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Harry and Louise's Deadly Embrace
Flying home from the Democratic convention last August, I sat next to a Sarah Palin-loving, Obama-bashing dittohead who gave me an earful on the various issues of the day. Chief among them: the superiority of the U.S. health care system.
My fellow passenger had travelled to Canada for work, he said, and had the misfortune to encounter the Canadian health care system when he came down with strep. He visited a Canadian doctor, who diagnosed his problem, but who, my fellow passenger complained, spent only a few minutes with him. Later, when he went to a pharmacy to fill his prescription for antibiotics, he found that he didn't have as many pills as he thought he needed. The reason, he explained, was that Canadian doctors try to game the system by getting patients to come back for extra office visits to refill their prescriptions.
This nonsensical tirade against a country that offered a noncitizen free health care only makes sense in the context of the rightwing rhetorical battle against the commies who want to destroy America by providing more citizens with health care.
The anti-universal-healthcare lobby is still out there. And much of the debate is unchanged since 1993.
Conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are railing about "socialized medicine." Republicans are crowing that President Obama's efforts at reform could be his "Waterloo."
But with 10 million more uninsured, fewer Americans are buying the conspiracy theories. People know there is a health care crisis. Few would object to getting free medical care in Canada. In fact, so many U.S. citizens are sneaking across the border to get cheap drugs, stories about the problem have become a local news staple.
So maybe the worst sign for the future of health care is the "conversion" of Harry & Louise to heath care reform advocates.
"A little more cooperation, a little less politics, and we can get the job done this time," says Louise of the infamous PHARMA-funded Harry & Louise ads, in the latest industry-financed national health care ad campaign.
After helping to torpedo the Clinton health care plan and launching a new era in issue advertising, Harry & Louise made a comeback just in time for the 2008 Democratic and Republican national conventions. The writing was already on the wall. So, instead of railing about choice and government-run health care, as they did in 1993, they decried the plight of the uninsured and asked that the next President, whoever he may be, put health care at the top of his agenda.
That was the first red flag.
But now, as the sausage machine in Washington cranks out a lobbyist-pleasing health care bill that, as it works its way through the Senate Finance Committee, no longer includes low-cost drugs or, possibly, even a public option, it looks like reform is turning into something Harry and Louise will love--no politics, no conflict, and largely written by the business and pharmaceutical lobbies behind the popular ads.
Actual U.S. citizens who are not paid by big Pharma still want an end to the health care crisis. That's why nine people were arrested in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday for protesting in the lobby of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, demanding an end to the insurance company's profit-maximizing, health-care-denying practices and calling for a single-payer, national health care system.
And it is why people are pouring into Washington, DC, on Thursday, July 30, for a massive rally and lobbying day in celebration of Medicare's 44th birthday.
A New York Times/CBS News poll shows that a majority of Americans support a government-run, universal health care system. A survey of U.S. doctors reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that 59 percent favor a Medicare for All system of national health insurance.
Grassroots efforts to get this majority view across to the Obama Administration and members of Congress are the best answer to the wingnuts on rightwing radio and, more insidiously, the populist-sounding proponents of faux health care reform, Harry & Louise.
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39 Comments so far
Show All"Grassroots efforts to get this majority view across to the Obama Administration and members of Congress are the best answer to the wingnuts on rightwing radio and, more insidiously, the populist-sounding proponents of faux health care reform, Harry & Louise."
Is the author delusional? Everyone in Washington - including the most rabid "free-market" republicans screaming for "more competition" in the "healthcare marketplace" - already know that a growing majority of Americans want single-payer healthcare financing.
Instead of hearing the cries of millions of uninsured, our folks in Congress only hear "CHA-CHING"!!! They're absolutely giddy because these poll numbers have sparked an overflow of money from the target industries.
q
They do know and they don't care.
quickstepper July 30th, 2009 8:56 am....."An overflow of money from the target industries...........to their pockets..
Just to be more explicit.
I'd gladly pay higher taxes to provide Harry and Louise with a lifetime of free contraception.
Please flee from that country run by the vilest and most evil people on earth. Get on boats or drive to Canada. Just get away. It will never change.
You want us to flee?
Coward.
