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An Open Letter to Congress: Help Me or I Will Die
WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Representative Eric Massa of New York said this week that in the 86 days since he took office, he has received many letters from his constituents. Some are general letters supporting him or proposed legislation; some letters express disagreement with some of what Congress is working on. Other letters begin with the phrase, "Help me, or I might lose my house," Massa said. But at least once every other day, Congressman Massa reads the words, "Help me or I will die," as a constituent from his great state falls through the gaping holes in the healthcare system we have today.
Thirty-five letters in 86 days.
"Help me or I will die," we write to them in ever increasing numbers. Help me, we beg. And while Massa said he doesn't know how any Congressional member goes to sleep at night without thinking about these letters he knows all of his colleagues must get too, we know that many don't yet know what our reality looks like or certainly what it feels like. Or worse, they still just don't care.
Healthcare reform is a priority, they tell us. Health insurance mandates. Buy the product, they say, and you'll be OK. Buying insurance will mean everyone has healthcare, they seem to be trying to say. Yet over the course of more than half a century, more and more Americans are dying in a system more and more controlled by corporate greed.
"Help me or I will die," we keep writing. We keep pleading.
Some Congressional members are fighting for a different sort of system. They are fighting for a publicly financed, privately delivered system. But their fight is being squelched by those advocating for our forced participation - through mandates - in an expansion of the health insurance profiteering that has killed so many of our citizens already. And as the push for mandates deepens, the insurance CEOs will grow ever more fond of the members of Congress who will build their customer bases exponentially - and fatten their salaries and bonuses at exactly the same time 14,000 regular Jane's and Joe's every single day in America are losing their employer based healthcare benefits when they lose their jobs.
"Help me or I will die," we write in the insistent drumbeat of human suffering in America that is so far answered with caucus meetings and political calculations and lots of special attention to protecting the insurance industry and its profits.
The insurance industry does not believe in the free market and competition at all. In fact, they believe in forced purchasing of their products. In recent days they have argued that they cannot accept any public plan option like a Medicare for All plan. Why? Because they could not compete with that sort of plan. So, the insurance industry argues they need the government to make sure they do not have to compete and that they can count on all of us being forced to buy their product. That's not a love of the free market at all.
Giving me the basic human right of healthcare and letting me decide where to get my care is a love of the free market. Allowing the insurance industry to dictate the terms of my life and my death is not freedom. It is tyranny. It is a sham.
"Help me or I will die," we write. And as we write, another American dies because the insurance industry decides the value of that life and its impact on the bottom line of their profits. Hundreds of thousands of times every year, the insurance industry answers that plea with a denial or a delay. A letter is sent to yet another Congressional member. The suffering goes on and on and on. But Congress fights to protect the industry, and another American dies.
This fight for the basic human right of healthcare is a tough one. Congressional members read the letters. Some, like Eric Massa, have trouble sleeping when they think about the suffering at home in their own districts because they know it could be so very different. Others can apparently rationalize their lack of action as somehow necessary or even in the best interests of a market based economy and free enterprise.
"Help me or I will die."
Work horse meetings. Stakeholder meetings. Super stakeholder meetings. Drafting committees. Orchestrated hearings with choreographed witnesses. White House summits and regional forums. Healthcare house meetings. On and on and on -- the suffering marches on while the insurance industry marches confidently to the front of the pack, ever sure of their position, ever sure of their outcome.
So who will pay for the insurance industry to beef up its profits? The same Americans writing for help and dying while waiting. And who will fund the bureaucracy set up to record the insurance mandates and the enforcement of the mandates and the collection of the mandate fines and the agencies set up to manage the flow of business to the insurance industry? You get the picture. We the people -- the Americans writing for help from their leaders.
"Help me or I will die." And the Congress keeps forgetting it is the one place where the people writing the letters are supposed to have a say in what the answers will be this democracy. The people's house of government. So we keep writing.
