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The Pompous or the Populists: Who Will Win the Healthcare Debate?
You'd think.
But, as the Republicans have swelled up in their opposition to meaningful reform that can finally provide a progressively financed, guaranteed single standard of high quality healthcare for all, the same old pomposity and crude disrespect for human life are surfacing and oozing from their every word.
There will be no bipartisan reform fellow citizens unless by that you mean the Democrats capitulate to every horrible and ugly instinct about the undeserving masses of poor working slobs in this nation who the Republicans see as lazy, fat, undeserving and certainly beneath their status in life.
I heard it all again yesterday in the hearing in the House Education and Labor sub-committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, as a hearing on a single payer option for reform brought out in its classic and clearest form the "blame the victims" strategy that the elitists in the Republican party have sold us on this issue and many others for decades - ever since the dawning of that "new day in America" in the early 1980s.
Listen to it. You know the gig. It's like asking a victim of rape what she was wearing and then doing the shoulder shrug, "Well, she asked for it," when you find her skirt was too short or her heels too high. Many Republicans want us to see those in need of healthcare the same way. "They eat too much, drink too much, and they smoke," we're reminded by the professors of economics and the think tankers and the wonks who count their speaking fees and ratchet up the language of hatred for the rest of us.
In yesterday's hearing, the one Republican witness didn't use the common sense, silent majority arguments I used to hear from many Republicans in the pre-trickle-down era to counter the single payer message. The GOP witness used arrogance, scoffing at the pain felt by millions and classic "I've got mine because I'm better than you" logic that millions in this nation turned out to the polls in November 2008 to throw to the curb.
David Gratzer, senior fellow from the Manhattan Institute, was the
Republican witness, and unfortunately we have all become too familiar
with his type of logic or lack thereof. We've heard all their ugliness for years now - and the lack of justice and lack of caring he put forward was profound and I will continue to hope will someday be fully purged from the party that used to include my dad and mom as proud members. My dad was a World War II vet who fought to make sure every freedom we enjoyed was available to every person. My dad, a Republican, was a Christian man who believed in fiscally conservative policy and in sound government - and he taught me well. His GOP was not an exclusive, country club type alliance. But that party has evolved into something my dad would scarcely have recognized.
So, as I listened to the Republican witness mislead the Committee with his answers, I knew this battle for healthcare reform won't be about any level playing fields. We still have hate-mongers in Congress who don't want to sit in doctor's offices with the rest of us. We still have people who believe that you have no right to healthcare if you are deemed sub-standard by their measures - either economically or socially or racially. Yes, they still think the racial and gender bias still endemic in the healthcare system is acceptable because in their minds those folks just haven't yet worked quite hard enough or smart enough to achieve what the elite have done. And it makes me sick to think that our first African American President or this Congress would suffer this sort of ugliness for one more moment in the name of bipartisanship.
Thank God in that hearing for Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, who spoke clearly and loudly for all human life. Thank God for Rep. Phil Hare from my native Illinois who spoke up for his constituents who write letters recounting horrific struggles within our current healthcare system - and Rep. Hare represents lots folks like my parents and me when he spoke. And Thanks God for Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio who never forgets that working class folks are suffering and dying and that the arrogant asses who stuff hatred down our throats at every opportunity must be challenged aggressively lest they keep spawning the sort of hatred that divides good people from their better intentions. I hope all who didn't see the hearing will find it on the Web and watch it.
Finally, I have to raise the issue of honesty here. Why isn't it a punishable crime when witnesses lie to Congressional committees? The Republican witness yesterday talk all sorts of dribble about how terrible Canada's health system is and about all the Canadians he said are flowing over our northern borders to get healthcare as evidence of their failing system (to name just one of his misrepresentations). Lies. What he failed to point out is that the relatively small numbers who do seek care here often bring their Canadian government paid benefits with them. And a real expert on the Canadian system I spoke with later added, "In fact, it is the sign of a confident and wise healthcare system in Canada that we often determined that sending a patient to Fargo, ND, for care might be in the best interests of that patient and that we would serve them best by paying for that." Imagine that.
Could someone please amend the hearing record from yesterday with the facts? Better yet, I wish someone would press charges against the witness who lied with the intent not only to mislead the Committee but to mislead millions of Americans. I have had enough of the pompous. Give me the populists. Everyone deserves healthcare.
- Posted in
31 Comments so far
Show AllThe side that will prevail will be the side that can stuff the most money into the pockets of enough members of Congress.
