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TechnoratiMad as Hell Doctors Signal New Era of Healthcare Activism
Single-Payer, Yes, Public Option, No
"I am not the first person to take up the cause of health care but I am determined to be the last," President Obama declared to great applause in his recent speech before Congress."
It was a stirring moment, but in the end perhaps just one more ephemeral moment on the stage of what passes now for political drama in the United States. Whatever results from the final health care legislation passed by Congress, we can be sure it will not come close to solving the health care crisis. The cause of health care, post-Obama, will go on.
That's the message of the "Mad as Hell Doctors" for single-payer, an intrepid troop of Oregon physicians now on a three-week national road tour fueled by a Winnebago and the energy of boisterous supporters at every stop. They're on their way to Washington, D.C. where they'll rally on Sept. 30 and ask to meet with the President to discuss the merits of single-payer.
It's unlikely the group has any high hopes to win Obama back to the single-payer cause he once formally supported. Actually, it's unlikely Obama will even meet with the group. The White House has not exactly objected to the efforts of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and others in Congress to shut single-payer advocates out of the debate.
The Mad as Hell Doctors serve as a counterpoint to everything wrong with the current health care reform debate. "What we're mad about is actually not health care," said group spokesperson Dr. Paul Hochfeld recently on MSNBC's The Ed Show with Ed Schultz. "What we're mad about is that the industry has once again manipulated the political process for profits instead of health."
The emergency room doctor from Corvallis, Oregon suggests even Obama may not have grasped the insurance industry's power before taking office. But if the President now finds himself a political victim of an industry whose profits are bought at the price of a society of victims, he has also not shown the requisite courage to take on the industry's real power.
Indeed, health care reform ought be the last issue the right wing is able to exploit. Not when tens of millions are without insurance, while almost everyone else faces derisory coverage with exorbitant premiums and out-of-pocket costs. A dismal economy has only aggravated this sorry state of affairs.
Yet thanks to Democratic efforts to limit and complicate health care reform, the right has turned an unassailable moral imperative for social justice into a stupid, noisy uproar over "death panels" and other nonsense. Meanwhile, many progressive supporters of health reform have been reduced to saying their prayers that some form of "public option" plan at least makes it through Congress.
Unlike many liberals, the Mad as Hell Doctors doubt a government-run public option will amount to much. "This is how we're doing to fix healthcare [with the public option]?" ask Hochfeld. "We're going to mandate that everybody in the country that doesn't have health insurance buy a commercial product that's flawed. If you can't afford it, we'll make you pay slightly more than you can comfortably afford and the taxpayer will pay the difference. If you get your insurance through your employer, then you won't qualify for the public option. That's 'fixing' health care?"
As Hochfeld also reminded MSNBC viewers, employed people tend to be healthier than unemployed people. Thus, it's likely under a mixed public-private system that the public plan will gradually morph into a mechanism for insurers to transfer the most burdensome patients onto the public system. The healthier, wealthier, and more profitable individuals will remain disproportionately represented in the private system.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, (Sept. 18, 2009), filmmaker Michael Moore makes the observation that no one should be surprised by the dispirited turn health care reform (now called insurance reform) has taken. "If you start, right off the bat, compromising, don't be surprised if (Obama) is going to keep compromising," notes Moore.
It didn't have to be. A New York Times/CBS News Poll earlier this year found 59 percent of Americans in favor of government national health insurance, with 49 percent saying such insurance should cover all medical problems. Other polls show even greater support for the single-payer concept.
Instead of mobilizing this base, the President has conducted himself as if the most important concern in the health debate is bi-partisan agreement with the opponents of reform. Apparently, Obama feels constrained to keep the Republican valets of the health insurance status quo in the loop for whatever change happens. Other than to perhaps prove what a reasonable man the President is, the question to be asked is just: Why?
Indeed, what kind of productive agreement is possible with people whose motto is no, no, and no to reform? Actually, it's not so much that the President necessarily cares about Republican support. But he does accept the entrenched economic power of the health insurance industry as here to stay. And the Republicans cravenly represent the latter.
