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TechnoratiObama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead
President Obama's White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table.
Obama doesn't even want to discuss it.
Take the case of Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan).
Conyers is the leading advocate for single payer health insurance in Congress.
Last week, Conyers attended a Congressional Black Caucus meeting with President Obama at the White House.
During the meeting, Congressman Conyers, sponsor of the single payer bill in the House (HR 676), asked President Obama for an invite to the President's Marchy 5 health care summit at the White House.
Conyers said he would bring along with him two doctors - Dr. Marcia Angell and Dr. Quentin Young - to represent the majority of physicians in the United States who favor single payer.
Obama would have none of it.
This week, by e-mail, Conyers heard back from the White House - no invite.
Why not?
Well, believe it or not, the Obama White House is under the thumb of the health insurance industry.
Obama has become the industry's chief enforcer of its key demand: single payer health insurance is off the table.
Earlier this week, Obama named his health reform leadership team - Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy-Ann DeParle.
Single payer advocates were not happy.
Since leaving Medicare, DeParle cashed in as a director at major for profit health care corporations, including Medco Health Solutions, Cerner, Boston Scientific, DaVita, and Triad Hospitals.
Now, what does the health insurance industry make of the Sebelius/DeParle team?
Here is Karen Ignagni, president of the lead health insurance lobbying group, America's Health Insurance Plans:
"Today the President is putting in place a team that is ready on day one to provide the leadership necessary to achieve health care reform. Governor Sebelius is the right person to move the President's health care agenda forward. She is a proven leader with extensive knowledge of health care issues and a long history of working effectively across the political aisle. As a former CMS administrator, Nancy-Ann DeParle brings considerable experience and a strong track record working on all of the health care issues facing the nation."
Karen sounds really upset, right?
Dr. David Himmelstein is a founder and spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program.
Himmelstein's take - Obama is caving to the insurance industry.
"The President once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he's caving in to corporate healthcare interests and completely shutting out advocates of single payer reform," Himmelstein said. "The majority of Americans favor single payer, and it's the most popular reform option among doctors and health economists, but no single payer supporter has been invited to participate in the administration's health care summit. Meanwhile, he's appointed as his health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, a woman who has made her living advising health care investors and sits on the board of many for-profit firms that have made billions from Medicare. Her appointment - and the invitation list to the healthcare summit - is a clear signal that the administration plans to propose a corporate-friendly health reform that has no chance of actually solving our health care crisis."
Obama to single payer advocates: drop dead.
108 Comments so far
Show AllFor Profit Health Care Insurance Companies
eqauls
a) possible death due to denied procedure
b) continued high cost of health care
c) US remaining around 30th place in health care
d) acceptance of only the health
e) the potential for bankrupty
Our health care crisis will never be resolved until
we have a single payer system. Until then people will
die, people will suffer,will be forced out of their
homes, etc.
Not only is health care an economic issue, it is also
a moral issue. Imagine not being able to obtain treatment
because you don't have the money while your neighbor does.
How would you like to make the decision on whether a specific
person should receive treatment which could save a life? It
happens all the time.
Can't happen to you? Better hope so because the for profit
health insurance industry (actually medical premium collection
agencies since they don't provide health care)is going to use
every lie and every dirty trick in the book to keep the dollars
flowing their way.
Notice I've not made one negative statement about doctors. They
get screwed by the for profit health insurance companies as well.
Everyone on this forum is talking about the powerful corporate interests uniting against what is best for the people. I don't get it. Aren't there lots of corporations that would LOVE to not have to pay for health insurance for their workers? Also, if health insurance companies are so incredibly profitable, why don't more people start them, or invest in them?
Lets be honest, not everyone wants mandatory socialized health care. And who is stopping all of you from organizing a large, "peoples owned" health care pool? You could get rid of all of the evil corporate profits that make private health insurance so inefficient right? If the people want it (as the polls everyone cites claim they do), and it is more cost-efficient than private health insurance (also claimed by most folks on this forum), then it should naturally, freely overtake the current system. The only difference between a system like this and one that is run by the federal government is that you can't force every member to pay the price you dictate based on their income. But that shouldn't matter because your system will win out in the free market.
Ahh, what am I saying. Rich people are evil and they control everything Obama does. He lives in fear of them and has nightmares about them in his sleep.
A post of dubious value....filled with the usual straw man arguments. We are not speaking about MANDATORY anything, get a clue please. Calling universal health care a socialist notion puts a great many nations in the socialist camp, dontcha know! Is England socialist, is Canada, is France, is Italy, is Germany , the list goes on for quite a ways.....
Most of what you post here is silly ,sorry to say, and you really need some new material. Why, I wonder, do you believe that by tagging a "progressive' label on your nonsense folks will automatically give it an unearned credibility?
The numbers do not lie, I wish you would do the same. This nation pays far more for far less than any other industrialized nation on earth for shoddy care. 37th in such care, 13th in infant mortality, 47 million of us without care at all, making emergency room treatment necessary ( the single most expensive type of care). If you do not want universal care, do not sign up for it...simple really. It is coming, get used to the notion. At least your grandchildren will thrive when it gets here.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Ditto on the last comment by poetic justice - I feel bad for those single payer supporters who voted for Obama, support and still support Obama, and expect much of anything to come from it except for a "Thank you for your time." You can't blame them for trying though.
Mainers experienced a similar let down when our Democratic governor John Baldacci held two statewide conferences on health care through video conference with a voting system. Many of us who had been vocal advocates for single-payer (either because of leadership positions or political affiliations) were invited to take part. The top choices for the state were to a)enable Single-Payer, b)get out of for-profit healthcare and c)focus on prevention. Did we get any of these? No, we got more funding for Dirigo Health Care which only funds a small minority of people (small business owners and such). They started out giving money directly to Anthem for this project! Anthem raised the rates and we now are funding it through a non-profit. I guess that's one thing Baldacci got right though not by choice.
My point is you can't trust the politicians to enact single-payer even though they talk tough - the major two parties are simply perpetuating the same shitty, stagnant healthcare system that we have lived with for too damn long. Unless people get serious about supporting Conyers and other politicians that openly call for single-payer, then we won't get it.
Obama is the new face of corporate America. He is a key element of the rebranding Corporate America has undertaken to appeal to the changing demographic of this country. Same old s**t in a new wrapper. Anybody who bothered during the primaries to read up on Obama's legislative record in the IL and US senate would have known this. Oh well, now we've got an even slipperier opponent than GWBush.