Now I read that some want this public plan option you're selling to us to really be just another way to buy into a private insurance pool. The "public option" as they'll try to sell it will not really be a national plan like Medicare but an employee pool for purchasing for-profit insurance plans. This Congress is inching ever closer to simply handing total control of our healthcare system over to the insurance industry. The want to manage us into thinking they give a damn.
"Help me or I will die."
So, when the next round of Congressional elections rolls around in just a little more than a year, their campaign coffers will burst with funds sent to them by the folks who will profit wildly from an health insurance industry forced government mandate that Americans buy private, for-profit health insurance. Full circle... we, the people, will have funded with the mandated premiums the re-election of those who sold us down the river and tried to tell us it was healthcare reform. Do you suppose the Republicans will love pointing out this bail out of the private insurance industry?
"Help me or I will die." It's not too late for Congress to respond with real reform, real fiscal responsibility, real honor and real courage. In fact, to respond to these pleas by simply entrenching corporate profits at the people's expense, could mean that in just a few months it may be too late for you in the ballot boxes of this nation as the plans do nothing to stem the flow of letters on Rep. Massa's desk.
Help us. Help us. Help us. We're going to keep writing and calling and voting until you do.
- Posted in
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37 Comments so far
Show AllThere are thousands of patients, badly in need of medicinal marijuana, who die because of the federal government's senseless policy of marijuana prohibition.
It's time to end the failed, destructive policy of marijuana prohibition.
Tell Obama and your elected representatives that marijuana should be legalized and taxed:
http://tinyurl.com/LegalizeTaxIt
If we have to have socialized bank failures, why can't we have socialized health care to soften the blow?
Congressmen Massa keep your honor and fight anyway you can. That it bothers you, shows your concern for more than your next election. Have you already been told that bucking the system, is not how we do things around here. "Have they taken you to the cloak room yet."
All americans can make a difference if they take the time to actually find out how their representative are voting on policies. If he is not representing you; fire him.
Remember this is a republic based on one man, one vote. We have the means to take control if we choose. Instead of voting the same old, self-serving, maipulating, jerks in. All the money lobbyist give to support these people mean nothing if we replace them with individual whom put duty above their egos.
Last year I suggested everyone watch the excellent PBS documentary: SICK AROUND THE WORLD.
It's the best film ever made showing how other industrialized countries around the world administer their healthcare.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
Writer T.R. Reid has now made a follow-up documentary: SICK AROUND AMERICA.
His conclusion in this film is the same...We must get rid of for-profit health-insurance companies.
One problem - PBS edited him and his conclusion out of the film.
So much for liberal PBS huh?
The full story of what we're up against is here:
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/sickaroundtheworld040209.htm
Donna Smith, time has come today. I think we’ve reached the point where if we lay down politically and don’t act, the animals are going to rape us to death.
So let us call a Gnr'l Stryke - right from here. Nobody goes to work on Wednesday the X Day - we call in sick "Sorry boss, puking and vomiting and diarrhea all night long. Not in today." Call and leave the message at 5am (can't argue with a message) - SICK OUT. And maybe somebody decides to sit down that day with 100000 of their close friends in the middle of Main Street - every Main Street - in waves. It would put the Fear of Jahweh into their gutless little hearts and after we've done it for the 3rd time - shut this nation down - we might start to get some of the programs and relief that the current Overseer promised. 3 Days that could change history. Interested?
1. Card Check NOW
2. Single Payer NOW
3. Out of Iraq/Afghanistan NOW.
If we hit those points, it will start an avalanche. Card Check - as originally written - changes the balance of power in the workplace - you know, like in Memphis - I AM A MAN! (or WOMAN, or LGBT - it was '68 after all); Conyers Medicare for all DESTROYS the Corporate lock on Health Care and frees massive sums not spent on corporate richfilth animals. Out of Iraq puts our Thumb in the eye of the MIC and frees BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of our $$$ to work here at home. Those three will shatter the dam.
What is step #1? Setting a date, listing the points, and a two paragraph agenda? Give us clue. We can just make this up as we go along but experience is best.
