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TechnoratiFinal Piece in Our Economic Collapse
Letting the health care market segment wither by lack of public support will do no one any good.
Having campaigned on a broadly sketched platform of hope for those on the fringes of economic and physical viability, President Obama is watching the ticker line expand to the point where half of the U.S. population considers itself either underemployed or underserved.
An expanding percentage of this group -- 43.6 million by the Centers for Disease Control's 2006 pre-recession count -- are without health care.
This number has certainly burgeoned well beyond the 50 million mark given the fresh round of layoffs, financial failures and re-budgeting by the recently unemployed.
My concern, and the concern of many, surrounds the disappearance of Obama's commitment to health care provision for the uninsured and underserved members of our population.
We are about to ignore our single functional economic engine -- that of the health care sector -- by prioritizing long-dead sectors of finance and auto manufacturing.
FACING A FISCAL TROUGH
If we fail to rescue health care and public health itself as we move forward, we will be entering a fiscal trough that may take decades to rebuild.
Now would be the perfect time to pick the sector with most viability to fuel our recovery. Later will be far too late.
As we pour countless, and lightly accounted for, billions into bailouts and tax cuts for those having sufficient income to avail themselves of such stimulus measures, we are leaving an ever larger proportion of our country behind, and in the most dire state of need.
Health has been largely commoditized and subjected to profit-focused market efficiencies for the past quarter century, leaving more and more Americans behind in the eternal rush to the margin.
As this process unfolded, and despite the loss of millions on the health care coverage rolls, there were ample dollars to ensure the profitability of health as a commodity.
This will not be the case moving into the near and distant future. Health care is, like so much else, heading into its own meltdown, and it will make the financial collapse of 2008 look like a mere blip on the Bloomberg screen.
With the U.S. economy claiming more and more members of the middle class for transition toward the poverty line, we are about to enter a period in our history defined by a statistical majority in the U.S. population having little or no access to health care - at a time when health care is acting as one of the few profit-making sectors in our economy.
With a spiking unemployment rate in the health care sector and a dilapidated pharmaceutical industry that continues its merger mentality to control costs no longer borne by a viable financial sector, we are heading into an uncharted abyss of social disaster.
TURN THE TIDE AROUND
The only way to stem the tide on this decline -- and its accompanying fiscal and public health consequences -- is to fund health care as the fiscal engine it has recently become amidst the financial sector collapse.
Had the health care sector been given half of the recent financial and auto manufacturing bailout funding, we would have been able to expand and extend health care coverage.
We would thereby be capturing the remaining stability of this sector as an engine of economic and public health recovery.
It surprises me that the economists and health care consultants working in the Obama administration have not taken this opportunity to the bank.
They could have made a difference by diverting meaningless cash dumps from non-functional industries into the single most viable and necessary industry in the country.
I am sad to say that the crash of the health care economy will be heard in a very different way than the crashes that recently preceded it.
It will take our final breath economically, and literally with the disappearance of greatly diminished health care services to all economic classes in the United States.
56 Comments so far
Show AllHa, ha. I am sorry, but some of the comments here are beyond ridiculous, Where in the world does it say in this article that the author is against single-payer healthcare?
Some people in this country don’t even want to hear about government-run healthcare because “we are ‘Muricans, and we don’t want no socialism.” Others, apparently, think that any idea expressed by a Rockefeller must be suspect.
That makes sense.
When questioned about Health Care, Senator Chris Dodd replied,
"It will never happen"..he of the Countrywide Scandal. I would be satisfied
if the government gave me the same medical benefits that Dodd is enjoying
on my dime.
Bill Walz
Single-payer universal health care. 100& coverage of 100% of the people. One single pool in which costs can be managed, the pool benefitting from the healthy to pay for the sick, unlike the system proposed now where the healthy pay to private insurance and the government pays for the old, and sick poor. That's what will bankrupt us. Single-payer is the answer. Just like it has been the answer for the rest of the industrialized democratic world. Come on Obama. This is your real test. May we HOPE for this CHANGE?
Conservatives/Liberals the terms are outmoded. Governors are less interested in the governed than they are about Re-election. Would *"Native Criminal Class", be a better Descriptor? *Gore Vidal.