It becomes increasingly clearer that neither established political party will respond to the needs of millions of citizens as much as it will to the power and money of corporations. WE will have to do the work of unifying the overwhelming power of millions of people to impose our will on the government and demand the change that our survival and well-being depends upon and obviously matters very little to those in power. WE have to make ourselves matter by the millions. I'll get back to you when I figure out how to do that, or you get back to me if you already have.
Today's Daily Kos website is reporting that Congressman John Conyers, sponsor of HR 676, "Medicare for All," is attending President Obama's Health Care Summit tomorrow.
This is reported by Cynthia Martin, Chief of Staff for Congressman Conyers.
See today's Rec Diary submitted by nyceve.
March 4, 2009
Single Payer & Universal Health Care: A COMPREHENSIVE and INCLUSIVE SOLUTION
In Oakland California and across the nation the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) and the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) are helping to break the silence around the Economic Human Right violations to adequate health care and more specifically that women’s health care needs are not being met. Through the collection of health care surveys throughout California and the nation, it is clear that the US health care system is failing our country. Consider the facts: one in five women in the U.S. do not have health insurance and uninsured women are 40-60% less likely to receive a Pap smear or mammography screening. This is not only unacceptable but irresponsible when we have 10,000 women diagnosed with cervical cancer each year and about 3,700 women dying every year of cervical cancer and 40,480 women died of breast cancer in 2008. These deaths as well as women’s lack access to proper health care, and the effects this has on reproductive care, is a violation of our economic human rights.
The ability to stay healthy is a human right, not a privilege. Your health and access to quality health care shouldn’t be dependent on how much you can afford to pay. We are patients, not consumers. As a result of having a health care system that is tied to ability to pay, today we have a whole class of people in America who cannot afford to pay for health insurance. Our current system also forces people to make unconscionable choices: between rent and monthly insurance premiums, for example, or prescription drugs and food. All of these situations are immoral. This is the reason why WEAP is fighting for a comprehensive solution like single payer universal health care and think it is crucial leaders in the single payer movement be invited to President Obama’s Health Care Summit on Thursday, March 5, 2009.
It is important for the president of the United States, President Obama, to take a proactive stance and try to live up to our ideals about human rights and recognize that through our tiered health care system, we have created a system of first- and second-class people. It is immoral to leave people without health care. For President Obama to truly be a champion of human rights, it is urgent President Obama and his administration support a strong movement for a just health care system that addresses women’s unique health issues and improve the quality of life for millions in this country. We are in need of bold leadership that is willing to divest the insurance companies and tackle the health problems our country faces. This means mobilizing for health care that does not push women to the bottom of the economic pyramid anymore, but instead opens up health access barriers, including those to reproductive care and drug recovery.
WEAP knows that we cannot move forward together towards poverty elimination and health justice unless we begin treating EVERYONE with the human dignity they deserve. President Obama, we urge you to stop the cost-analysis on suffering and make sure that everyone in the United States has access to decent health care: a single payer universal health care system. Respectively submitted by Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP).
"The majority of Americans favor single payer, and it's the most popular reform option among doctors and health economists, but no single payer supporter has been invited to participate in the administration's health care summit."
Congress is still, although you wouldn't know it from the last few years, a branch of government co-equal with the executive and the supreme court. In fact, should they decide to exercise their power, they are the most powerful branch of the government, having the ability to override the executive's veto.
Its time for Congress to grow a spine. (Yeah, I know. What are the odds?) Congress can hold its OWN health-care summit, and bring in the most knowledgeable DOCTORS who know how to make a single-payer system work. A single-payer health care bill must be written and passed by both houses and laid on the president's desk. It is up to him to pass into law or veto the bill. When the bill is vetoed, congress must override the veto, and tell the President to go to hell, the people have spoken.
The big mistake from the beginning as naming it "single payer." Americans hate change and fear "socialism." It would have been better to call it "medicare for all" right from the beginning--it's familiar and non-threatening.
Ironically, donna, it was named "single-payer" to neutralize some existing opposition to it. It had been called "a Canadian-style plan" before then, until someone realized that that was tapping into American xenophobia.
And sure enough, the health insurance lobbies (there were several) were all capitalizing on "a Canadian-style plan" by damning it as "not transplantable" to our ultra-special situation here in the U.S. (i.e., fear of a government that is supposed to be representative ... ironically, the kind of "democracy" Bush was "spreading" in Iraq).
That "not transplantable" campaign worked, despite the fact that there probably aren't any two cultures in the world as similar as the Canadian and American. (France and Belgium? Norway and Sweden?)
(Incidentally, almost no one in Canada knows what single-payer means. It's an American term, not a Canadian one, devised by wonks. You're right about its being a mistake.)
"Medicare for all" has its own problems, though. It's going to conjure up visions of red tape and bureaucrats racheting down benefits arbitrarily. (People will forget that HMO clerks are even more arbitrary. Government bureaucrats have long incarnated evil for Americans ... except during one decade, during an economic depression when unemployment went over 20%....)
The fact that "Medicare for all" implies centralization in Washington will be a vulnerability, too, because the U.S. is so regionalized. Mississippi and Vermont and Utah don't want and won't accept the same plan.
Even if it didn't conjure images of red tape naturally, the lobbyists will make sure it does by the time they're finished.
"Medicare for all" was tried in 1992-94, by the way. Didn't fly.
But we Americans are singularly insistent on not finding out about past attempts, let alone learning from them. That almost guarantees wasted money and effort during each new wave of reform. And we've had those waves off and on for an incredible 85+ years now, since before WW I.
Only this time we don't have the money to waste.
The best way to get single-payer adopted is to get the information about what it is and how much more efficient it is out to a public who will advocate for it themselves. That will take more time than pushing an interim proposal that gets people in dire straits insured under a system they more or less already understand.
There's a depression on; it's kind of urgent for those whose families have no coverage at all....
Can't we resolve not to do the usual top-down American approach, where the comfortably enfranchised decide what meets the needs of the disenfranchised? Have you noticed how no one seems to be asking what those 50-60 million people might want?
The truth about single-payer is that most people don't understand it and don't have the time to find out about it. They tend to opt instead for slogans advanced in the corporate media like "a government takeover of health care," which the health insurance lobbies came up with last time. That one worked like a charm in the famous prime-time TV Harry & Louise commercials.