I'm tired of talking folks. It is past time we reminded these animals of what real Americans are about when they get fed up with richfilth bullies who think they own our world. THEY DON'T, we've just let them use it a lot longer than we should have. WE HAVE CHANGED OUR MIND.
Our parents and grandparents did not fight Adolf Hitler so that we could lay down for the grandchildren of the double Traitor Prescott Bush, and his current Overseer. No more Richfilth Traitors making our country a land of torturers, usurers, and degraded despots.
How long has it taken to even get Single Payer on a congressional desk? 1947? This is our last real shot. After this, there's nothing but waiting for the buses to the camps and hoping you got a high number - or we could stage 3 Days that change America forever. One thing I can tell you and I think Ms. Smith might agree: They are terrified of us. When stand up and stick together and "stay as one" - we defeat them and they know it.
So, once again, how do we start?
Peace.
Great response. I've been now in 41 states, and people are pretty fed up with the whole scenario.
I think sometimes Congress and the President forget that when there are bills going unpaid, when the rent is due, when the disconnect notices are on the table, when the collection agencies are threatening, when the pink slips are coming, when the stress is nearly unbearable, people begin to make different kinds of decisions. No matter how well behaved we want them to be, angry and abused people tend to be difficult to control.
I do think this Congress could act wisely if it had reason enough to do so. We have to give them that reason.
The rest of the story on this path to healthcare justice is just details to be worked out... someone will work them out, I am sure of that. will it be general strikes? Will it be folks voted out of office? Will it be the ridicule of the world as they watch us kill our own people because we are too greedy to stop it? Yes, it may be.
Donna Smith, American SiCKO
Donna, I'm looking for more than this. I will be contacting you later today. Would the California Nurses Association consider a 1Day Sick-Out in support of a Gnr'l Strike for Single Payer? From what I see on their website this should be right up their alley. I will also be contacting some Union Guys (who know what it means to Stand Up) on Card Check and AfterDowningStreet for the Antiwar folks.
This is our time to act. Smell it, it's blowing in the wind...
Peace.
The left needs to stop sucking and start biting.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
This is an important story. It's not just that the PTB are blocking single-payer care. It's more than that, worse than that. Think of it as NAFTA. Under the guise of feel-good stuff like technology, modernization and healthcare, they are implementing an Orwellian solution that doesn't even address the problem.
What is the problem? We don't have affordable access to care.
What is Obama's solution? "Modernize." We will put all health records on the internet and that will make care affordable. Will it? Think carefully about the problem and the proposed solution.
Big players like GE's healthcare unit have supported Obama in order to get this $19B payout. If being able to outsource American healthcare jobs to India was such a good deal, I'm not sure why we have to pay billions to build out the infrastructure for it.
If you look at any of the players involved, they have partnerships with healthcare technology in India. For example, GE announced they are spending $250 million in an initiative with Intel who is also eager to make big bucks in health care. GE also has a partnership with a company called HCL, a company that focuses on "transformational outsourcing... remote infrastructure management... and BPO. (BPO= Business Process Outsourcing). That gives you the flavor of it. Or look at athenahealth, a company run by Jonathan Bush, Jr. set to profit from this. Athenahealth promises a full solution for both back and front offices for doctors. Pay attention folks: ALL medical office jobs can be outsourced to India via this wonderful Electronics Medical Records solution to health care Obama is proposing.
Now I know there can be good things about these proposals, but here is what you need to think about before Congress votes. Many healthcare dollars are going to go to a "solution" that personally, I think will not provide anymore care but actually make things worse. Beyond that, it is a Trojan horse. Under the guise of stimulus - of creating jobs in this country so that we might be able to afford care - it has us create the means for a job destruction unrivaled since NAFTA. Think about it. There are a lot of medical jobs in this country. They don't pay a lot of money, but they are relatively good jobs. They do a necessary and honorable job. Obama and Jonathan Bush, team players, have decided that getting rid of these jobs by outsourcing to India will make care affordable.