I wanted to post to say "Hi", I have been without means myself due to a job loss and I am still endeavoring to replace the infrastructure in my life. Health Insurance, savings, college all gone with the economy. Still, after all the dream of improving my lot and my family continues. Any improvement would be better. I want all people in this country to have a "Better", choice but we're starving down here, really starving. Let's all focus and promise to carry on this fight to improve the "playing field", for everyone. Thanks
"Conservatives/Liberals the terms are outmoded"
Actually no. That is a myth perpetuated by losing conservatives meant to cloud the issue and to deflect blame from themselves for the present situation.
Ducksawce, Wake up!! Buy a plane ticket and spend time in France and then rewrite your article. I have retired to Southern France and I can assure you that the services are more efficient, systems are computerized nationally thus massively reducing the paper work and per capita costs far lower than in the US. The US system is an unjust bureaucratic nightmare and embarrassment.
You mean I wouldn't have to find time to take care of people in between filling out forms that document that I have filled out the forms that say I have filled out the forms? What kind of rogue nation's health care system operates like that??!!
Any chance you could expand on your experience with the French health care system? Thanks.
Okay, first of all he is not from that Rockefellar family whoe namesake had the middle initial D and stole his money with the monopoly business Standard Oil.
Secondly, his CEO status with a management consulting firm ought to have taught him that single-payer is not only good for just plain folks like you and me, but also for the bottom line of his clients since a major expense and morale issue is the availability and cost of healthcare benefits provided by such businesses.
Finally, as has been alluded to by several posters, if we can squander as much money aswe have on bailing out Wall Street and catering to the military industrial complex, there ought to be enough money in the federal budget to provide single payer healthcre for all Americans.
Poet
Single-payer health care enacted.
Liability for medical expenses no longer required for auto or home owner insurance policies.
Auto and home buying stimulated.
Economy saved.
Single-payer health care pays for itself.
"My concern, and the concern of many, surrounds the disappearance of Obama's commitment"
Why is Mr. Rock-a-feller concerned about O'Bama's commitment and not the people's commitment? Maybe because the elites' domination over the people depends on the people's lack of commitment to themselves and their communities. God Bless the United States of America!
As I posted in a the Daschle article: Single Payer Health Care is the only way to go. Why keep putting it off? You say, "it's not going to happen?" Let me tell you, it is going to happen, because it MUST happen, there is no other choice that works. Again: How long must we pay for it. As long as profit is involved, greed will be involved, and thus less health care will be involved.
Yes, it will cost a lot, but few people talk about what it will profit us: A healthy America. Workers able to work. People able to stop hurting, able to stop putting off necessary health care choices, people will be able stop going bankrupt or losing their homes for health care reasons,..... We'll gain: a whole lot less pain, and more happiness, that's worth paying for, right?
BUT ALSO, as we re-build America's health infrastructure, with all that money that currently goes to profits, we will provide more work to doctors and RN and therapists and technician galore, and construction workers, service workers, office workers galore as well. This part of a healthy health care system is often ignored. A healthy America will be creating plenty of money for this country.
I agree it can work: my auntie's social security payments arrive on time, my unemployment benefits arrive on time, my county health insurance has helped relieve me of a YEARS old medical problem. Yes, I receive help from the gov't, but, baby, I've put SO much of myself into this country and my community! It all comes full circle.
We need an EVIDENCE-BASED single-payer National Health care system. The "evidence-based" component is absolutely crucial because it would improve care and dramatically cut costs.
If you don't have a clear idea of what this means try reading
Overtreated; Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer by Shannon Brownlee, Bloomsbury, N.Y. 2007.
or even
Trick Or Treatment; The Undeniable Facts About Alternatice Medicine By Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst, MD;W.W. Norton & Company; 2008
Also,look into the work being done by the Cochrane Collaboration.
The "national" component is not just because of the actuarial calculations but because it would coordinate the collection and spread of important medical information, put research and clinical practice under a much broader umbrella of certainty and protection.
The "single-payer" component would greatly improve administrative efficiency and also cut costs.
Under the present system expenses are going to overwhelm Americans' ability to pay even as millions are left completely out of the system. The current deficit will look like peanuts compared to what we are facing in health care within just a couple of decades!
Dean Baker, a regular contributor to Common Dreams, has done some great analysis of this.
Jeevee
A wise psychiatrist friend once said, "You must choose to make money or choose to serve." (There is no other choice.)
That is wise and almost short enough a saying to catch short attention span AMerican attention.
The US is broke. Almost every state, large city, company, and many households are bankrupt. Is California really going to issue IOUs? Abuse of globalization and deregulation, trillion dollar wars financed on credit, and numerous "bubbles", especially real estate and mortgage financing have done us in. The $700 billion bailout that might not solve anything is on credit. Is the US creditworthy???