The republicans have been very successful at convincing working class folks to vote against their own well being. In this case, they've managed to convince many people that everyone does NOT deserve healthcare.
As I and others have stated previously, it's bizarre that people will complain about government "rationing" healthcare (which has nothing to do with the single-payer issue) but are quite happy to let greedy for-profit corporations do so.
q
The author's consternation at the behavior of Republicans(who are just being modern day Republicans) is misdirected.
The Democrats are IN CONTROL, making Republicans irrelevent, unless the Democrats allow them to be relevant. The author should be chastising Obama and the many Democrats in Congress who are turning "health care reform" into a NO INSURANCE COMPANY LEFT BEHIND, and NO DRUG MAKER LEFT BEHIND Program.
As to the author's comparison of 1950s (fiscal conservatives) Republicans with today's Republicans (class divides), keep in mind that Obama is somewhere to the right of Republican President (1953-1961)Dwight Eisenhower, so its not just the Republicans who have dramatically changed. IF Eisenhower had entered the 2008 Democratic primary, the DNC would have put him on the too far left bench next to Dennis Kucinich.
oh mygod i wish that weren't true; but it seems so right on! how to get enough in Congress w/balls & ovaries to say screw your f'kin $ we'll just tell the truth to the people, who despite all the propaganda are already w/us! But so many of our Conressfolks are quite dense and/or think $ is their only route to success. We say, despite the silence of the msm, trust people's experiences, bet on us w/ even less negative campainging tv $, and the profiles in courage to turn over the corporaritist bastards once and for all. We are correct, we are the majority, we need to carry the message thhrough every media possible, and through one on one by the way we live our lives and carry ourselves.
I would hope that when single payer comes in eventually that some cooperation between countries will be negotiated so that Canadians visiting in the States and Americans in Canada have access to each others hospitals when needed without the need to purchase expensive insurance or to incure large out of pocket expenses.
And with respect to the writers last paragraph I too find it difficult to understand how some people can be allowed to lie with impunity and without fear to the Committee.
Sioux Rose
RAND B: Through the elaborate labyrinthian chambers of the right wing media, the LIES told often enough are believed as true!
They lied about the reason for invading/attacking a sovereign nation, and a million dead later, no problem. Lies R U.S.
They lied about "we do not (do) torture," but the torture camps off-shore continue as before. Lies R U.S.
They lie about "clean" coal, and they lie that by giving the banksters who engineered a fiscal crisis that's proven calamitous for millions, that the problem is being treated and a new basis for prosperity is underway.
They lie about transparent government as each administration grants the previous one impunity, while the deeds of each grow exponentially in terms of lawlessness.
Why would they NOT lie about health care and try to make the necessary and humane option tantamount to a communist/socialist plot to takeover our "free" citizens?
RandB,
You are apparenty a Canadian, and are unaware of how bad things are here.
If we get single payer, it will only after US society descends to something resembling Nicaragua, then through armed revolution, it overthrows the oligharchs and instiutes a new, genuinely social-democratic republic.
I expect to be long dead when that happens.
Yes, am in Canada, but have been reading the horror stories on healthcare in the U.S. for some time now. Parts of our system can be loopy too, though thankfully not nearly as bad yet. I suspect that various corporate interests are working to destroy or cripple or compromise the Canadian system so as to demonstrate the superiority of the private healthcare system.
I mentioned the possibility of the two countries cooperating on insuring their citizens when travelling because I have not yet heard the idea mentioned anywhere even though it would be an activity worth consideration if single payer got in somehow. It might be useful to add it to the debate.
Are the oligharchs as smart and superior as they think they are? Not likely. Hopefully we will not need to descend to Nicaraguan conditions before overthrowing them and that that will happen long before you are dead.
Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association and single-payer advocate, appeared on "Democracy Now" this week.
DeMoro was one of the s-p advocates who was finally granted the rare privilege of meeting with Senator Baucus, Congress's Chief Universal Healthcare Obstructionist, without being arrested for her trouble.
One of her most interesting comments, I thought, was that Baucus not only seemed genuinely apologetic for not recognizing the legitimacy of having single-payer "at the table", but also seemed perplexed about finding himself in the middle of an argument between angry citizens and the Obama administration.
As DeMoro disclosed, Baucus explained that the reason this wasn't "the time" to pursue single-payer is because Obama has tasked (Democrats in) Congress to "give him a 'Win'"!
