaking to Richard Nixon, discussing medical insurance profits: "The less care they give 'em, the more money they (the insurance companies) make."
Obama is in charge now. Who will he emulate -- Nixon or FDR? People across the political and economic spectrum, from big business to the little guy, are dying to know.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllThe fairy tale that the government works for us is only accepted by the most ignorant, but the American people are the ones that are most culpable and in their ignorance are willing to suffer with little or no health care because they do not obstreperously demand it of their leaders. Why shouldn't every American get the same health care benefits as the people in Congress? We hear over and over again, that they work for us and not the other way around, so as their employers, why do the employees let this happen? In other words, do you get better health benefits than your boss? Folks, the reason we are all being hanged separately is we are letting this happen. We need to hang together and demand the health care that every American deserves.
The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
I think that it is worth mentioning that states like Michigan, which is the hub of the domestic auto industry, is forced to pay welfare to states like Alabama, which is dominated by federally subsized foreign automakers. Also, the "Growler" program, headed by Senator Carl Levin, stole military vehicle jobs from MI, to the purpose of granting them to a South Carolina firm that made an inferior product. Such acts of sabotage have not only killed Detroit jobs, but have killed many of our soldiers when their costly, ineffective, "Growlers" flipped over during combat. Of course Levin will probably never have to answer for this, as he is currently investigating his own department.
Sioux Rose
The arguments for single payer are ostensibly clear and undeniably fair, they also make the most economic sense, even for the corporations (that in competing with other nations are put at a disadvantage when health care costs to employees figure in on their balance sheets); so the ONLY thing standing in the way are the tentacles of the insurance industry and its rainmakers in the lobbyist ranks.
Right wing radio continues to misrepresent the issue, something they have proven very effective at in such items as the making the case for a war on the basis of fabricated if not premeditated "evidence," and now they are making war against the only SANE plan for America, by muddying the evidence and setting up the dasdardly "why should I pay for you?" construct, a play on selfishness that becomes all the more significant when the fiscal pie gets cut smaller and smaller and the workers are left to fight for crumbs.
A friend of mine that I generally admire has already shown a willingness to buy this stupid propaganda, telling me the other day how UNIONS ruined it for this country. That's the campaign the right wing radio clones are busy prattling on about, doing all they can to make sure individuals never come to realize that it's in their BEST interests to consider becoming their brothers/sisters keeper. Maybe some new enactment of a fairness doctrine demanding accountability for the lies that pass for truth in media needs to be put back into effect. To try to educate persons thus exposed is like swimming through a sea of sewage without sufficient pause to get a clear breath in.
Very well put. Single payer, and a system with coordinated routine and preventive care at the community level, is the rational choice for health care. We had some of that right after WW II. It worked.
The unions, or what is left of them, have become the latest scapegoat of the right wing talk shows. The slander campaign is meant to divide us with petty jealousy over $4.00 an hour here, and a work rule there, while the banks and likes of Madoff waltz off with hundreds of billions of our money.
Joe
jclientelle:Joe, the success of Reagan and the right wing is that the unions have been shrunk via "right to work" state laws and propaganda. The propaganda goes back a long long time. I heard it in a NYS teachers(upstate) college class in the late 1950s: professor in a state college said, "we are professionals as teachers, we don't need unions, we are like lawyers, and doctors." I started teaching, noticed my paycheck size and got involved in the first teachers' strike for collective bargaining (teachers didn't have a union in NYC until the early 1960s), and then the next year, I was a union delegate to the first union vote for the first contract battle:strike or not to strike. We voted to and struck for a decent first contract. The Taylor Law made public workers striking illegal.
For good info on the labor movement: "Building Bridges" a radio show I've been listening to on WBAI 99.5FM for years and years. WBAI is one of the 5 Pacifica network - www.pacifica.org -stations, the one in NYC. (You probably know.) www.wbai.org Show is on Mondays, 7pmEastern Time, live streamed and archived for 90 days; also deals with activist things like police brutality; has its own website,too. One of the hosts is a librarian union member and the other is a legal aid lawyer. The lawyer, Mimi Rosenberg, does a segment every Wednesday morning on WBAI's "WakeUp Call" morning show, called "In Brief" on latest legal news. WBAI is where DemocracyNow got started and where I listen every morning. Workers have to be allowed to vote for and join unions. Unions need to become more racially integrated and more involved in immigrant worker struggles. Many are.
Heath care, health coverage has to be de-coupled from work/job. Single-payer from birth (and for those already born, just make it happen.)
