Those of us on the patient (excuse me - "client") side of healthcare sometimes forget that the professionals in this system are just as trapped and helpless as we are by corporate greed.

My dance partner is a neonatal nurse practitioner and I have learned not to discuss this matter with her. She's a very sweet, even tempered lady and this topic is the only one which can make her angry.

Baucus seems determined to join the rogues' gallery of corrupt politicans which had been filling up with republicans over the past thirty years. He is truly a piece of shit.

q

Yes the Bauchus 8 spoke with clarity and conviction and yes their example inspires us. But what moves the world relates to the consequences Bauchus will face with is own electorate for doing this. Does it threaten his power base in Montana? We will get Democracy only when a Bully like Bauchus, with all the corporate money and all the established political power on his side can no longer tell lies to the people and get elected. In fact this is the only way you get Democracy.

Donna, you were simply outstanding on Bill Moyers!

Does anyone really expect the same people that torture and
display lack of compassion for human life to provide you with a health care plan?

I happened to turn on "Bill Moyers' Journal" the other night, and there you were! Good job.

Bill Moyers seems to have a gift for graciously interacting with his guests and getting really good "performances", if that's the right word; I think his secret is not only sincerity, but also in not letting his own ego intrude into the conversation and overwhelm it.

Even though time is limited, Moyers does an outstanding job in establishing a relaxed enough pace to allow his guests to express themselves without being interrupted or hassled. (Even the excellent Amy Goodman is uneven, and ends up getting frantic when she's racing the clock.)

Best wishes to you, the Baucus Eight, and all who speak truth to power!

· Yr Obd't Servant

If more people who were employed did not have health benefits, you'd see more than 8 people protesting. I'm afraid that we're a long way off until people can take healthcare as seriously as they take purchasing guns. If these same Bacchus 8 were arrested for protesting for unlimited gun rights, could you imagine how nastily the NRA would react? Maybe we need an "NRA" similar for healthcare on our side.

It's going to take much more then a few brave protests. Maybe,it's going to take the reality of a really lousy phony reform bill to wake more folks up to the evolving lie of the Obama Corp. Demo. Gov't we all elected. It seems all that has changed is we put a man in that is marginally more "liberal" on a few social issues and has a slighly less aggressive view of foreign policy then the toxic neo-cons of the BV$H admin. Beyond that it's starting to seem as though Pres. Obama is really just another in a long line of bought for Corp. flunkies, who isn't about to foul is own funding nest by doing the right thing.

Soon we will have to bring our own bed pan and bedsheets to the hospital.

The best way to support the Baucus8 is to promote single payer whenever and wherever we can. The US health care "system" is a very expensive mess, a fact even capitalists like the Wall Street Journal agree with.

Changing the system may seem impossible...but so did the bankrupcy if GM, which is due not just to the absence of vision at the top, but also to the extreme cost of providing decent health care to auto workers.

Across the border, in Canada, they've got a system that's not only decent and humane, it also costs 1/2 per capita what it does in the US. The US ruling class couldn't care less about humanity and decency, but they do care about the bottom line.

Donna--
Bravo for your effective and unrelenting activism on behalf of single payer.

I've noticed that some liberals associated with the PDA--Nation Magazine types--have shown some softness for the "pub-op" plans being floated as the Plan B of the HMOs. I hope that the CNA will resist the temptation to accept this hocus-pocus as any kind of meaningful reform. As you well know, it is the most insidious fraud being perpetrated by Obama and his cohort of corporate liberals (such as the AFL-CIO and Healthcare for America Now [HCAN]). This shame "reform"--often marketed under the misleading slogan "quality, affordable health care for all" (a PR marketing code for "force everyone to buy coverage from the HMOs") purports to offer an appealing "public plan" alongside the private insurers, but is simply more of the same. For those not familiar with this debate, here's why:

The advantage of single-payer is in risk pooling--everyone is in the same pool: well, sick, young, old, sick, and poor, thus averaging out the risks and costs of guaranteeing coverage to everyone. In the "public-option plan," everyone is NOT in the same risk pool, as they would be in single payer. In a "pub-op" plan, the oldest, sickest, and poorest would end up in the public plan--the youngest and healthiest cohort would aggressively marketed by the private HMOs, because that's where the profits are. Hence the whole advantage of single-payer risk pooling would be lost: the whole point is to combine EVERYONE's resources (through taxation rather than private premiums) so that the currently healthy 80 percent (any one of whom could become ill tomorrow!) subsidize the unhealthy 20 percent and thus achieve overall cost efficiencies not obtainable if these two groups are in separate pools. In a pub-op plan, the public sector, saddled with the sickest and oldest 20 percent, will incur unmanageable per capita costs and will be made to look unworkable. Moreover, it will have to charge premiums and impose deductibles, just like the private plans. It would be just more of the same, notwithstanding the "public" branding.

This is the sham in the making that is the Stark-Hacker-Obama pub-op plan: game the system so that the public sector founders, thus discrediting the idea of publicly funded health care for another generation. Pub-op is a Trojan Horse for the HMOs--a wolf in sheep's clothing, lipstick on a pig--chose your cliche, but that's what it is. What it is NOT is the real reform the public needs--it's just another scam to keep the private insurers in business--the HMOs Plan B to gull the public into believing that it is getting some kind of "reform."

A publicly funded plan can achieve real cost efficiencies ONLY through true risk pooling--that means EVERYONE IN--everyone in the same pool. That means single-payer Medicare for all. The "public option" being pushed by the corporate liberals of HCAN and the AFL-CIO is not a step toward single-payer--it's a step into the abyss.

I think it's safe to say that single payer health care is dead for now. Next, the "hybrid" plan which doesn't look much promising and yet the insurance companies will do everything to water down that plan. They'll most likely get their way along with mandatory-care for Obama to sign. More victory to the insurance industries and more losses against us.

"back-ass-wards"? My Dad would have used "FUBAR" and worse, but then again he often spent time in the brig for "insulting an officer". Apples don't fall far from the tree.

Anyone who has been proclaimed to have a 'pre-existing condition' is in deep trouble - like me. Lives are ruined every single day because of the power of corporations - that's fascism, just in case you missed the definition. It doesn't work for any society - and it leads to ever more powerful force against the people as they stumble under the burden. This is why 'we' fought the Nazis - but corporations made out like bandits because of the war and built up their war-chest with their obscene profits. So the battle isn't really about 'single payer' - it's about fascism. It's about corporations being held as more important than people. We can't win the fight for national single-payer healthcare - and affordable prescriptions - until we end corporatism (fascism) and its death-grip on our society. That's the ugly truth, whether you want to face it or not. And they're not going down without a fight - ask the guys who fought the Nazis...

Cancel those private insurance policies, folks. A % of that $ is holding these folks in jail.

Why focus only on Baucus? Obama, too, has rejected single-payer coverage. And I'm still on the terrorist watchlist and cut off from friends and family in the US for my assistance to both sides during the pro-democracy movement in Nepal, because the US backed the brutal, corrupt king. The Bush and Obama regimes criminalize humanitarian dissenters and immunize torturers and murderers. Change we can believe in? Yeah, right.