DeMoro felt, correctly I'm sure, that Baucus spoke from the politician's "pragmatic" perspective: Obama Good; Obama is Friend of the Little Guy; Single-Payer advocates are themselves Little Guys representing the Littlest Guys; Little Guys surely support Obama and Trust (actually, Hope™) that Obama is the One and Only Messiah who can lead the Little People to the Promised Land of Single-Payer-- in his own good time.
Gotta support the team!
So why in the world were all of these angry health-care activists and citizens making such a stink?
DeMoro didn't say all that, of course-- that's my elaboration of the attitude she observed.
Put more plainly, Baucus' mind-set-- if one may call the fulsome settlings between his ears a "mind"-- makes it impossible for him to understand that any non-Republican, non-wingnut Amerikan citizen would "take issue" with Obama and the Democrats' approach to health care.
Or dare to suggest that it's actually a RETREAT from health care, and that Obama's crisp lab coat is as bogus as the Emperor's new clothes.
It seems less and less likely that ANY legislation or program devised by the utterly shallow, pitiless, and self-serving political elite in the legislative AND executive branches will serve the public good rather than the corporations, financiers, and vested interests.
To paraphrase General Smedley Butler, USMC: Government is a racket.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Baucus has received nearly five million dollars from the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and related industries whose profits would be gutted by a single-payer system.
He can't hear single-payer advocates because of the constant "CHA-CHING" ringing in his ears.
q
YOS, thanks for your comments, spot on as usual. In concentrating on the "nasty" Republicans as the source of problems for single payer, she ignores of course the role in obstructionism of the D from Montana, Baucus and the P (pragmatist) from Illinois, Obama, in the grim prospects for single payer. While neither of these worthies is necessary "pompous," they are certainly not "populist" either (a false dichotomy in the first place), but partisans of their own careers and their aspirations for a political "win" on the issue. (a plethora of p's in this pitiful paragraph)
Actually, I wonder if there isn't something like a good cop/bad cop scenario going when it comes to health care reform. "Bad" Republicans make these asinine and false statements about people who need health care "bringing it on themselves" by their own behavior (just as they blame people who bought houses they couldn't "afford," thus producing the mortgage crisis). Good cop Democrats respond with their version of "universal health care" that seems populist but is actually only another recipe for the corporate domination of the medical system that we have always had. This gives "good" Democrats (that is, most of them who, unlike Kucinich, have no moral compass to guide their decisions) the cover to do the "liberal" thing and give Obama the coveted "win," a lesser evil compromise that at least is a better system than what the Repubs had offered (nothing). In this view, to paraphrase the statement about the Devil, if Republicans didn't exist the Democrats would have to invent them to provide the "evil" alternative against which their own tepid and fruitless "reforms" seem to be great progressive victories. (There, I've just written the "health care" plank of the next Democratic Party platform.)
excellent...good cop\bad cop is correct...both parties actually one party...abusing the masses while appearing to be frustrated in their attempts to help...what a con...a deadly con...they'll never stop willingly...
Excelelent points!
And therefore, we need to get ready to vigorously oppose, even if it places us on the same side of the loony right, Obamacare in the form it is likely to take.
I't not like I've not been in such a position before. Last year, I had to explain over and over again to canvassers at my door that my desire to not vote for Obama did not make me a McCain supporter. But unfortunately, the canvassers tally forms didn't even have "Ralph Nader or "Cynthia McKinney" on them.
Obedient Servant writes:
"As DeMoro disclosed, Baucus explained that the reason this wasn't "the time" to pursue single-payer is because Obama has tasked (Democrats in) Congress to "give him a 'Win'"! "
Obaama's HAD His "win".
Note that ""Bad" Republicans make these asinine and false statements about people who need health care "bringing it on themselves" by their own behavior (just as they blame people who bought houses they couldn't "afford," thus producing the mortgage crisis)" analysis [Jerry D. Rose] could be applied to Oblabla Himself, who only yesterday was flacking "healthy" lifestyles of the reasonably-rich to the country at large -- barely stopping short, for whatever reason, of blaming Sotomayor's broken ankle on excess avoirdupois.
Well worth reading: Alan Maki's Letter to the Editor at http://www.ifallsdailyjournal.com/news/letters-editor/health-care-reform-needed-106
Here are a few excerpts from a favorable review of Gratzer's book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care"
For example, Gratzer says health savings accounts (HSAs) are the best vehicle for expanding health coverage to the widest possible group of people, while also stimulating the American economy in the most effective way.