Thank you, Donna. I am so angry at the party that we waited and worked for. They are so afraid that they will be called out on their corporate welfare bill that they have adopted Republican cheating tactics to get it through. This bill is going be rolled into the budget process so it only needs 51 votes to pass instead of 60.
You said it so well. I can't even speak. I just want to scream profanities at them. I knew the Republicans sucked. It's just harder to know the Democrats are just as bad. I am furious. Obama is a fraud.
I second luckylefty. I suspect that it will only be when members of Congress can see -- literally -- how many people want single payer, universal health care that they will change course. We need to be in the streets. I would not, however, have all three issues on the platform because the impact would be diffused. One at a time, with health care (my preference) first.
Av, those 3 bring Labor, Heathcare, and Antiwar to the same table at the same time. Three constituencies acting as a multiplier and the unifying principal for them all is to break the back of the richfilth animals who are raping us to death - in the workplace, in health care, and the MIC. That covers a lot of ground with 3 points.
Besides, "3" is a very lucky number and "it's a crowd". For this we want "a crowd".
Peace.
The only way we'll get single payer is when we replace the sellouts in both parties with strong progressive independents starting 2010 and every election after that.
Jennifer, smell the coffee. The richfilth animals started buying our entire political class in wholesale lots in the early 70's and started buying the Corporate MSM at the same time. They are now baked into the cake. BHO has taught us by his example: It doesn't matter who gets elected or what promises they make, if we don't beat the soles of their feet WITH OUR ACTIONS - they will serve the exclusive interests of the richfilth animals and rape us to death. Period. Full Stop.
The days when you could expect that your entire role as a Citizen was merely to vote every couple of years - those days are DEAD. That is all that Master wants from you: Vote for a phony candidate then bitch and moan and lay down.
The only way we get Single Payer is to shut this country down until we get it. Period. Full Stop.
The only way we get EFCA (Card Check) is to shut this country down until we get it. Period. Full Stop.
The only way we get Out of Iraq/Afghanistan is to shut this country down until we get it. Period. Full Stop.
Gnr'l Stryke - right from here. Nobody goes to work on Wednesday the X Day - we call in sick "Sorry boss, puking and vomiting and diarrhea all night long. Not in today." Call and leave the message at 5am (can't argue with a message) - SICK OUT. And maybe somebody decides to sit down that day with 100000 of their close friends in the middle of Main Street - every Main Street - in waves.
Now, if you don't agree, that's fine, just stay home that day...
Are you ready to stand up and be a real American Citizen for the rest of your life?
Peace.
Rest assured the Peoples in power know full well the power of an angry citizenry and a General strike.
They have been preparing for years for such a thing with all manner of laws that are disguised as tools to fight Terrorists.
There now a Bill in the Senate that would allow President Obama to shut down the internet in the case of a national emergency.
An ever more Militarized Black garbed police fore, Tasers and Crowd control gear, torture in prisons, the suspension of habeus Corpus, Fema camps across the nation and dire predictions of more attacks on America all part of the same overall policy.
That to instill FEAR so that the populace complies.
Sioux Rose
GWNORTH: Excellent post. I've also felt the use of drug laws to incarcerate people for small "offenses" was a ruse to build prisons and get the beds ready for the intelligentsia when the time for the new authoritarians and their massive, insidious control devices, came.
Get out of the box. Congress isn't going to tell corporations they can't make profits when it comes to health care. Congress knows better than to piss off their bosses. The whole bailout is a fraud. It’s Congress paying kickbacks to their employers, and initiating a war on the middle-class. Congress works for the corporations and no longer has to answer to “we the people” . Congress is authorizing thousands of H1B visas and allowing outsourcing of jobs in the public sector while privatizing the military sector.
Ike was right.
Hoa binh
since1492: So Dwight David was right. You are right. So what? What are you going to do about it? Read the previous posts for a few hints. Then join the rebirth of the American Citizen (that's the one who stands up and won't lay down). You sound like you are ready to make a change.