If yesterday's posts by "dreambait" railing against single payer are any indicator, our electorate is way too cornfed to see the forest from the trees. Just listening to the Blue Dogs give their phoney "compromises" on health care is enough to make me throw up. As for the Republicans, I checked my mailbox this morning and my Rethug rep and senator rah-rahed about America having the "best healthcare system in the world" and wrote pages of crap about the importance of Big Pharma/Insurance which sounded like a pile of desperate baloney. I did get a somewhat nice response from Mckaskill but as usual her "we have to be realistic and compromise" doesn't impress me either. With a lot of selfish minded pee brains in both parties, maybe we don't deserve HR676 and S703. For that matter, maybe we don't deserve good leadership such as Nader, Mckinney, Sheehan, Kucinich, etc ... Until the Harrys and the Louises in this country are forced to fall on their knees and weep, true health care reform will remain stuck in the twilight zone ! :(
Sometimes the obvious only occurs to a few of us. In this hhis healthcare blog here:
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=1275
The anon. blogger points out that the (93 or something) co-sponsors of HR676 outnumber the blue-dogs, and could easily use the threat of their votes to hold the whole process hostage unless HR 676 becomes "the" bill. But they don't. Perhaps most of them are only co-sponsoring it as a political calculation - endorse something popular for the votes in their urban-left districts back home, while cynically preventing the bill thay claim to support from actually getting consideration.
This tactic gets used all the time. In the last Congress, my "moderate" Republican rep. voted for the EFCA, knowing full well the Senate would never let the bill become law. It worked. The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO took the bait and endorsed him over a progressive democrat challenger. This time, he will not vote for the EFCA, unless it is gutted to uselessness. The Pa. AFL-CIO will be getting more than a few phone calls from me when this happens.
The whole political process makes me sick. Surely, outside of the Banana republics politics is not this cynical elsewhere.
You and I are already paying more in taxes to finance Big Pharma/Insurance and that's what is forcing more people into bankruptcy and yet Washington bails out Big Pharma/Insurance while leaving the bankrupted to hold the bag. Single payer would actually cut out those middle men and reduce the tax burden for all. The current system is completely broken beyond repair that even fixing a few edges won't do jack. I'm sorry but this nation is the biggest laughing stock on the planet for being the supposedly richest and best nation with no basic universal healthcare for all. And if you're still worried about choice, single payer will give you that and more. Besides, if single payer has its downsides and disadvantages, then why haven't other nations scrapped it? Again, trying to exaggerate the cons of single payer only makes this nation a bigger laughing stock.
Single payer healthcare financing would be a simpler and less expensive system than what you suggest (which is status quo).
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever - moral, ethical, economic, or medical - to maintain any semblance of our current system of private healthcare financing. The entire private health insurance business model is built on the philosophy of exploiting the misery of others for private gain.
Then again, one could say that there are four reasons to do so: ignorance, laziness, stupidity, and greed.
q
Re dreambait July 30th, 2009 10:40 am, who asserts
"Our current system is the best in the world, nobody is even close, as far as the quality of care it CAN deliver."
Our current system is #37 in the world, based on what it DOES deliver. What it CAN deliver is a pleasant mirage.
That was another thing I was seriously concerned about db saying. That got me thinking that either he's been suckered into the Joe the Plumber mentality or he's one of those rich folks stuck in blissful ignorance.
Ok, fair enough. Somehow, you remind me of someone my old friend stumbled across. He used to be here but whose wife now posts here on the occasion for him. I await his recovery and return. I do read the archives too btw.
"Those rankings are a joke."
No.
The health care system in this country is the joke, and it's on you.
"Not having "universal" access (which we do have, we just don't have free access)"
You're employed and because of your employer you're covered. Were you not employed, you wouldn't be covered the same way. In fact, you wouldn't be covered at all ! I don't see anything universal here at all but trashing universal care as if it's some mooch-off care shows your lack of sympathy. I swear, you remind me of someone who was totally heartless on this issue that my old friend who used to post here stumbled across.
Hi Jennifer,
Are you referring to a debate my husband had with someone similar to dreambait back in March?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/12-8
That's the closest I can remember. I might have to look through some more of the archives to help you out. I'll let you know later today what I can find. I like the way you've changed somewhat and my husband will be delighted to read your posts and those of others when he returns.