Few Americans ever learned that it wasn't true.
Goo dnews. I just called Conyer's office, and he is invited to tomorrow's summit.
President Obama said a publicly funded, single payer health insurance program is the most comprehensive and cost effective program. I wish he would follow his own advice. The cost of health insurance is strangling American business because our reliance on the ‘market’ keeps everyone in relatively small purchasing pools. Our current system is too complex, costly and inefficient! Medicaid in its various forms requires people to remain destitute or limit their family income for ‘assistance’.
Health insurance is one area where conservatives cannot claim economic pragmatism because public insurance has been proven to be more comprehensive and less expensive than our private market. Even Canada's conservative prime minister said in his news conference with Obama that Canada faces many of the same economic troubles as the U.S. but not in health care. They finance health insurance through their provinces. It's like to old Geiko commercial where the lizard tells someone, "Why, if you're so rich, just keep sitting in your chair and do nothing!"
A publicly funded insurance pool like an expansion of Medicare will create a system that protects everyone without the requirement people stay poor for benefits or fork out huge sums of cash in deductibles. We’ll get there someday, and I wish President Obama would follow his own advice.
Sounds like Cheney's Energy Summit
somebody tell me if I'm wrong, but didn't the us gov pay for the largest of the insurance bandits already. we own them now don't we.AIG
Thirty six percent of it I believe...Currently AIG is selling assets and going down!
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Obama's campaign was quite explicit right from the beginning that he was for insurance-based health plans only. Don't be acting surprised. He has to dance with them who brung him. He never was and never will be a progressive.
So get over it and start lobbying him as the centrist he is to force him to be as progressive as we can. No Obamamania. Y'all have finally figured out that he is NOT the second coming.
i've already set up my spambots to deluge change.gov w/ as many lefty suggestions as i can. any other ideas for how i/we can "lobby" the prez to be "progressive"?
Candidate Obama never advocated single payer during the campaign. Why would you be surprised that he is still opposed.
Amazingly he will meet with Republicans to discuss proposed laws but not with Democrats.
**WARNING** to Obama:
Hillary Clinton's 1993 Health Care initiative FAILED because she refused to take all points of view into account at a time when "there was an air of inevitability about health care reform". She (and of course, Bill) firmly shut out of the process those on the left who wanted to discuss elements that had been rejected by the originators.
[Just a note, the DLC was established by the Clintons and other Democrats to block "leftist, radical" elements of the party that wanted single payer health care. Their actions were motivated primarily by the surprisingly strong support for Jesse Jackson's platform of universal health care by voters, labor unions, health care providers, and liberal activists during the 1988 campaign, and this meant things were getting out of control.]
The Clintons' heavy-handed political rejection of recommendations by those calling for a single-payer system (from the left) cost Americans years of MORE health insurance company greed and minimal health care for the poor. The Clinton supporters in the administration insisted on health care systems that included and were supported by the for-profit health insurance companies. Voters could not be mobilized to support the final product because the Clintons had allied themselves with the health insurance companies, not citizens' needs. And so Congress refused to pass it.
http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro11122007.html
Mr. Obama, how do you intend to muster citizen support for a health care system that continues to screw them instead of helping them? The Republicans will vote against any plan you put forward, so that's a given. But those in Congresss who are not Republicans have a choice to make, and it's all about doing what's best for their constituents or what's best for health insurance corporations. If you can't get citizen support for your plan, how will you get legislative support other than ramming managed health care down America's throat again, no different than what we've had for years?
Maybe it's time we had free non-profit "community-owned" health care facilities employing health care personnel whose reasonable salaries we'd guarantee by a local sales tax paid by everyone -- that would be cheaper than health insurance policies that we now pay for (and will continue to pay for under Obama's plan while also paying for those who can't afford the insurance). Opt out of the for-profit health insurance industry entirely.
You'd approve, wouldn't you, Mr. Obama? Community organization and all that? Just not to "get a piece of the pie" but to opt out of pie-eating altogether?
As long as I am not forced to purchase some substandard garbage I do not care what he does.
When people get too sick too pay they will just sign up for ssi and life will go on.
I like not having paperwork and answering to fools and just getting a write off.
Insurance only benefits the insurance companies.
No single payer? Looks like the recession will be deep and hard.
I do not understand why he is paying the unemployed to purchase cobra. This is very expensive insurance.
If I had decant coverage at my company I may be tempted to get myself laid off.
I knew an AIDS patient who struggled every day to try to get Cobra to honor its obligations.
This is a great article because it presents a clear A-B comparison between Ignagni's elite propaganda and "Himmelstein's take" which includes the most relevant point of all which is that the people support single payer healthcare. PLease re-read the two quotes and notice that Ignagni is saying absolutely nothing of substance, yet USans are trained to pretend that the propaganda means something. In contrast, Himmelstein wastes no time homing in on the elites' class war aggression against the people at the root of our healthcare fiasco and the broader fiasco.
Those working in the for-profit healthcare industry are sick of performing sub-par "as directed" by elitist chimps on thrones. The paperwork alone is enough of a problem. But add to that an emphasis on managing chronic diseases with expensive, dangerous drugs instead of prevention. If you have an idea that resource allocation should be shifted toward better understanding our connection to nature, you better forget about it because it interferes with the elites' cultivation of the people's dependency on the opiates, and it makes the people's productivity surplus much harder for the elites to steal.
As for the current occupier of the oval orifice: We knew that candidate was sponsored by the elites all along. Shalll we vote for a people's candidate next time? Every day we can vote the people's candidate in all of our exchange/association.
This telling the public who want a national health care system to "piss off" could have been predicted...easily. The insurance and medical monopolies gave Obama millions during his campaign for the presidency. He won, and now he's paying them back.
And we won't have meaningful reform until those two special interest groups loose their ability to modify public policy for their benefit. This isn't a surprise if you were observant during the campaigning.
>And we won't have meaningful reform until those two special interest groups loose their ability to modify public policy for their benefit.
Is this even conceivable under the power realities of American capitalism?
And if not, isn't it time for working people to seriously start moving toward a meaningful alternative?
Looks as though people are bent on making the same mistake that sank the reform attempt in 1993-94 under Clinton: If they can't have single-payer, they'll stomp and drag their feet and cry conspiracy and betrayal.