He wisely and usefully cites health insurance's link to employment as the beginning of a third-party payment system that grew to rob individuals of choice, ultimately leading to wasteful bureaucracy.
Gratzer also advocates reform--though not outright elimination--of Medicare and Medicaid. He suggests adjusting age and other eligibility requirements to better account for a more long-lived American public.
...
Instead, Gratzer says, economics will save American health care.
He points out the health care system is the only facet of the U.S. national economy not driven by Adam Smith's "invisible hand"--true interplay between supply and demand--and that the system that has developed in place of organic, neoliberal economic policy has, in effect, created barriers to trade. This has caused decreased access to care at higher prices than the market should bear given all of the advances in modern medicine.
So what is Gratzer's well-conceived cure? Let America do what America does best: Create a self-regulating market for health goods and services, free of excessive and inefficient government meddling.
Targeting poorly administered programs at the federal and state level for elimination, and allowing value and personal choice to regulate the health care market in an organic way, is an approach individuals and employers alike can appreciate. This, in turn, will make the problem of reforming surviving entitlement programs easier to manage.
Where there is true competition driven by value-conscious consumers, the market will flourish, value and access will increase, and individual satisfaction with health goods and services will increase.
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20383/Prescriptions_for_Progress.html
HSAs were a scam to enrich bankers, just like they wanted to administer SS for a fee. The laughable part of this whole thing is that surely the insurance companies who depend on the government to supply cash by the truckload to this business don't support Gratzer's Calcutta policy.
How can ANYONE take these "libertarian" free-market arguments for healthcare seriously???
So let's say a young patient gets diagnosed with cancer with a poor prognosis, but a chance for successful treatment under a skillful and experienced oncologist. Is the patient (while also dealing with the anguish of facing his own mortality), going to shop around, like tomatos at a farmers market in August, haggling for the best price from a bunch of oncologists? The question is absurd. The patint wouldn't do it, and any doctor did buisness this way would violate the medical cannon of ethics anywhere in the world. He and his family are going to do their damdest to get the best oncologist. Price won't be considered. So much for anything like a market working here.
Come to think of most people look for the most reputable doctor without cost considerations even if it is just a bunyan or something. The idea that there could exists anything like a "free market" in medicine out ther in Ayn Rand looney-land.
But alas, getting the working stiffs to believe in such free-market-looniness is a damn-good idea if you are a wealthy investor or a big corporation.
By the way, this is the thing Ron Paul proposes. He is an advocate of the "Free market" fixing health care and of HSa's
"Let America do what America does best"
Nothing?
Gratzer's argument is a great example of ideology trumping common sense, not to mention common decency.
Here's a synopsis of a counter-argument by Dr Arnold Relman, recently posted as part of an article in the New York Review of Books:
"Nearly a half-century ago, Stanford economics professor Kenneth Arrow, later a Nobel laureate, convincingly argued that medical care cannot conform to market laws because patients are not ordinary consumers and doctors are not ordinary vendors.[4] He said that sick or injured patients must rely on physicians in ways fundamentally different from the price-driven relation between buyers and sellers in an ordinary market. This argument implied that, contrary to the assumptions of antitrust law, market competition among physicians cannot be expected to lower medical prices. And since physicians influence decisions to use medical services far more than patients do, the volume and types of services provided to patients—and hence total health costs—need to be controlled by forces other than the market, such as professional standards and government regulation. But Arrow's argument was largely ignored in the rush to exploit health care for commercial purposes that ensued after the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965."
Dr Relman is a long-time advocate of single payer, and is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.
His full article, a review of a health care policy book by Rahm Emanuel's oncologist-brother Ezekiel, is here:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22798
And you'd think in the People's House . . .
The People's House is a bordello in Berkeley, California. The congress of the USA is a subsidiary of that bordello, employing the same name to exploit brand recognition.
Why is the dirty little secret of Americans using Canadas health Care system never broadcast in the USA. It has been reported on extensively in Canada.
There were a number of studies down in border towns and cities that as many as one third of Hospital beds were taken up by Americans using faked Health Cards.
In addition the worlds single largest source of "Medical Tourists" is from the USA. Canadian Hospitals in fact ADVERTISE services down in the US and Americans use them because they are cheaper.
India and Mexico also draw tens of thousands of clients from the USA.
I find it so interesting that "Canadians using the US system shows Canada's system fails" yet there never any mentioning of the much greater numbers in the US that either get no care at all, or use the systems of other Countries.