Mrs. Verez, that was one of them. I saw a few more articles where he debated that same person on weapons spending. I'm no expert on weapons and spending unlike your husband and henry8 but I like the way he showed his courage and spoke out against the double standards of weapons spending vs health care. I hope he makes it back and I wished more former soldiers could speak out like him. Maybe there's hope that they will although I cannot tell when it will be so. Even Thomas More had a heart and knew where to draw the line on weapons spending. Wasting billions on land mines and cluster bombs along with big insurance and pharma with nothing but very poor service to show for it is itself heartbreaking. :(
Says WHO? Are you the World Health Organization? Why should we believe you?
Ours is by far the worst and most expensive system in the developed world. It costs twice as much as our trading partners and denies basic healthcare to 50 million people, leaving another 50 million with inadequate insurance. This is not something that needs 'adjusting around the edges'. This is a baby that SHOULD be thrown out with the bathwater.
I am the fastest man in the world .
All I have to do is run the 100 meters in 9.5 seconds. This CAN be done.
If the final bills end up as bad as it is looking they will, we may find ourselves having to side with the right wingnuts.
Better nothing than something that will entrench private insurance even deeper into the system and make single payer even more difficult in the future.
Right wing ideology in this country has basically become a religion. No facts are needed to support it's ideology, and no facts will be tolerated that question it.
The authors traveling companion that said he didn't have enough time with his doctor, and felt he didn't get has many pills as he thought he should have, all while getting the service for free, in my opinion is the same has the religious fundamentalist who thinks he sees an image of Jesus in a piece of toast. They both have a BELEIF in the way things are and will happily twist reality to fit that belief system.
Folks on this site should take a journey to the other side and read what goes on at "conservative" right wing web sites. I ran across one guy that was ranting like a lunatic that we shouldn't have a universal health care system because it wasn't in the constitution, and he didn't want to see the constitution defaced by introducing such a system.
Now the leap in logic there is something akin to Evil Kenievel's attempted leap over the Snake River Canyon. (I should note here that neither was successful). The constitution also doesn't specifically allow or disallow, public schools, public roads, building damns, NASA, and the list goes on and on and on).
I'm guessing roughly 30% of the population in this country have this non reality based view of the world and in most cases it will be impossible to change it. They will continue to see Jesus, and the solutions to the issues of Energy, health care, and the how the military industrial complex affects them with the same self-righteous religious belief system. A belief system that is supported by nothing more than the words of their priests, talk radio hosts, and Republican leaders.
Trying to steer the ship of state when you also have to drag this many happily misinformed people along is like trying to correctly steer a boat while dragging a very large anchor off of its starboard side.
Dreambait - I can actually agree with you on this statement.
It is unfortunate that Obama will not go to bat and expend his significant political capital on promoting single payer. I did not vote for him and thought this would happen, but I believed this could be one issue he may take a progressive stance only because of its potential to positively effect our economy.
The arguement for single payer is easy to make - you pay less and you get better care. Augment the arguement with testimony and data from all the success stories from other systems around the world, and testimony and data from all the disasters in our health care system, and he rallies the 60 - 70% of the population behind the bill and goes down as one of the best presidents and a landslide to reelection.
I just don't get how he doesn't see it.
Right now, health care costs are like a 100,000 pound anchor on a sinking economy. Single payer is the only way to recover the 30% added with no benefit the insurance companies provide.
Dreambait, if you haven't yet, you should read the FAQ on HR676:
http://www.johnconyers.com/hr676faq
I am confused by your insistance this bill trades freedom for security. This bill is the only way we will have freedom and security in health care. Freedom to see whatever doctor you want and implement whatever treatments he proscribes. We have nothing of the sort right now with private insurance.
We will be paying less money for a better system. I just don't see the opposition for this bill.
Rastaman vibrations are positive!
Ubrew12, great point. People who are warped up in employment seriously need to face reality as it can and will happen to them to at some point. Single payer is like preventative treatment in some respects.
The purpose of for profit health insurance is to get you to pay for coverage you won't receive when you need it (where else did you think profits came from?). For that, all the insurance company needs to do is have you purchase insurance while you're young, and then (through a job change or some other technique) deny you coverage when you're older.
My daughter is young. Unfortunately, she had thyroid cancer a few years ago. She can't get health insurance.
Thank you ubrew12 for better explaining this. I feel sad for what happened to your daughter and I sincerely hope she will recover despite the insurance bottleneck. If you can, try to find alternative practitioners who might be able to help her as best as they can. They're usually not the for-profit types. Good luck.
Our system will eventually place the health of your child against the million dollar salary of a corporate CEO. Guess who loses? One out of every three healthcare dollars spent in America goes into administrative costs. The comparable figure in Canada is 1%.