And the 50-60 million hurtin' uninsureds (plus millions more who are UNDERinsured) will wind up, again, with nothing. We'll then see an even larger blank check written, again, to Big Pharma and the insurance companies — just as in 1994.
The worst threat? Botching things so badly that, just as in 1994, people will vote Republican in the 2010 mid-term elections, just to put a cap on the endless chaotic cacophony of squabbling, short-sighted politicians.
That scenario is not at all beyond the realm of possibility, folks. Karl Rove et al. would like nothing better. The corporate strategy in 1993-94 was, and remains, divide, confuse with details, fatigue, and conquer.
Few people know that Bill Clinton found single-payer to be the best option, but he also considered it not politically feasible. And it wasn't. Obama has the smarts to feel the same way, but he HAS to get something on the books even faster than Clinton had to.
Single-payer may or may not yet have the required critical mass of support in Congress and among the electorate. But even if it did, it will be tarred as "socialist" (it's not, of course, anymore than Medicare is).
And nothing frightens Americans as much as "socialism" and "government take-over" when applied to plans they don't understand. So single-payer would take much longer to get into place. Hundreds of millions of dollars would go to enriching the PR and ad firms that develop the media campaigns for all sides ... AGAIN.
Might we have better uses for that money in a Depression?
These reform opportunities come along so rarely that perhaps we could, just this once, agree to get SOMETHING in place that offers universal coverage to the millions who have NONE, however unsatisfactory it feels?
And then, gradually, in the coming years, as some sort of economic strength returns, and as those who feared the worst see that the worst has not materialized, we can move the system toward single-payer.
JUST THIS ONCE???
so your solution is to take a terrible system and make it bigger?
the more likely, indeed inevitable, outcome of your scenario is that for-profit insurance becomes so unaffordable that a universal system collapses. but that's after we've thrown hundreds of billions more at it and done zero to rein in the problems of affordable health care (e.g., pharmaceuticals, outlandish admin costs, etc.). so we are back where we started w/tons more money and many lives wasted.
sounds like a plan. for failure.
You didn't even read what I wrote. Unlike you, I've fought this battle once before, on the single-payer side. I've met Himmelstein and others who advocated it.
Here's a news flash for you, newbie: the best plan doesn't always get adopted because the process is POLITICAL, and it's taking place in one of the most conservative countries in the world with almost no tradition of collective action.
My solution, which you'd have seen if you'd read what I wrote, is get SOMETHING in place now. For everyone. It's not a black-and-white question of single-payer OR huge corporate profits, which you'd know if you'd studied the history of reforms in this country and abroad.
We're in a depression (or haven't you yet noticed because you have a cushy job with health insurance?). So if your blind recalcitrance backfires and 50-60 million have to go without coverage and corporate bureaucrats continue to decide what procedures get paid for, well, at least YOU'LL not suffer. Thinking of the disenfranchised CAN be so uncomfortable. Who could blame you for not doing so?
YOUR solution is for the center (there is no organized left in the U.S., sorry to break it to you) to bicker and squabble because the exact plan YOU want doesn't get the nod. You're going to throw a tantrum, even if it means NO ONE gets ANYTHING.
There were legions of similarly deluded people in 1993-94. You're just another knee-jerk imitator.
But you did give the right prognosis that will result from your own doctrinaire bullheadedness:
"for-profit insurance becomes so unaffordable that a universal system collapses. but that's after we've thrown hundreds of billions more at it and done zero to rein in the problems of affordable health care"
That's what we'll get AGAIN when everyone insists that it's their plan or NO PLAN: more chaos, waste, and healthcare-driven personal bankruptcies.
Wonder if you'll admit your responsibility when that happens?
I have to agree with RLT on this. It doesn't make any movement at ALL toward a single-payer system to "fix" the corporate managed care system. In that case, health care wouldn't be taken up again for at least another eight years.
In your hopeful scenario, it would be better to not do anything at all, just leave what we have in place, until the public will accepts nothing less than a single-payer system.
Your "public" here obviously doesn't include YOU, anney. If you didn't have health insurance for yourself and your family, your tune might change very, very fast, I'm guessing.
Easy to pass judgment on someone else's fate, ain't it?
If you bother to look back at the 1992-1994 proposals (of which at one point there were more than 50), there were a whole raft of them that weren't single-payer and weren't proposing to "'fix' the corporate managed care system," including Alain Enthoven's incredibly complicated (but popular among wonks) proposal.
Your decision that it's either your plan or the status quo is fallacious from the get-go. Health reform in this country has been attempted eight times, dating back to the 1910's believe it or not. Each time it was defeated because of intransigent idealists who themselves were not at risk.
I note that you don't suggest asking the uninsured what THEIR preference is. No one does. That's the American way: Let the enfranchised decide what's good for the disenfranchised.
If you were affected directly, anney, your attitude would magically become much more flexible. Then you probably wouldn't want someone else deciding for YOU, would you? Deciding for them, though, is OK.
So ... here we go again. Making decisions based on feelings and ignorance of precedents. Criteria worthy of Republicans.
If we can't learn to compromise and get past this typically American Manichaean good-evil scenario in the interest of the 50 million whose plight doesn't bother you, none of us deserves to have insurance, especially not members of Congress.
THAT would cure the problem right fast.....
At the risk of further incurring an increasingly sarcastic tone from you by disagreeing with your points...
I fail to see the efficacy in building on the ruin of our health care system as it is currently constituted. We pay over 2.5 times the costs of any other industrialized nation for a system that provides care that ranks us 37th in the world in health care, 13th in infant mortality.
Especially in a time of economic instabilities and increasing financial peril we simply cannot afford to continue to enrich the few at the expense of everyone else.
"Where men build on false ground, the more they build, the greater is the ruin." Hobbes, in Leviathon
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Obama is doing precisely what his puppet masters put him there to do. Why do people act surprised by the politics as usual, if we keep electing corporate puppets and we can't expect things to change. He was put in there to protect status quo while spinning it as "change."
If Obama had chosen Dennis Kucinich as his new health tsar, then he would have officially launched class warfare by Fox News standards. Instead Obama's choices are a clear indication that he has caved into at least some of the corporate interests. The public's only hope is that there are also many powerful corporations out there that would love government sponsored, universal healthcare such as automotive manufacturers or many mainstream retailers. If unions were united behind this, it wouldn't take much to get their employers to back them.