Sioux Rose:The myth that "unions ruined it for this country" is not new. Did you say anything to your friend? I used to point out to one friend who is a Republican, how that line and many others has flaws. I finally gave up. I am not sure if people who listen to Right wing radio were that way first and just getting "talking points" or became that way. I'd guess they were of like mind before they turned on the air pollution. I do not have a solution for right wing radio pollution. I do think kids need to learn critical reading and thinking from the earliest.
Sioux Rose
NYCARTIST: I tried to explain about GM and had they had single payer insurance operating for employees the car maker might have been able to stay competitive. (Its choice to produce inefficient vehicles from the fuel standpoint is another story and in my view indicative of its karma.) The level of hypnosis is maddening. I mean how do you get one to see/hear the truth when they have been already brainwashed, and when confronted with what you take for easy facts, these positions have already been co-opted by the right wing. The father of the guy I date really thinks LIBERALS ruined in for this country. I tried to go down the list about 40 hour work week, etc but he has all his arguments from Rush ready, and it's too energy-depleting to TRY to meet those blow for blow. Here's how they see Sarah Palin, "She took it upon herself to make sure every Alaskan teenager has money to go to college." Sounds like a noble idea, doesn't it? I mean it's like conversing with someone who inhabits a different (dis-information) universe! Bring on the translators!
Sioux Rose:my Republican friend and I, by my decree, only speak of ourselves, our lives and the weather. I forbid another word of politics,(it was all "talking points, all the time"), if the friendship is to survive. I have no idea how to change people's minds, although, on some things it's funny. For example:I know two people who carried on that social security was AWFUL and should not exist. But when they got old enough, they started cashing their social security checks. I laugh and kept quiet.
A lot of the reason for this "hypnosis" as you put it is due to the language having been hijacked by the powers that be....You are basically speaking to a foreigner in a totally different language.
The easiest example of this is the word "Torture". You know what it means. I know what it means. We are progressives.
GW Bush claims the United States does not "Torture" and his followers repeat this simply because they CHANGED The meaning of the word.
"I don't take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House." -- Barack Obama
Perhaps even the insurance company lobbyist will support a single-payer health care system after inauguration day, eh?
I don't know how sooner I would have recovered even with single payer but it's a great idea whose time is long due and it's time we the people quit getting our healthcare coverage tied to our employers especially at a time when unemployment is rising.
JWVerez:yes. You made the point about uncoupling health care from employers and jobs, better than I did elsewhere.
Pres-elect Obama says he will sit down with all interested parties, like the Pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, HMO's to see how reform can be made to the current system. That's like sitting down with "organized crime" to reform RICO and expect tougher laws to combat crime with their approval of course. fagettabout it..whooo ya kidd'n. watt da ya want, blood?..I'll give ya blood..but it ain't gonna be mine....no it'll be ours..
Why is Amy Goodman saying that GM could have higher profits without the healthcare burden? Does she assume that "what is good for GM is good for America?" Isn't this slogan obsolete now? Yes and still pundits who claim to serve the people's interests continue to argue within the elite frames. No wonder the elite ignore such arguments - the elites know their frames are rigged grotesquely in the elite's favor.
Amy Goodman, GM reaped profit windfalls for years as the Clintok chimp and his successor allowed the gas guzzler tax to flounder, as the ice shelves started breaking off of Antarctica, GM was raking it in. Where are their profits now? It squandered some of them, gave some away to its shareholders and hid some in secret vaults. Also don't forget that GM is tied into the military industrial complex and is thereby subsidized through the Pentagon's 1/2 to 2/3 $trillion annual theft from the public.
Everyone with your pet projects and problems du jour should combine forces and focus on the root cause of all of them: Elite rule, which suppresses the people's enlightenment, responsibility, and rights. The people will deliver top value in all production sectors, at the local level, via small enterprises, for local markets. Get to work, people!
Why is Amy Goodman saying that General Motors could have higher profits without the healthcare burden? Does she assume that "what is good for GM is good for America?" Isn't this slogan obsolete now? Yes and still pundits who claim to serve the people's interests continue to argue within the elite frames. That is, arguing to advance the public interests by appealing to elite interests. The elites see past this, and recognize it as a toothless argument that will not inspire confidence in the people's cause. I don't know if Amy Goodman sees it or not.