Peace.
There are approximately 600 people at the top of the government. These are the 535 members of Congress, the 11 Supreme Court Judges, and the President and his chief of staff, the cabinet and cabinet aides.
This group of 600 administrators is a wholly owned subsidiary of the 400 people in this country that own 22% of the wealth and receive 50% of the nation's yearly income. This group of 400 owners is a subset of the 1% of the population that owns 80% of the wealth and receives 90% of the nation's yearly income.
We need to "open a dialog", so to speak, with the 400 owners. There are 300 million of us and 400 of them.
-- ekaton
EKATON: Would you stay home from work for 1 day as part of a Nationwide Gnr'l Stryke for: Card Check; Single Payer; & Out of Iraq/Afghan? Just asking. Actions are always the clearest forms of speech. I mean, we did the voting thing and you can see what THAT got us, right? BUPKISS. Whaddya think?
Luckylefty, I like your idea of a Grrr'l Stryke and would be more than happy to stay home AND join in the streets. I am so sick and tired of being ripped off by healthcare insurance companies who gladly accept their monthly premiums, but always seem to renig on paying claims. This is not an acceptable national healthcare plan! Further, I am so f*$king angry with our "best government money can buy" constantly turning a deaf ear to we the people on virtually every issue. Impeachment off the table, bailing out fraudulent banks so their CEO's can take home million dollar bonuses, no investigations of the Bu$h regime's crime spree, no investigations of the Wall Street frauds, warrantless wiretaps and searches, fenced off areas for protesters, the media pushing propaganda as "news", Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, the list is seemingly endless and Mr. Obama is looking more and more like an empty suit every day. Your stryke is a fantastic idea, but I am truly beginning to believe that the sheep that seem to make up the majority of our general population will take an endless amount of abuse from both the greed ridden corporations and the government they have purchased as long as they don't have to miss an episode of American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.
Thirty years ago, this corruption of government and corporate greed would have been quelled by now or at least an attempt made to do so. Of course we had a media that reported these incidents as well, so more people were aware of what was being done to them. As I said, I will gladly participate in your strike...I just hope enough people will participate to be heard by our "representatives."
I'm waiting for the insurers to declare all conditions pre-existing, and thus not covered. Take cancer for example, since every child born is already polluted by carcinogens. Same with everything related to childbearing since all women have the pre-existing ability to become pregnant. And numerous other examples exist.
Insurance has only one valid purpose--to help repair damage done to property. Humans are not property. Therefore, insurance is a totally wrong concept when it comes to health care. The best healthcare is preventative--provided before any damage is done.
With their position of profit before human welfare, insurers are pure evil. I've done my best to not pay insurers a penny for ANY type of insuarnce, even the auto insurance mandated by the State. When I accompany any of my elder kin to the clinic, I write self-insured in the space provided.
Jeevee
Why do we ignore or deny the obvious? Let's add a 4th and make it #1:
CLIMATE CHANGE REVERSAL: N O W !!!!
Hummmmm...."Help me, or I will die". Commmmmmon everybody, it might be more effective if we all said, "Help me, or you will die." (I didn't really say that. I've already been arrested once for protesting the war.)
Anyone remember "homeostatis"? Cannot be achieved in a toxic environment created by a toxic culture overseen by a corrupt politics. Was it Susan Sontag who wrote "Cancer as Metaphor"? This system doesn't want you healthy. Get over it. Just watch the ads on the evening news and 60 Minutes. They want you all to be prescription junkies. They even manufacture diseases that don't exist so they can sell drugs that don't cure. After all, "health care" and Big Pharma sales all grow the GROSS Domestic Product. Dis-ease is not only highly profitable but also a "blame myself" form of political oppression.
Single-payer is the most efficient way, but the question still remains "What are we paying for?" Health "insurance" is but a small part of the real paradigm shift that is needed. I'm all for a SICKOUT but I'm just too infirm to organize it!