Canada and many other advanced countries faced opposition when they first introduced universal coverage as well (many Canadian doctors went on strike!) but everyone fell in line soon afterwards when the benefits become too obvious to ignore.
Because the U.S. is not a real democracy (non-corporate candidates) I'm afraid our hope will have to rest with competing vested interests who see universal healthcare as a cost effective alternative to our current, broken system.
After reading this article and the comments here, I'm thinking maybe universal mental health coverage is more crucial.
I just don't see it happening until the Insurance companies start to become insolvent, asking for bailouts. That will be our window of opportunity, if it does occur.
Why all this hand wringing over Obama and single-payer? It is Congress that will have to pass a healthcare bill and that can be single-payer if enough pressure is applied by the citizens. Obama will not dare veto it.
Won't happen as long as the insurance companies (and the entire barbaric health system) remains profitable. Meaningful regulation seems to only come after a collapse, which will, in this case, mean when millions lose their so-called health coverage. That's the harsh reality we have here in America. You say it is self-destructive? When has that ever stopped the profit machine before?
Congress will never approve single payer so long as the leader of the majority party does not support it. Remember the days when Bush was the King and Decider in Chief? How does the Executive Branch lose it's powers as soon as a Democrat gets in. Obama could call the financial crisis a matter of national security and an emergency and declare war on the crisis, and use his powers to slam this down the insurance companies throats to benefit the economy. He has the power, just not the will or inclination; and there are other reasons, best left unsaid, as well. Anyone believing otherwise is, well, never mind.
go Obama
there's a big difference b/n "can't" and "won't". clearly, obama won't, but to say he can't, b/c he's just a puppet, a front man and all that, or even more scary, he'll be assassinated....of what human being are not all those things (potentially) true, that if you step out of line, bad and scary things will happen? of course he is beholden to certain interests, but he chooses to be so. there is nothing, no threats, no interests, no nothing, that can stop him from getting on t.v. tomorrow and saying whatever he goddam feels like saying. of course the president cannot by himself change anything (and that's a good thing, btw), but he could give something a big shove in the right direction. at any second.
but he won't. b/c he's there to defend certain class interests. he's there to be a coward. but please don't deny him his own agency in these decisions.
Just make sure all of you sheeple keep paying your taxes to fund the bank bail outs and never ending wars.
Shut up and row.
exactly
americans are learning - the hard way - that the chump club has a lot more members than they might have thought after the elections in november
the great black hope has proven to be a canard
the issues of the republic are much more dramatic than anything that brother obama can pull out of his hat
being the president is not as easy as it looks - just ask anyone who has been president
presidents age right in front of our eyes
a lot of pressure
newsflash: the president is a puppet
it is foolish to think of them any other way
clinton said that when you are the president and you want something to happen - it happens
in certain areas
as president, there is no one who you can't kill
no country you can't bomb
no friend you can't reward
but you must not fuck with the controllers
just ask jfk
the controllers will blow your brains out on national tv and there is nothing anyone can do about it
their total control of the media is overwhelming
as chomsky says - they "manufacture consent"
as they know - people will believe anything
unfortunately
they are easily confused
not mature
the intellectual level of the presidential debates:
in 2000 bush and gore: grade 6 level of vocabulary and concept
in 2004 bush and kerry: grade 6
2008: obama and mccain: grade 7
health insurance is one of the most obvious incidence of this control issue
the public in large numbers want single payer insurance - too fucken bad, you aint gettin' it
controllers can't make money on that so yu can't have it
most americans really have no idea of what has gone on or is going on in iraq but they - again in large numbers - want the troops home
(insert rimshot here)
guess what they are stayin' - operation enduring freedom prevails, paid for by the savings of the chinese peasants
on your tab
yesterday, there was a march by the veterans of vietnam - yes vietnam - still suffering and still dying from the corporate american love potion - agent orange
37 years after the operation ends the vets are still trying to get some care
doesn't bode well for the boys in iraq and afghanistan
talk about health care issues
obama will send more young men into that shit and that is that
forget the campaign
this is prime time and here the rule is - don't fuck with the controllers
that's the prime directive
cheers, b
Until Corporate Citizenship is revoked I'll tell every candidate for office to Drop Dead.
Careful... You might get flagged like Mordichai...
Can we just get rid of these bloodsucking insurance companies.
Insurance should be for things, not people.
Healthcare should be for people - not corporate profits.
Can we just get rid of these bloodsucking insurance companies.
Not until their business model starts to fail, and it could happen sooner than you think.
Why do you suppose it is that Cuba, which we've tried to kill off with propaganda and sanctions for half a century, can manage to deliver FREE, first-rate healthcare to all its citizens, plus train enough doctors and nurses that they can be "loaned" to other countries who have health care crises?
The appointment of DeParle only serves to emphasize the degree to which Obama is allowing (planning?) the growth of the corporate state. What a disappointment! But do we have any realistic hope of anything else? What else can be expected in a nation of dumbed-down sheep?
Perhaps it is better now, but in my day, most high school grads of reasonable affluence were not well equipped to make a career choice. Soon after graduating from a rural school, I found myself at a large state university, with full-blown medical, dental, and law schools, as a somewhat poverty-motivated engineering student. I had never really been introduced to any of those professions, but medicine was one thing that I indeed longed to pursue. I returned to Plan A upon realizing that my classes with overlap between those required for pre-med were extremely hard, with curves that demanded unreasonable hours of studying to get B or better; this followed by years of further education and residency, and very high medical school fees. I foolishly eschewed that $150,000 of debt and also allowed my distaste for wee-hour studying get in the way, but I mean to illustrate that there are yet other layers of impediment to inexpensive medicine - affecting this sample of one, and not really having much to do with potential for delivering health care.
Only those who refuse to see are surprised that Obama is acting like the imperialist tool that he is, and always has been. Need I remind you that he is a Democrat?
Sadly, most of the sloppy liberals who dominate CD-land will never come to the evident fact that capitalism cannot be reformed to put humanity above profits. Even educated non-Marxists will acknowledge this, but since it doesn't rhyme with their other lines, liberals are perrenially and conveniently silent on the matter. Inherent in capitalism is war and poverty, and the ONLY known rational solution is international communism. After 40+ years, I've yet to hear a counter to this, and it is a safe bet that there will not be one today. If you are sincere about changing the world into a peaceful and affluent place, there is really no choice but to build the party of world socialist revolution. Everything else is self-deception, a ruse, or an illusion.