The new stimulus package will also be based on credit and may not correct the fundamental problems. Real Estate is still overvalued, GM still can't sell enough cars to make its overhead, we are still at war, and our trade balance is still obscenely negative.
Health care isn't something we can trade with the world. It comes AFTER food, fuel and shelter, and security (not from "foreign terrorists"), and that is what we may be faced with now.
theinitiate
Sneaker, this is what I'm thinkin'. That those in power will never let go... Then what?
I'm still working hard to believe the positive, that we can START NOW to be PROACTIVE to stem the wounds and problems in our civilization...But...There are all kinds of people out there with different levels of understatnding and perspective on this abyss, People with all levels of patience. Some won't hold out that long if those in power decide to hang on. In other words, all the different "sides " may drift farther apart. If this happens even more than it already has...
The article certainly doesn't mention "single payer" because it spends a lot of time talking about health as a profit center. Rockefeller's logic is that Obama should not leave health care out of the stimulus bill because it is the biggest moneymaker out there. But isn't that precisely what should change? Isn't the reason the current system is so fracked up because it is based on extracting profit from health care? The reason why it is hard these days to trust a diagnosis from a doctor or dentist because you are not sure whether you really need the procedure, or whether the doctor is just trying to make a buck off your insurance? Many of the best doctors now no longer even take insurance, and therefore the best care goes to only the wealthiest...
It seems that you can only come around to "single payer" philosophically if you give up the idea that health care is a commodity, i.e. a producer of profit, surplus value. Why aren't we at least looking at other single payer systems out there (when I worked in France in the mid-nineties, the system was pretty great: you could go to any doctor at all, everyone used the same simple forms, money was immediately deposited in my account, all the pharmacies used the same forms, I had a free house call in the middle of the night...it was amazing, elegant even).
sierra7
Bravo!
Keep repeating the mantra:
"Single payer, Universal health care!" Whenever anyone talks about "health care."
Repeat, repeat, repeat!!
And, don't take "no" for an answer. Because there is no "NO" in the mix.....
We are a disgrace as a society (among other things) for trying to "reform" a moldy, broken system that is profit oriented and leaves so many with no "health care coverage."
Get the Pharmas and the insurance crooks out of the business, period.
Repeat after me:
"UNIVERSAL, SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE"!! Nothing less will do.
"UNIVERSAL, SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE"!! Nothing less will do.
Thats the real truth. Thanks.
I second the motion.
If the sentence doesn't start with "single payer healthcare" there is no point in discussing any proposal further.
'We' absolutely need to 'fund' healthcare, education, transportation, manufacturing, finance, housing, arts, social services, recreation...did I leave anything out?
Garage researchers are sitting on good inventions that need to get to the market. Some inventions, such as passive solar improvements, are cheap and will get to market just fine on their own. A few inventions, such as cheaper community-sized solar electric generation, need government support and are getting it. Transit inventions are orphaned by a horrid "free" market, they will mostly die with their inventors, and the government doesn't give a damn.
Also, there are inventions which can cheaply and safely inhibit the runaway Arctic methane release. The inventions are of nearly infinite value to the planet, but there's no money anywhere to prototype and demonstrate these little products. Someone please throw an alarm clock at the global warming movement.
I'm amazed that there is “spiking unemployment” in health care. The way I see it, even if we transitioned immediately to Universal, Single-Payer Healthcare, and there were no unemployment in that field, we would still have a severe shortage of professionals and the people that support them. And one of the arguments used in the past, and will be used again now, is that there will be long waiting times for procedures and such. Given the under staffing at hospitals and clinics now, those who make that argument will have won by default. We need a boom in high school students going to college to specialize in various aspects of the health care industry. We could do this by using some of the planned stimulus money to make college free for such students, or at least let them pay a much lower cost for their education. (Then maybe gradually extend the program so that college is free for all who want it; that would stem the complaints from some that other countries are graduating more scientists and such than the US...) I think, though, that since the coming problem is obvious and my proposal also, that Congress would dismiss it out of hand because of its obviousness.
Pathos January 31st, 2009 12:11 pm:
I use mass transit, better for the environment and overall health of the population.
ankh January 31st, 2009 12:58 pm:
From Slashdot:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
-- Anonymous
Thanks for the reference to Tom Paine.