-30-
OleManRiver - Single Payer is a meal by itself. Card Check is a meal by itself. Out of Iraq/Afghanistan frees BILLION$$ per month for use at home, another meal in itself. All of them were promised to us by BHO and now he's going to try and rape us just like the richfilth animals want him to. Together, those three make a tsunami to break the backs of the richfilth animals and our politicians whom they have made their pets. And all people have to do is stay home and buy nothing - and ask their friends to do the same. You can stay home and buy nothing 1 Day, can't you?
You hang in there, the fat lady ain't sung yet...and Americans may yet remember what their parents and grandparents died for...
Peace.
Sorry. HomeostaSis.
-30-
article99
I think Lucky lefty is onto something here. I've had the same thought myself, the only way for the humans to regain power in this country is a general strike--no work, no classes and above all no buying anything. Maybe no TV too--I read recently that Americans are starting to support Obama's Afghan war, and opposition to the Iraq war is softening--because the massive PR machine that is composed of the Pentagon and all the major media have done a good job of late.
We could argue about the Three Nonnegotiable demands--I tend to think they're good choices but possibly one at a time would be a smarter tactic? Thing is, if the humans finally WON one, they'd be ready to do it again. Incidentally, your metaphor is bad. Our enemy is not "animals"--animals are among those we must defend, and we are all animals as well. Our enemy is corporations, and they are machines, no more capable of "caring" about abything than your car is. If you wired the gas pedal to the floor and sent your car out with a full tank and no driver, there would probably be a lot of destruction. That's essentially what we've done by handing power over to corporate "persons." Metaphors matter--we are the humans battling to retake our country from the monster we created, not humans battling animals.
Another tactical point--I think we pick a Monday first of all, because nobody wants to go to work on Monday anyway, and then if (when) our demands are not met, the following week it's Monday AND Wednesday. The third week it's Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Also, organizers in every community should arrange teach-ins to give the people staying home something to do and educate them at the same time.
mwildfire April 3rd, 2009 11:22 pm
People have asked me about 3 instead of just the one: Card Check; Single Payer; and Out of Iraq/Afghanistan - here are the reasons:
1. Any single stick can be broken, put 3 together not even the strongest can break it.
2. There no confusion about what they mean. Card Check is written and known (before the dims and our POTUS proceed to mangle and rape it to death). Single Payer is already written. And OUT means OUT.
3. Every single one of these shifts the balance of power from the corporations to us. Card Check in the workplace; Single Payer in health care; and Out of Iraq, the MIC. Every single one puts money in our pocket, puts power in our hands, and frees money to rebuild this broken country.
4. Each of the 3 has major constituencies it brings to the table: Labor (all of us); Health Care (all of us); and Anti-War (all of us).
And all we have to do is stay home and buy nothing.
10 million, 20 million, 30 million adults stay home from work.
Workplace Empty
Schools Empty
Colleges Empty
Stores Empty
Freeways Empty
Silence that will shock the world and change American history.
Remember the song from "Old Blue Eyes"? "Start spreadin' the news..."
Another thing. If this battle is humanity versus corporations, and the means the corporations have used to gain and keep power over us involves their human components--not only managers and lobbyists but the PR people who work to persuade us all that the corporation is our friend and should not be made to pay for the harm it does--then these people are actually traitors to their own kind, meaning not a mere nation or race but species. They don't think of themselves that way of course-- "I'm only doing my job" which is to protect XYZ Corporation from harm that could come from bad publicity. But the cumulative effect of all the PR people protecting all the corporations, all the lobbyists arranging for Congress to send the people's tax monies into their coffers and excuse them from taxes and real regulations--the net effect is that our climate is out of control and we can't address it--we have the world's most inefficent AND expensive health care system--and there is apparently a rule that a day must never pass in which nobody dies at the hands of the US military. It might not be a mad thing to spread this concept around--working to advance a corporation's interests, especially in the realm of PR, makes you a traitor to the human race.