The other choice is real democracy. World revolution of any stripe is any idea whose time will never come, but local democracy would be easy if only we could come to see that what's needed is not economic reform, but political restructuring that would make any kind of reform possible.
It doesn't make a tad of difference who owns the means of production if decisions are made by the people.
GG
Just a note.
Democracy is not an economic system as socialism and capitalism are, though we tend to conflate them. Democracy is a way to govern, not so much a money-production system.
And I disagree that if democracy is in place it doesn't matter what economic system operates under it. A monetary system and a government both need boundaries and limits, not just freedoms.
Until we realize that the beasts of greed, acquisitiveness, and rapaciousness beat invisibly in the hearts of more than we know, all systems without limits will fail.
We human beings want those who govern us to be the "grown ups", those who will guarantee protections against the wrongdoing of our neighbors and fellow human beings. But for the most part, those in the government aren't grown-ups at all -- they belong to the same group who would do us ill, and there are no "grown-ups" left to set limits.
getting people to think along those lines, esp. in this country, is difficult.
maybe history, in the form of great depression II, will change that.
Thanks. Well said!
Bill
Obama's fuzzy commitment to affordable health care was fair warning, but foreclosing single-payer health care at the outset makes clear that Obama dares not, lest he go the way of others who challenged the principalities and powers, or is another cynical pol, serving money rather than the people, so it is for Dennis Kucinich to lead a people's campaign to force Congress to act or be turned out and damned the big contributors.
James A. Swanson, Los Altos, CA
www.bushleagueofnations.com [for FREE download of entire $25.95 book]
Frankly, I'm not sure where Obama stands on this critical issue, but I support single-payer universal healthcare.
Truly progressive reform must meet the following two principles:
1. America needs universal healthcare—not health insurance companies.
2. American employers, both large and small, should be removed from the healthcare business, which will make them more competitive globally.
What follows are excerpts from my new book, "The Bush League of Nations," which you can now download for FREE at www.bushleagueofnations.com. See especially the comments on executive theft, I mean, compensation.
The United States is the only nation among the top 25 industrialized nations that does not provide health coverage for all its citizens. At the same time, America spends much more per capita on healthcare costs, almost 2.4 times the average of other industrialized nations ($5,267 per capita annually, versus $2,193.)
America’s healthcare system is wasteful precisely because it is private. It is a private con game run by and for huge corporate interests.
The privately milked healthcare system is structured to provide maximum returns for shareholders and wealthy industry executives who are not caregivers, while denying and delaying coverage, and passing around like “hot potatoes” those individuals most needing medical care.
As a result, America spends more than $1,000 annually per capita—almost $400 billion annually—on administration and paperwork, while Canada, for example, spends less than one-third this amount on a per capita basis.
America’s private health insurance companies spend billions each year on advertising and gaming the system. Patients and the actual caregivers—doctors, nurses and other staff—are forced to waste enormous time and money coping with the bureaucratic obstacles and paperwork of hundreds of different billing and reimbursement systems.
Health insurance companies enjoy record profits, and their CEOs and other senior executives pocket exorbitant compensation. William McGuire, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, received compensation totaling $124.8 million in 2005. Critics noted that his compensation of $124.8 million in 2005 could cover the total cost of medical care for an entire year for more than 33,000 average Americans.
McGuire retired under pressure in October 2006 due to a pay and stock options scandal affecting UnitedHealth. An investigation determined that McGuire’s options to purchase 1.5 million shares had probably been “backdated” to increase their value. His stock option package has been reported to be worth $1.6 billion (imagine 1,600 piles of $1 million each.)
This is many thousands of times what is paid to the most highly compensated executive in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which is run more efficiently than America’s private healthcare system.
The additional reported amount of $1.6 billion in stock options for McGuire could have paid the total cost of medical care for an entire year for 422,400 Americans.
It has been the kiss of death for any political leader to push progressive reform because the corporate and political forces on the right kill the messenger and sidetrack any serious policy debate on the merits.
This is why reform proposals proposed by congressional leaders keep insurance companies in the business of screwing America.
Jim Swanson, Los Altos, CA
“The Bush League of Nations”
www.bushleagueofnations.com [for FREE download of entire $25.95 book]
jswanson: good information...thanks...
Rember whe he said that he would change Nafta with Canada, then admited in
private that he did not mean it? He only said it to get elected?
the same with auto manufaturers in Canada, the health care system is paid by
the government. In the USA the auto companies have to pay for our healthcare.
Isn't this an advantage to Canada Auto Makers? Isn't this a violation of Nafta?
I don't think so, because it is not an advantage specific to Canadian auto makers; all Canadians enjoy the benefit of "universal health care."
It's time for everyone who supports single-payer healthcare to stop waiting for and expecting Obama to protect our human rights.
We need to ACT on the moral outrage that is healthcare for profit.
I'm not sure I want single payer healthcare and this is the reason: I do not do drugs. More specifically, I do not do prescription drugs that the doctors want to shove down my throat to support the pharmaceutical corporations. I have become more and more involved in holistic and naturalpathic cures and find they are much gentler on the body and far more effective.
Case in point: 15 years ago I had gallstones. Eating became tenuous because I never knew what foods exactly would trigger an attack. The doctors wanted to cut my gall bladder. I wanted to keep it. So I went down to my health food practitioners and bought a book on getting the stones out naturally and without surgery. 15 years later I still have my gall bladder and the stones are gone.
I'm afraid that if single payer health care becomes mandated, somehow my choices will be limited. In other words, I expect the pharmaceutical companies to somehow "backdoor" this legislation to keep their pills flowing in the market place.
I fail to see the dichotomy between availability of universal health care and your own preferences for holistic care....
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
FC also rails against women's rights to choose on the issue of abortion. Besides, if in those 15 years, something were to get in the way of FC's progress, FC would have been begging for single payer or maybe not. The bible thumpers can be off the wall.
Murder of an unborn child is hardly in the same league as me wanting to take herbs instead of oil based pharmaceuticals, is it?
Of course, only a liberal could look at a dismembered human body, cut into pieces by a "doctor" and claim "It's really not a baby. It's really not a baby"
Keep repeating that mantra and perhaps soon you won't be able to see the little toes, fingers, etc.