If Obama truly wants to be the leader of historic change in health care, he should call for a mass grassroots activist campaign to demand insurance companies out of health care. He did once say that single-payer was probably the best system, if we had the luxury of starting from scratch. But is it really a "luxury" to try to make the system right by tackling the root of what's wrong?
Unfortunately, while the crazed right screams about Obama's "Marxist" mission to dispense Grandma to the gulags for some "end of life" counseling, the millions of voters once galvanized by his run for the Presidency have not mobilized with anywhere near equal passion.
It's not hard to grasp why. "He's only going halfway with this public option," Moore tells the Chronicle. "He needs to remove the private, profit-making insurance companies from the table." But here the deeper reality of the political status quo emerges. When was the last time a Democratic President did anything to promote grassroots mass action for a progressive cause, at least when it didn't involve their own election?
The Mad as Hell Doctors remind us that the fight for health care reform isn't really over whether private insurance is more or less good or bad in taking care of people's health care needs. It isn't over whether premiums are too high; or there are too many co-pays or policy exclusions. It certainly isn't about anything the Republicans say it's about.
This is a battle for the way we define ourselves as a nation. Will we be a society guided by a sense of compassion and justice, in which our every medical resource is devoted to the well being of the people? Or will we be a society in which in the end money trumps justice, and people suffer and even die because it's just more important to let the profiteers keep their good thing going?
We need to guarantee every American the right to the best care possible, regardless of their income. That means private health insurance companies out of the picture. That means single-payer into the picture. And, as the example of the Mad as Hell Doctors teaches us, that also means a new, long-term commitment to grassroots activism for health care justice.
45 Comments so far
Show AllBlaming insurance companies for the mess is like practicing symptom treatment medicine. It's a useless activity. Health care is costly because:
1. The FDA bans all natural treatments that have been proved to work. (Google: FDA bans pyridoxamine)
2. The state medical societies (arm of AMA) take disciplinary action against physicians who use "unapproved" treatments (which used to include chiropractic care) EVEN WHEN THEIR PATIENTS GET WELL.
2a. The AMA and other medical organizations refuse to see what's right in front of their faces (See: "Why stomach Acid Is Good For You" by JV Wright, M.D. and L. Lenard, PhD--this change alone would ultimately save tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars.
3. Big Pharma colludes with FDA and Congress. We do the research through the NIH and they reap the profits. When the research shows a problem, like estrogen doesn't work for heart diesase, it's the taxpayers who eat it.
4. Air, water and food are full of toxins--carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, neurotoxins
5. Subsidies for corn, wheat, sugar, potatoes, soybeans and CAFOs create economic incentives to eat poorly
6. Too many people think healthful food and basic physical activity are a joke--but very few who don't exercise and eat well will be well.
P.S. There is much anecdotal evidence that H1N1 flu can be prevented by adequate vitamin D status. Heard about this from the fearmongers and vaccine pushers?
Please note that 3 of these are direct gov't action and #4, the toxins, have somehow escaped EPA notice. How convenient.
Without health freedom, i.e, the right to choose your medical practitioner and to choose the type of treatment you need, any payment system will fail. Single payer will be a very expensive joke. By the way, these same problems are now faced by European and Asian systems which will also start to fail.
You are blaming the victim, and falling for the capitalist propaganda of making all societal systemic problems ones of individual choice, or "evil govenment". People follow all your alternate medicine stuff get sick at the same rate as those who live by more reeasonable guidelines. Preventing flu infection by taking vitamin D is nonsense.
Single payer would be a far more expensive joke if it paid for every umproven folk-remedy out there.
The systems in other countries are threatened because of neoliberal capitalist atttacks in the form of funding-starving.
Health care is costly because it basically operates as a profit-making monopolistic collusion of insurance, hospitals and drug makers.
pjd412: Hope you see this. First the site was down, then this morning my server was down. Re: vitamin D, see Sanctuary and my comment. It's obvious you didn't bother checking facts at vitamindcouncil website. On what do you base the claim of "nonsense"?