Further to that. If the "Free market principle" works so well in the USA, then why is it they have to rely on Canadian trained Doctors and Nurses to staff their Hospitals? Why would the free market not provide an adequate "supply" for all that "demand" ?
And a BTW. The number ONE reason Canadians go down to the USA for medical services is for Plastic surgeries. The Face lifts and tummy tucks breast implants and the like.
If I lived in Detroit or Buffalo, you can be damn sure that I would be looking for a fake Canada medical card - especially if I was out of work!
There another thing I must comment on and perhaps I look at this with bias, it hard to tell.
I have watched all party "Committees" in the United States, Canada and or Britain try to hammer out bills and legislation in order to address things like Banking Regulations, Enviromental protections, and improvemnets to health care. I have also read how such legislation passed in places like Sweden and Germany.
One thing sticks out like a sore thumb when observing the US system.
That is the absolute BIAS and ideology of persons giving testimony or input to the debate. What I mean here is as example, using "Canadians Flocking down to use the US system" in a presentation without even acknowledging that the opposite also true. Or using an example of a Canadian experience in Canada to show how "bad socialized medicine is" but not acknowledging the same happening to Citizens of the USA with their system.
A given presentor or testimonial is inherently dishonest because it presents ONE side of the debate in order to achieve ONE given outcome.
Were *I* an honest Republican of Democrat truly committed to improving health care in the USA , were I to use the example of a Canadian ill served by the Canadian system, I would also use an example of a Citizen of the USA ill served by the US system. I would then try and figure out which is the best way to address BOTH problems so a better system comes out.
I would bring in people from France, or Switzerland, Or Sweden to describe how their systems work and learn their advantages and flaws.
It seems that doing what is right and best serves Citizens of the USA as a whole plays a much smaller role then doing what serves ones OWN Ideology.
This very much like peoples of an extreme religous mindset trying to force their views upon everyone else even if it harmful to the society at large.
It makes for poor Government. Pompous indeed.
GwNorth
"There were a number of studies down in border towns and cities that as many as one third of Hospital beds were taken up by Americans using faked Health Cards."
It seems "we" are the illegal aliens this time.
"Were *I* an honest Republican of Democrat truly committed to improving health care in the USA , were I to use the example of a Canadian ill served by the Canadian system, I would also use an example of a Citizen of the USA ill served by the US system. I would then try and figure out which is the best way to address BOTH problems so a better system comes out.
I would bring in people from France, or Switzerland, Or Sweden to describe how their systems work and learn their advantages and flaws.
It seems that doing what is right and best serves Citizens of the USA as a whole plays a much smaller role then doing what serves ones OWN Ideology."
Just an excellent point. I'd also point out that it would take time to do that, so the push to do this by Fall tells you we have no honest Republican's or Democrat's. The honest ones would not rush to judgement like this.
I don't know who originally stated "A camel is a horse designed by committee", but it must be noted that one of the crippling effects of a national legislature of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy is that the selfishness, venality, and greed guarantees that the "sausage making" recipes try to contain bits and pieces of everything that's appetizing to the producers.
I know that's hard to follow, but what I mean is that from a common-sense perspective, single-payer is obviously the most sensible choice. And one of its most appealing features IS its relative simplicity!
I mean, that's the whole point-- a single-payer system not only takes profit (greed) out of an area in which it never should've been permitted in the first place, it also uncomplicates the healthcare process.
Why can't the damn POLITICIANS appreciate this? Apart from the fact that they're co-opted, and all the other bad things I can't stop bitching about, they just don't "get" programs that are relatively straightforward.
Instead, they survey the landscape to determine first who gains vs. who loses, and who will accept vs. who will reject. Then they employ a Rube Goldberg approach to produce a complicated plan that will give the best APPEARANCE of accomplishing the stated goal with plenty of twists and turns and loopholes. They try to accomplish this with a cornucopia of bits-and-pieces, a tax incentive hear, a tax break there, a Health Care Card that does everything but pay for health care, no questions asked...
This fuzzy rant was triggered because of the preposterous libertarianish notion that real progress can be made if citizens are seen as "health-care consumers" who would be greatly empowered by "shopping" for health care-- and that health care institutions, and insurance corporations, would in turn clean up their act and offer less onerous plans and services.
It's the old canard about regulation only hampering the "free market"'s ability to self-regulate and improve goods and services as a result of consumer choice.
I know one or two people who are avid "shoppers", and who won't even buy a pencil without going on line, checking Consumer Reports, etc. It's obvious that they have a knack or predisposition for this kind of "researching".