Ahh thanks for the heads up. Though the position on choice would be obvious from the moniker....
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Where did you get the notion that all doctors on a single payer system want to shove pills down your throat? Where did you get the idea that your choices are limited?
I pay $18.00 a month and have never seen a medical bill in my life. My doctor never forces me (or coerces, or cajoles) to take drugs. We discuss my lifestyle - we discuss options (like lowering blood pressure with diet and exercise, etc.)
I've noticed that the younger doctors have a wholelistic attitude towards health. They ask about your stress levels, about your diet, your mental well-being etc.
My choices have never been limited. My doctor asks if I'd like to see a nutritionist, or a dermatologist, or an internist, etc. - whatever the situation calls for.
I have a thorough annual check-up including all sorts of blood tests. Annual or semi-annual mammograms - and unlimited doctor appointments - all included in the $18.00 a month.
There's been too much misinformation in the USA about single payer healthcare.
I live in Canada. And I don't pay any more taxes than an American in the same financial bracket.
Michael Moore had it quite right in his movie "Sicko".
Hello Faithful,
I understand your fear of the orthodox medical monopoly.
The historical record, however, shows that it is the medicine for profit system which most zealously guards a narrow minded monopoly; and that once the medical system is free of the profit motive it is much more open to alternatives. Germany, for example, is a leader in herbal and homeopathic remedies. German researchers do serious double blind clinical studies on herbs which can never be tested rigorously in the US because the drug companies cannot patent them. And a friend of mine in Berlin does massage therapy and is paid by national health.
Why do we have to fight in Congress to preserve the right to take adequate doses of vitamins? Because the drug companies don't want the competition, and keep key doctors on their payrolls.
Even from the standpoint of alternative health, Single Payer is the way to go.
Hello Faithful,
I understand your fear of the orthodox medical monopoly.
The historical record, however, shows that it is the medicine for profit system which most zealously guards a narrow minded monopoly; and that once the medical system is free of the profit motive it is much more open to alternatives. Germany, for example, is a leader in herbal and homeopathic remedies. German researchers do serious double blind clinical studies on herbs which can never be tested rigorously in the US because the drug companies cannot patent them. And a friend of mine in Berlin does massage therapy and is paid by national health.
Why do we have to fight in Congress to preserve the right to take adequate doses of vitamins? Because the drug companies don't want the competition, and keep key doctors on their payrolls.
Even from the standpoint of alternative health, Single Payer is the way to go.
Actually, your choices will likely be improved under single payer. Right now, insurance companies limit which doctors you can see and which treatments you can use and get paid for them. Of course, to control costs, single payer would have rules too, but less than those imposed by the current system of totally unregulated insurance corporations.
You completely lose me with you idea that single payer would somehow force you to take medications or submit to treatment you don't want. Simply tell the doctor "no", and/or don't fill the prescription.
---USAn---
Complete nonsense. Single payer isn't the demon you claim it to be. All this "personal responsibility" bullshit is just excuse for more of the same. When money can be wasted on wars and doling out more handouts to Big Pharma and Big Insurance, surely a fraction of it can be spent towards single payer. And single payer still gives you plenty of choices. If you can't learn to be pro-choice, then step aside. Besides, a real PRO-LIFER would choose single payer over privatized "care". As for doing drugs, if you still wanna believe that phoney "war on drugs", then be my guest. Besides, 15 years is a hell of a long time and almost any shit can happen in those years. You may be lucky but your "solution" ain't a cookie-cutter.
i too had a physical in '04... cholesterol a little higher than previous year... immediately given script for lipitor... and several warnings... if you get serious pains about the joints and elbows... and... and...
so i humored him... took the script... and filed it... (not fiLLEd)... went to NIH site... was "borderline high"... on the low side...
over the next year i didn't stop eating pizza... bagels w/ cream cheese... or cheap chocolate cupcakes... but made the effort to reduce intake of cholesterol raising foods while eating more fruits and veggies...
12-21% reduction by the next year... NO lipitor. also... new doctor.
another part of the problem is too many people want to whisk thru the CVS drive thru every time they get static cling in their socks... there's a sort of "chic" with some people rattling off their prescription diets...
and these folks can't be mobilized for boring old single payer health without the glitz...
the wall street journal did an exhaustive piece in the late 90's where the big pharmas were looking at the end of their big profit patents... and made an organized and well funded effort to 'advertise their way out' of loss of future revenues... btw... drug patents are just "socialized" medicine for the corporations... patents are just government subsidies for a the few...
but - i do disagree with this on one level... if you're injured severely and need major intensive and immediate care... holistic won't stop the bleeding...
but... if only 25% of the population followed healthy living... would probably put several "health care deny-ers" out of business...
every issue on the table right now... if folks would start VOTING WITH THEIR WALLETS... would have 10 times the impact of any policy decisions...
my comment has it's naitvete... but... sometimes big problems can be broken down in smaller parts...
i mean... if no one's buying the bulllshit... (like now, but because of economic meltdown)... these parasitic corporations GO OUT OF BUSINESS... without one single blogpost... or bought politician...
if you want your ill to be cure by natural way without help of the doctor or drag, you just need not to go to the hospital that's all. it's your choice, doesn't matter it's single payer system or private health insurance.
I'm Japanese and a person who took granted Japan's government run health insurance system, I feel americans are so ignorant about the idea of healthcare system run by the government as simply duty of the government for their own citizens.
I think it because many of the people in advocacy groups themself have not clear idea what it should be to suggest people.
i maybe wrong and I myself don't know clear idea what kind of system they are suggesting.
first of all, why people call "single payer"? is it not government run health insurance system? there is only one government so government run health insurance means single payer isn't it? or is "single payer system" including option as one health insurance company run the system?
in Japan, the system works like this- you pay fixed amount every month to local government office (I don't know how much now, I live in US for 15 years, but when I was there it was like $20/month) and you will have health insurance ID card. when you got sick or something, you go to the hospital (any hospital,any clinic, any dentist of cause) and you get exam or treatment or whatever necessary care, then you pay 15% of cost for the care. (maybe it's more than 15% now, not sure). I never got badly ill, so, I don;t know but I'm sure there is cap for the price I have to pay or some kind of support if the cost got too much for your financial situation.
I think the system of other countries are same more or less, beside of little differences of how much you have to pay or what's to be covered (I mean, like england, covers cost of the transportation sounds little bit too much coverage).
isn't it something like this?
or what?