Love your suggestions, from your mouth to God's the Obama's and Congress' ear as we the people subtly shout it to the roof tops through the streets.
There is "spiking unemployment" in healthcare because healthtcare is a for-profit enterprise. There are only a few ways that healthcare can increase profits. One of them is to have people work longer hours for the same wages. Another is to pay them less, i.e., create new classes of healthcare professionals that are paid less for the same work. Yet another is to reduce the healthcare workforce, lay people off, and have the remaining workers not eliminated pick up the slack, i.e., work more for the same pay. But this scheme is rapidly falling apart. It will become more and more obvious in the next few years that neo-liberalism and Capitalism as we know will be replaced, hopefully, by a more evolved form of economics that prizes, first and foremost, the social, and not the for-profit, contract. Time will tell.
Right but healthcare is more than profit to the elites, it's also property. Both the profits and the property have to be routed. No more "ownership society". Asset ownership and enterprise size both have to be limited to ten man-powers.
Well, obviously. The elites own the means of production and that is the crux of the problem. Owning the means of production (property including the workers) makes them the elites that they are. Notice that experts in their fields (scientific, etc.,) get short shrift in the mainstream media (propaganda) but if you are wealthy you are an instant authority. It comes down to what society values as its most dominant paradigm. In the case of U.S. Capitalism, the dominant paradigm values Capital most. Everything else can just go away, disappear, and die. Apparently, Capitalism's "business plan" has gone full circle as it has been foisted upon itself, i.e., is is going away, disappearing, and dying. Capitalism has met it's enemy, and, it is, itself.
What Mr Rockefeller is saying is that health Care should be given the same priority as the US Military Industrial Complex wherein just as Hundreds of billions of dollars flow from Government Coffers to the MIC each year to build arms and enrich its shareholders , like amounts should pour into the Health Care Industries.
In essence he is promoting the "Corporatist" principles of Mussolini. No doubt he will be sure to be heavily invested in the heath care industry.
Did CD run this article just to watch me spew my morning coffee thru my nose?
Funny that a Rockefeller, a CEO of a consulting company that has virtually ZERO internet presence would be so concerned about our poor little healthcare industry / (and I am sure) health insurance industrial complex markets...
Theres a picture! Thanks for the laugh!
Before we eliminate the health care industry, look at he reality of single payer systems or government payer systems in the US.
A rapidly increasing number of doctors - especially primary care physicians - no longer accept Medicare since reimbursement rates are too low. Medicaid compounds the problem. Some doctors have even given up hope on receiving the state co-pays. They must sacrifice 20% of the already low reimbusement rates.
The only prgrams which encourage treatment of chronic disease at an early stage are those offered through private insurers. Enormous cost savings can be achieved by treating chronic disease at an early stage. Medicare has no provision for this.
The only plans stressing generic drugs are through private insurers. Once again Medicare has dropped the ball.
Care management or care coordination is non-existent with Medicare. If you have an emergency on the weekend, you go to the emrgency room. Some private plans will send a nurse practitioner or doctor to the patient. $1000 + for or emergency room visit or $200 for a home visit?
We are in a telephone and internet age. Many qustions can be answered over the phone or on-line. Follow-up for routine purposes can be done over the phone. There is no reson for a routine office visit.
Medicare is a massive bureaucracy that has been in existence since the 60s. In common with other government departments, they are not electronically up to date.
Tremendous efficiencies lost through outdated programs and equipment. Also, there is a major cost for employees working in the government sector. Private industry can pay the same salaries and benefits, and achieve profits through efficiencies.
There are fewer levels of managers and administrators. Not that this cannot be done with the government sector.
Eliminating private insurance would eliminate health insurance for more than 100 million people. Can they afford to wait until the government erects a new system ?
Millions are employed by the private health care system. Can they be switched over to a public system in a reasonable amount of time?
Medicare is a great system which took 40 - 50 years to build. There are major structural problems that need to be resolved before it can take care of the over 65s and the disabled. To expand the current system to cover the whole nation is beyond comprehension.
There is a role for private insurance in the short-term and long-term. What has been missing is oversight. Where have I heard that term before?
ducksawce
I really have to disagree with a few of your points.
"If you have an emergency on the weekend, you go to the emrgency room"
I don't know where you live, but I have excellent insurance and I had to go to the emergency room a couple of weeks ago.
"There is a role for private insurance in the short-term and long-term."
There is..... as an upgrade to single payer health care.