Since the right wingers keep telling us this is a Christian Nation under God, it follows that we take care of the health corporations and their executives first and then worry about the poor and sick later. I have never heard a right winger pulling for single payer health care so that must be the deal. Of course, they also think Social Security should be privatized or eliminated as everybody for themselves is a good deal for all but execs and politicians.
"Help me or I will die," we write in the insistent drumbeat of human suffering in America that is so far answered with caucus meetings and political calculations and lots of special attention to protecting the insurance industry and its profits."
......while at the same time protecting the "casino" Banking & Usury industry with our tax dollars.
"This Congress is inching ever closer to simply handing total control of our healthcare system over to the insurance industry."
They're also handing total control of our monetary and economic systems over to the (privately-owned) Federal Reserve Bank; the main source of the toxic poison that caused the global financial meltdown.
It's called: THE ROAD TO HELL!
We often forget that Medicare is a Social Insurance Program administered by the US Government. The operative word here is insurance.
The problem today is with for-profit insurance. Non-profit inurance may be one solution...
Under a non-profit insurance system, the system or company is owned by the people - much like a Mutual insurance Company.
The non-profit receives the same subsidies from the US Government as the for-profit system. They, however, put profit back into building and improving the system - not to shareholders and CEOs.
A well thought out non-profit will blow the doors off of a for-profit. The people will be shareholders and will have voting rights.
The US Government must mandate that every employee have the option to select a non-profit provider. Non-profits must be represented in state Medicaid and uninsured pools.
Rather than the government running the health system, the poeple, through well regulated competition, will run the health system.
Insurance is not the four letter word ...we must look at non-profits.
Insurance IS the four letter word. Talk to people who work in health care (I did in my last job). Dealing with all the different companies and plans, and arguing over coverage, eats up probably a third of the labor cost of the average provider. It's hugely inefficient compared to having ONE payer, whether it's ONE insurance plan paid by the government as in Canada, or England's socialized medicine in which the providers simply work directly for the government. I don't care which, as long as we get rid of the insurance compaies. They don't provide health care so why are they siphoning off a big chunk of our healthcare dollars? They're as parasitic as tapeworms. Getting rid of a tapeworm is an ugly nasty procedure, but once it's over you feel a whole lot better, and it's time we started excising the insurance parasite from our healthcare system.
mwildfire I stuck this down below by mistake:
People have asked me about 3 Tags instead of just the 1: Card Check; Single Payer; and Out of Iraq/Afghanistan - here are the reasons:
1. Any single stick can be broken, put 3 together not even the strongest can break it.
2. There no confusion about what they mean. Card Check is written and known (before the dims and our POTUS proceed to mangle and rape it to death). Single Payer is already written. And OUT means OUT.
3. Every single one of these shifts the balance of power from the corporations to us. Card Check in the workplace; Single Payer in health care; and Out of Iraq, the MIC. Every single one puts money in our pocket, puts power in our hands, and frees money to rebuild this broken country.
4. Each of the 3 has major constituencies it brings to the table: Labor (all of us); Health Care (all of us); and Anti-War (all of us).
And all we have to do is stay home and buy nothing.
10 million, 20 million, 30 million adults stay home from work.
Workplace Empty
Schools Empty
Colleges Empty
Stores Empty
Freeways Empty
Silence that will shock the world and change American history.
And no marginally literate high school graduate with a badge and a gun, "just following orders" gets to degrade a Citizen or shoot them in the face with rubber bullets or push their face into the pavement and taser them as punishment when they are helpless.
Remember the song from "Old Blue Eyes"? "Start spreadin' the news..."
Profit is the four letter word... Above you mention "ONE insurance plan paid for by the government as in Canada."
It is possible to have insurance without profit. Insurance without profit can compete with insurance for profit and put them out of business.
We need non-profit insurance which is independent from the government and all of the special interests that that come with it.
The Government can be the payer, the non-profit can be the deliverer.