RichM - I was thinking the same thing - see my post below at the same time.
What is Obama thinking - does he think he will be reelected before the sh$@ hits the fan due to this disastrous bill? Does he just not care because the $$s are going to roll in from his post-presidential life? Or is he really just that stupid - because he really doesn't seem like he is.
He is going to be labeled a socialist no matter what he does - so why not just do the right thing and at least have popular support?
Instead he is going to loose both the left and the right on this issue that effects everyone in our country. He once again is compramising with the right to get exactly zero votes from republicans on this bill. How is he going to survive the right-wing assault in 3 years if all those people on the left who held there noses and voted for him (or truly believed in him) jump ship? Are we really that politically insignificant?
I am so confused by his overall strategy (if you can call it that).
Rastaman vibrations are positive!
"I am so confused by his overall strategy (if you can call it that)."
You're not alone. I keep my fingers crossed anticipating the worst. The only thing unpredictable is how bad he can get. Btw, I like your posts on Alternet despite your getting persecuted by the non-thinkers there.
RichM
I don't believe they are going to get anything done or so little it won't make much difference. The people I'm talking to and listening too when they are talking about this seem to be about 10 to one against.
Obama is done on this I believe.
PROBLEM: DOES YOUR FAMILY HAVE A RECENT COLLEGE GRAD?
NO JOB = NO HEALTH INSURANCE!!
REACTION: frustration and turmoil = FEAR
SOLUTION: Isn't new swine flu purported to have greatest
efficacy with young adults??
= END OF PROBLEM!
Its been said that nationalized healthcare denies choice but lowers risk. That's true. But who's choice is being denied? Your choice of 5 insurance companies offering substantially the same coverage? Or THEIR choice of several million patients to insure or NOT insure as their profit model dictates? The fact is, the way insurance companies make money is by weeding out the sick, the very people most in need of healthcare, and denying them coverage. It is THEIR choice to divide and conquer their patients that leads to their enrichment and our poverty. (One CEO recently retired a BILLIONAIRE, while every year a million American families face healthcare-related bankruptcy).
Single payer healthcare isn't socialism: its buying in bulk. In France, the private option is left open for people who feel inadequately covered by the public option. We should do the same here.
Choice in America: Pepsi or Coke. Ford or Chevy. Get denied by Cigna or get denied by United Healthcare. Golly, we live in the greatest nation on earth!
i gave up on most media several years ago, so don't hear rush, or any other fox-types...the interesting thing to me is how much planning we do that relies on tax money...as I look down the road, I see less 'working', which would mean fewer tax dollars to do anything with, including supply national healthcare, which is a great idea, of course...I'm just wondering who else out there is anticipating a possibly dramatic decline in tax revenues, and considering the impacts, healthcare or other...
Personally, I hope that Dr. Jack Kevorkian will cure Harry and Louise's chronic anxiety about the Evils of Socialized Medicine once and for all.
I understand that he can be very persuasive.
PS: Not knocking Kevorkian, whom I greatly respect.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Being the world hegamon means:
Never having to say you are sorry for trashing other nations like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Never having to pay decent reparations for same.
Never having to pay for real resources, because you can make other nations take your printed currency at gunpoint.
Never have to reduce military spending, or fossil fuel consumption for it, because other nations will be made to pay for it.
Being hegamon means never let another nation become powerful enough to say no.
Running the government is mostly a protection racket, to keep in power Generals and Billionaires that bilk the system.
Elections make no significant difference, with the only changes being the window decorations.
The private health system is currently part of the protection racket. While you pays heaps of money, you gets looked after, wether you really needs it or not. Everyone else gets worse than nothing. There are so many external causes of illness, which most people can ill-afford.
It is an existential impossibility for a private health insurance system to provide basic cover because so many people will still need enough money to get basic healthy food.
So get over it, the private health insurance system was never made serve most of you all anyway. Its just there to take your money. The only people who can afford it are those who run the system.
Could someone please explain why it’s okay under capitalism for national security, police/fire protection, air safety, education and myriad other goals to be pure non-profit run, indeed even the essence of socialistic since benefits are not tied to income, but at the same time, somehow health protection must be reserved exclusively to fill insurance company pockets? In Congress, it does not even seem possible to debate the point.
Signed: Lawlessone [for more irreverence, see resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]