"Also, there is a major cost for employees working in the government sector. Private industry can pay the same salaries and benefits, and achieve profits through efficiencies.
There are fewer levels of managers and administrators. Not that this cannot be done with the government sector."
I can assure you that is not true and there are a ton of examples available after the attempt to privitize welfare. In other areas as well. I believe that cost savings we were going to get here in Texas has cost us a little over 300 million to date and produced much poorer service.
Your comment about government workers as opposed to private industry workers is also incorrect, at least at the state level.
Social Security functions much better than most business's.
Lest we forget.
The inefficiencies of Medicare are not borne out in its operating at a 3% overhead. Imagine if our leaders viewed it as a viable and healthy option and threw a bit of money and wisdom into modernizing its approach to care, for example, competitive bidding on prescriptions.
It seems that the Reagan mind set that all govt is evil pervades otherwise rational and intelligent folks. A pity that they do not understand it as propaganda generated to ensure huge profits for the few and inequities for the majority.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
Good points all Thomas.
Thank you sir.
Awwwww, don't you feel sorry for those poor under payed, under appreciated physicians who cannot afford to take Medicare and Medicaid payments. I mean, they spend maybe 15 minutes with a patient on average and charge them from 150-200 bucks (a modest estimate for those without insurance, and that excludes additional testing), which translates to $600-$800 per hour. Most other professionals don't even make close to that. Doctors have to decide if their first priority is to make the maximum bucks or help the sick.
If we ever get single payer health care, government funded facilities should be built so physicians do not have to worry about overhead. No one would dispute that doctors should make a decent living for their skills, but I just cannot bring myself to feel sorry for the 'under payed' doctor, as the middle and working classes has been losing ground for quite some time now. Also, it is time for doctors to decide whether or not they will be willing to reduce their fees, because before long it is likely to come to that anyway. Also, they will not have near as much paperwork to contend with.
>>Tremendous efficiencies lost through outdated programs and equipment. Also, there is a major cost for employees working in the government sector. Private industry can pay the same salaries and benefits, and achieve profits through efficiencies.
This is the basic premise of your entire rebuttal.
There NO Compelling evidence whatsoever that private Industry is more efficient.
As you even mentioned later, there no reason whatsoever that every efficiency gained in "Private Industry" can not be replicated by a Government.
That fact that private industry MUST return a profit to a shareholder means that all other things being equal, it is costlier.
Private Industry works well with Consumer goods wherein there a choice on the part of the cosnumder whether ot not to buy. It makes no sense with the delivery of something as essential as healthcare.
pk
GwNorth
"There NO Compelling evidence whatsoever that private Industry is more efficient"
I agree, I'd even say there is compelling evidence that private industry is not as efficient as government.
Isn't single payer like you have in Canada still private industry, even though the government is the single payer? They do not employ the medical staff or provide facilities. Is not single payer a combination of government and private industry that workd better than either alone?
During the past decade, we have seen a larger number of non-profit corporations entering the health arena. As a non-profit corporation, they do not have to pay dividends to shareholders.
They receive the same reimbursements as "for profit" corporations. They use their "profits" to develope better programs.
Many of the early HMOs were developed on a non-profit basis. They had a much more hilistic approach to health. Unfortunately, large health companies (and hopitals) got into the business. The original HMOs had to compete on an unequal playing field and the public lost out on a once promising health care model.
Mass General, Brigham and Womens, and specialty units like Dana Farber have put together a coalition that threatens to take over the entire health care industry in the greater Boston area. They have the "best" doctors and the "best" equipment and the "best" reputation. They charge health plans, and the patient, more for access to their facilities.
Tufts health Plan tried to challange this partnership by refusing to pay the higher costs dictated by this partnership.The patnership said take it or leave it. Tufts dropped the hopitals and lost half their subscribers to other plans that offerred the "best" hospitals in Boston. Tufts caved in and the subscriber now pays a higher premium. (several Boston Globe articles tell this story much better)
Mass Generalm and Brighams are willing to go the way of Harley Street in the UK. Can we afford to have a class-based health system?
Meanwhile, Erie County in NY (Buffalo) has two social workers to deal with the Meicaid. Bless their hearts. If one gets sick or quits, half the program is gone.
Below, a longer quote, for those who didn't click the link but might bother:
See Tom Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ for the hopes the USA started with to avoid the apparently inevitable accretion of money and power to stupid people over several generations.