...and oh yeah, Himmelstein rocks.
GObama!
If anything shows how much Obama is beholden to powerful special interest groups, it is this issue of single payer health care. It's got to be the most important issue in the country right now, and it's a no brainer. Houses are important, jobs are important, a vibrant industry is important, but what's more important than being able to have health care without worry? A person's health is the most important thing he or she has in the physical world. Being assured of health care would do much to ease the spirits of the wretched citizens of this increasingly benighted land. We need a David in the White House to combat the giants that beset us.
I understand that there will be a choice and that one choice will be medicare. If this is true we will have medicare for everyone in a short time. Howard Dean said this is the way it will go. Am I wrong?
Medicare operates with an overhead of only three percent. No other health care facility or provider can make such a claim, thus the choice to expand Medicare to cover all who choose that option seems sane enough. Add the ability to demand competitive drug pricing and we the taxpayer can save again.
By removing the need for companies to provide health care for their employees much money is freed up, some of which can be assessed in a health care tax to fund the expanded Medicare coverage. Companies win, the consumer certainly wins and only the provably inefficient and greedy insurers lose, as they should.
For those who simply resent govt run health care one can always opt out and find private care on ones own.....the wealthy certainly will use that option as they in fact already do, self insured through annuities and such.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
i can't comment directly on your question...
obama's plan... seems to revolve around making the current system... more efficient and cost effective... and mandatory... thus resulting in more affordable premiums... copays... and deductibles...
but it's a flawed design...
health "care" corporations... "lose" money... EVERYtime they pay... ANY claim... and ONLY make more profit... by paying LESS claims...
it's a loser for those who need haealthcare before it even starts...
think about it... the MOST PROFITIBLE HEALTH"CARE" Corporation... would be one... that paid NO claims... EVER... to ANYone... right?
if they only collected premiums... and denied EVERY claim... it would be the purest form of profit... and isn't that why one starts a corporation? to make profit...
i don't care how much profit a auto maker makes... a tv mfgr. makes... or a cruise line company... but when i'm sick... i can't just choose not to be... like i can forego a tv or car purchase...
obama's plan isn't written down yet... i kind of voted with muted silence... because he's kind of shrewd... i think the jury's still out...
like i didn't expect his budget after he got the stimulus... maybe a few months working on the banks and laying a little lower... then WHAMMO... two weeks later... everything but the kitchen sink...
we "may" be seeing "The Shock Doctrine" in reverse... but i'll believe it when i see it - single payer that is...
Mandatory health insurance is like mandatory car insurance... A guaranteed racket that criminalizes poverty...
All insurance should be pay-at-the-pump or pay-at-the-hosital...
This article is horse shit. There is absolutely no fact behind it. I suppose such an article is easy to write when you don't sign your name to it.
Tell us the source of this information or save yourself the trouble of writing.
God, has CD turned into Fox News?
Are you hyperlink phobic?
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/
Corporate Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
202.737.1680
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
If you can't tell the difference between Fox News and a progressive news site, then heaven help you. Obama is not some sort of Messiah, nor is he even non-status quo politician except in rhetoric. He has already demonstrated his allegiance to Wall Street interests. He is a servant of the people, not some sort of demigod father of the nation.
well... then maybe you could read this... by...
Daniel P. Wirt, M.D. is a Pathologist, Houston, Texas and member of Health Care for All Texas and member of Physicians for a National Health Program. He can be reached at: boojum@wt.net
Removing the Foxes From the Henhouse
Single-Payer Health Care Reform
By DANIEL P. WIRT, MD
The data and evidence are clear: to a scientific certainty, only a single-payer “Medicare-for-All” system of health care financing will solve the serious cost and access problems and achieve good, affordable health care for all in the United States. As a scientist and physician, this is my conclusion after studying the data for years. The data are voluminous, stretching back to World War II, and come not only from the United States, but from all other industrialized countries. link to article...
http://counterpunch.org/wirt03032009.html
"Competition among the foxes does not benefit the chickens, the patients, the doctors or the hospitals."
To merely scream "greed" isn't enough. The elites are violating fundamental market rules. Institutionalized, criminal greed, taught in the "ivy league" business schools like Harvard. The insurers are practicing cartel collusion by fixing prices. This is illegal and yet it's been rampant in most sectors in the USA since Raygun. But the real problem is that the people have no idea and no care that for example, the market rules they uphold in their daily local exchange, are not honored by the elites. USans are quick to criticize foreign societies for lacking ethics in local exchange but turn a blind eye to their own elites practicing monopoly, cartel and crony capitalism, and worst. They're spellbound.
The only shocker in the mix to date is that a Task Force hasn't been appointed to oversee the corporate healthcare profit proliferation. Donna Shalala - Board Member of UnitedHealth Group, Newt Gingrich - consultant to innumerable healthcare corporations, Rudy Giuliani - a shill for Big Pharma, Jeb Bush - Tenet Board Member, Bill Frist - cardiologist and HCA-enriched, Tommy Thompson - the public face of several healthcare operations, etc. --- should be invited to partake of the new opportunities.
At least the grub-fest would be open and transparent.
This pipe dream that one politician is actually going to do what they say or what they hint they will do has gone on long enough. Please start understanding that the corporations and business people run this country under the name of capitalism, which we have supported by the way, this is what you will get and all you will ever get.
I do not recall Obama ever saying single payer was on the table, he always seemed to be advocating making insurance available for everyone who can afford it, and making it more affordable, which is a complete loser. I guess those 30 second commercials that people use to make their voting decisions did not make this clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE
I would offer that the plan Obama presented ( well not exactly presented, more hinted at) left 25 million Americans without any health care outside of emergency rooms. This may be an improvement over the current 47 million of us without such care but it aint much of one.
The real issue here is who runs this country and to what purpose? If this nation is run for the profit of the few then I applaud President Obama as doing his job. If it to be run for the general welfare of the citizenry then not so good a job so far.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
I agree.
It is exactly those commercials that totally mischaracterized single payer in a single dismissive sentence that convinced me that I could not vote for him.
But let's remember, it is not the president who will write any health care legislation, it is congress. HR 676 is a very mature and well-thought out bill. We need to give up on Obama, and push Congress like hell - including serious civil-disobiednet actions in the congressional offices.
We may even need to be able to override an Obama veto.
---USAn---