GM reaped profit windfalls for years as the Clintok chimp and his successor trashed the gas guzzler tax, as the ice shelves started breaking off of Antarctica. Where are its profits now? It squandered some of them, gave some away to its shareholders and hid some in secret vaults. Why should we restrict healthcare plunder and leave automotive plunder intact? The solution to the one problem is the solution to all of them. Also don't forget that GM is a key member of the military industrial complex and is thereby subsidized through the Pentagon's 1/2 to 2/3 $trillion annual public theft. GM is only trying to grab some sympathy to match its privilege and prestige. Godzilla in a pretty pink tutu. How is the automotive industry any different than the healthcare industry? They have exactly the same modus operandi.
We have to jump out of the elite frames and jump into the progressive frame, the taboo frame: The over-arching cause of 90% of the society's problems is elite rule, which suppresses the people's enlightenment, responsibility, and rights. The people will deliver top value in all production sectors, at the local level, via small enterprises, for local markets. This is the kind of production that most benefits people, physically, mentally, spiritually, socially, economically, politically. People, take production back from the elites, NOW! Healthcare, automotive, everything!
LeeAnnG
The health care situation is not the only aspect of our economy misrepresented by the hate radio hosts. And, in fact, it's not just the hate radio hosts who misrepresent our economy. This morning on CNN, there was a panel of "experts" discussing the "recession," which they still apparently refuse to label a depression. They all agreed that the problem was precipitated by over-spending and a lack of saving by average citizens. Then they all turned right around and agreed that our economy is based upon consumer spending, which needs to be encouraged somehow in order to jump-start it back up.
The interviewer did not confront them with this contradiction. And in the discussion, no mention was made of the Wall Street gambling (euphemistically referred to as "stock market trading") or the discrepancy between the obscenely wealthy and the other 98% of the population. Entirely missing from the conversation was the emphasis in our economy and political arenas on rewarding financial games rather than rewarding actual work. No one thought to expound upon the fact that people can't save (and have to borrow too much) because their jobs don't pay a living wage.
I suppose it's irrelevant that multinational corporations, with the cooperation of our government, have sent most of our manufacturing jobs overseas. Or that high US worker productivity is not reflected in increased wages. Or that the financial bubble was artificially created and maintained through shady, manipulative lending practices and supported by government deregulation.
One of the participants announced that it's business that makes the economy work, so creating government jobs is not the answer. No one touched upon the notion that the tax money we working people have so generously offered through our government is what's bailing out the financial world, not the other way around.
Of course, the outlandish cost of health care was not under discussion either. The interview focused mainly on the bad spending, borrowing, and saving practices of "regular" people.
Just the other day, I saw a Republican senator on TV. I don't remember her name or which state she's from. She announced that tax cuts have been proven to boost the economy! I wonder where her head has been for the past 8 years. And, again, the interviewer failed to challenge her assertion.
There's a lot of work that needs to be done to counterbalance the misrepresentations, cherry-picked evidence, and outright lies of the corporate media, hate radio, and other rightwing sources before people realize that this country is of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy. And unlikely to change in the near future unless a whole lot of us rally and begin to make demands. A universal health care system would be a very good start.
FAIR, the media watch dog group founded by Jeff Cohen exposed the fact that the big health insurance companies supported Bill "Dixiecrat/Republican" Klanton's national health care plan, as it allowed the health insurance industry to continue, with really just the small health insurance companies opposing the plan. The main force opposing the plan at the time was the pharmaceutical industry as it feared the federal government, with such a plan in place could negotiate the prices of prescription drugs, cutting down on the industry's ill gotten gains at the people's expense. The other criticial factor was Klanton's lack of guts and political triangulation strategy. Add to that FAIR also exposed the fact that the plan was so complicated that the administration couldn't itself even explain it, and then the president simply gave up within about a year and handed over the plan to his wife, knowing full well that the political types would conclude he wasn't serious at all about putting this legislation through, which he wasn't. He backed off on gays in the military and about everything else liberal to progressive he had claimed to be for in the 1992 campaign, and in the end he did more to carry out GOP right wing domestic policies than both his GOP predecessors, leading to the Democrats almost becoming extinct as a political species except in presidential politics, with "old Bill" taking care of himself and selling himself to the highest bidder in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Amy Goodman is a fine, decent, and courageous journalist: but on this she's a bit wrong about "good old Bill." He didn't win on his health care plan, as he really didn't care and was just looking out for himself. He wasn't even close to being in the category with a Harry Truman nor even Jimmy Carter. They both had guts, and would stand for something, while
"old Bill" simply stood for himself. It's too bad he didn't lose in 1992.
The basic thrust of the article, however, is good.
A grass roots progressive movement keeping the pressure on is a must!
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