He made the strongest, and least selfish, argument there is for making the best possible education -- and health care ---freely available to every citizen: because it is the way to rearrange wealth and power according to actual ability, for the good of the nation. We’ve never come close:
----------------------------------------------------
“… a permanent family interest is created, whose constant objects are dominion and revenue…. it is impossible to control Nature in her distribution of mental powers. She gives them as she pleases. Whatever is the rule by which she, apparently to us, scatters them among mankind, that rule remains a secret to man. It would be as ridiculous to attempt to fix the hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom. Whatever wisdom constituently is, it is like a seedless plant; it may be reared when it appears, but it cannot be voluntarily produced. There is always a sufficiency somewhere in the general mass of society for all purposes; but with respect to the parts of society, it is continually changing its place. It rises in one to-day, in another to-morrow, and has most probably visited in rotation every family of the earth, and again withdrawn.
As this is in the order of nature, the order of government must necessarily follow it, or government will, as we see it does, degenerate into ignorance. …. It appears as if the tide of mental faculties flowed as far as it could in certain channels, and then forsook its course, and arose in others. How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses to flow! By continuing this absurdity, man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts, for a king, or a chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not elect for a constable.
It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”
http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/rights/c2-03.htm
Education, health care -- for the good of the country.
If you want ten expert people, start by teaching ten thousand kids the basics, and keep educating them. The very best among them reach adulthood as experts. There is no other way to make sure the very best people get the best chance they can.
Tom Paine:
"As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”
http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/rights/c2-03.htm
Shorter Tom Paine: “Give me liberty, not libertarianism.”
Is this author related to the Rockefellars who brought about the economic ruin of this country in the first place? I'm already disgusted with the name Rockefellar as it is.
Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho
The boss class of USA would prefer to see USA perish than let it slip from their slimy grasp.
If 300 million USers must die, then die they must. But they must never be allowed to jeopardize boss class control.
All six billion human beings should be exterminated rather than let them live, free, happy and prosperous lives.
So is the greed creed of the US boss class.
Now shup up, USers, and bleed.
The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
Prioritizing auto manufacturing?
Obviously you know nothing about healthcare or manufacturing. All of these industries are connected, and with a name like Rockefeller, I shouldn't have to tell you that. The healthcare industry works closely with the manufacturing unions (who would'a thunk it?), and our manufacturing as well as our unions have been gutted, along with our civil rights.
Do we need healthcare reform? Hell, yeah!
Do we need to aid or revive our auto industry? Sure, right along with our steel industries, our glass industries, our textile industries, our rubber industries, our plastics industries...need I go on?
If we don't manufacture then we, obviously, CAN NOT PAY FOR HEALTHCARE.
It is this kind of unobservant-narrow-mindedness that lead to the outsourcing and financial deregulations that got us in this mess in the first place.
I drive a Ford. Incidently, the Henry Ford Hospital was an off-shoot of Ford.
What do you drive?
Noticing the lack of the words "single payer" and the name Rockefeller leads me to conclude that he is NOT talking about single payer national healthcare but rather a crony capitalist direct payment to private firms that would probably benefit the companies he is "consulting" for. Close but no cigar, real progressives must put the bar higher and demand single payer national health care and not just a crony capitalist bailout of healthcare companies.
Single-payer? Give it a rest. It's not going to happen...
What is missing in this article is a good analysis of how Obama's health care proposals will solve most of these problems. It will at least take care of the problem of people lacking insurance.
"Single-payer? Give it a rest. It's not going to happen..."
What benefit to debate and discourse is such a throw away and casual line sans any substance? What about the fact that this nation stands alone among the industrialized countries in not providing such care? What about the fact that , under the Obama health care system as currently constituted, 25 million Americans will still receive no care at all?
You must have a reason for your continual and almost juvenile cheerleading on all things Obama, but blind faith and hope backed by no actual intellectual discipline or fact finding helps noone and solves nothing. I would urge you that your duty as a citizen of this nation demands much more from you.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
Single payer IS going to happen. Maybe before the complete economic collapse, but more likely afterwards when the ashes are being swept up.
joehope
It better happen. We can't afford this mish mash any longer. I've studied Obama's plan that seems to be ever changing and its no help. As long as Insurance companies are involved youwill have the same overpriced care.
Right on Thomas More.
Hoot....Right on the money! Great post!
Sioux Rose
HEY, HOOT, I agree with you. Good post.
Thanks SR.
The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
Damn, you beat me to the punch! Ha!