But it's simply bogus to expect ordinary people-- especially if they already suffer from debilitating health problems-- to sift through any number of "options" to decide what's best for them.
Like the tax code, what results is a complicated mess that requires experts to understand and administer, and hangs all but a few natural-born "shoppers" out to dry.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Obedient Servant
"But it's simply bogus to expect ordinary people-- especially if they already suffer from debilitating health problems-- to sift through any number of "options" to decide what's best for them."
A perfect example of this are the various options in Medicare. I have two college degrees and Doctorate work and I can't help my mother make heads nor tails out of some of this stuff.
YOS: thank God for google, and Wikipedia too: the expression of camel as horse designed by a committee:
"has been attributed to Vogue magazine, July 1958, to Sir Alec Issigonis and also to University of Wisconsin philosophy professor Lester Hunt. The defining characteristics of "design by committee" are needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision.
The term is especially common in technical parlance, and legitimates the need and general acceptance of a unique systems architect. Often, when software is designed by a committee, the original motivation, specifications and technical criteria take a backseat and poor choices may be made merely to appease the egos of several individual committee members. Such products and standards end up doing too many things or having parts that fit together poorly (because the entities who produced those parts were unaware of each other's requirements for a good fit).
The term is also common in automotive parlance for poorly designed or unpopular cars."
...........
Apart from the last as a (perhaps) glancing blow at the horse committees at General Motors, I think the expression, as defined above, explains in all-too-graphic detail why over-complicated and appeased (compromised) medical coverage systems always fail. In my home county (Alachua county, Florida) there was devised a few years ago a so-called CHOICES program for medical insurance coverage for "working poor" people; and only a miniscule percentage of those "poor" ever even applied for it; one reason being, perhaps, that people had to "apply" for participation, and probably many were just intimidated by the daunting application process. Similarly with the "prescription drug coverages" options that overwhelmed the capacity of people to make these choices. When will policy-makers ever learn to apply Occam's Razor or the principle of parsimony to their plans: those plans work best that are the simplest ones? The arcane "choices" about to be built into the "health care reform" program that gets by the committee of horses known as the Congress of the United States will clearly fail the Razor test and, 5 years from now, we'll be reading pitiful stories of folks who fall between the numerous cracks of an over-designed "system."
"I have had enough of the pompous. Give me the populists"
Ok! Sell your car, and use the proceeds to help the poor.
Did that -- but had to give it all to the healthcare giants. Used to have two cars, now have one. Used to have a house, now have none. Gave it all. Will keep fighting until that's not what it takes to get healthcare in this nation.
Donna Smith, American SiCKO
"WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are offering to scrap a controversial government-sponsored health insurance provision in an effort to win more than a dozen moderate and conservative Republican votes to extend health care coverage to nearly 46 million uninsured Americans.
Sen. Max Baucus , D- Mont. , the chairman of the Finance Committee , signaled his willingness Thursday to compromise to attract enough GOP support to pass the legislation in the Senate this summer with as many as 70 votes."
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So, Baucus and the Republicans are going to give Big Insurance "taxing rights" on the American Public. As it is now, one third or our health care costs goes to the Big Insurance 'overhead' like pornographic salaries and bonuses. Now our elected officials are lining up (and lining their pockets) with the corporations to slit the throat of the American citizens and lift their purse. What a fine bunch of road agents they all are. When the Corporations start 'taxing' We-The-People how are we represented? Do we select the Corporate Execs and the Boards of Directors? We have all been through this Taxation Without Representation business before. We no longer have an elected government due to bribery and corruption - we have Corporate Tyrany! We have the right and duty to overthrow Tyrany in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence! It is better to live and die as Free Men and Women than grovel as corporate slaves!
Best regards, Publius
Norman Mailer said he loved this country all of his life -----and he was angry at it most of his life.
Me too!
I would love to hear anyone of the bought and paid for bigots in congress use the "blame the victim" arguments against war. This is the one place these arguments would fit. No war money is justified because the lion's share is being syphoned off to legal theft for war corporations. These corporations want war because they don't have to compete. They want war because they are lazy and anti-free enterprize, etc. But when talk comes to war, the paraded patriotic chest poping conveniently ignores the corporate welfare cheats on our dime. Then when healthcare returns to the conversation, the entire logical structure is flipped on its' head. I would say it was deliberate cognitive dissonance but I think it's just a bunch of bribed mouths talking.
If big money wins on healthcare, it's over.