Of course it's a monopoly. The entire health care system is one big monopoly and it pretty much controls the aspects of gov't that it interfaces with. That is why all the things I listed have happened and are happening including the problems in other countries. If you don't break the monopoly you are just pouring money down a gilded rat hole. Cutting out the insurance middle man will do nothing to affect actual cost of care.
"You are blaming the victim and falling for the capitalist propaganda of making all societal systemic problems ones of individual choice..." Who exactly is the victim I'm blaming? The blame is on the gov't and the medical monopoly. If you are referring to diet and exercise, that is a fact that a significant percent of health care problems are related to poor choices in this area. You can't change that fact. People have "cured" their depression with daily exercise. Nothing cures everyone because we are biochemical individuals but a significant per cent of illness can be fixed at very low cost.
The capitalist progaganda of individual choice? Do you mean the choice to have an abortion?, to use IV vitamin C therapy to treat cancer and viral diseases?, to use quality supplements instead of thousands of drugs that do great harm? To treat digestive problems with digestants rather than the current digestive antagonists?Who exactly will make those decisions if not the individual? Do you want the government, via single payer, to make those decisions? Maybe a doctor who is a Big Pharma booster?
"...all your alternative medicine stuff". I have no idea what you mean "my" alternative medicine stuff. You don't know me or have a clue what I know personally and professionally. Therefore you can't possibly know if people who care for their bodies as I do get sick more or less frequently than those who don't.
You clearly didn't bother to check any of the references I provided.
I know these ideas are hard for people to grasp but if one doesn't understand the cause of a problem you really can't fix it. That's what natural medicine/ nutritional medicine/functional medicine does. It seeks the cause of a problem and treats the cause. Allopathic medicine treats symptoms.
If you do go to vitamindcouncil.org and read Dr. Cannell's biography you will see another problem with doctors in his description of trying to help his coal miner patients. Please try to be just a bit open. For $49 you can get a one year subscription to Nutrition & Healing by Dr. JV Wright, a leader in the field. You will get access to online archives back to 2000 with a good search engine. All references and research is there. For free, sign up for e-alerts at hsibaltimore.com. Skip the ads and focus on the research. They, too, have a search engine. Information is basic, not the depth you get from Dr Wright but truthful just the same.
There is very compelling longitudinal statistical evidence, over thousands of people and many countries, that Vitamin D insufficiency is responsible for depressed immune systems that then precipitate all manner of diseases and premature death. This comes from standard medicine and doctors and has nothing to do with "alternate" medicine.
It is surprisingly easy to track all this with northern and southern countries and their respective seasonal exposure to sunlight, sunlight that creates Vitamin D in humans.
Since flu is seasonal and generally happens towards the winter it is not an unreasonable correlation to link declining Vitamin D production with increasing flu outbreaks. Whether there is proof yet, I don't know.
My own doctor, who is part of the big pharma cartel like most other doctors, recommends that everyone over 50 take 1000 IU's of Vitamin D daily.
If you were to go to vitamindcouncil.org you would find research and references that might amaze you. The Canadian Health Service has recommended 1000 IU (maybe 2000, can't remember) to prevent cancer. You would also find, on the home page, under "Noteworthy News", correspondence between 2 physicians and the site director who is also a physician regarding the protective effect with flu and swine flu in particular. If you check the biography of Dr. Cannell, you will find a scientist as well as a social activist.
Doctors should go on strike and refuse to accept insurance until simgle payer is established. While we are at it, I think that insurance companies should not be able to be listed on the stock exchange.
Senators Rockefeller, Schumer, Stabenow and Widen of the Senate Finance Committee Sub-committee on Health, did a great job of pointing out that the Medical Industrial Complex's contribution to Health Care Reform, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is $20 BILLION and in return they will get $500 BILLION in TAX-PAYER FUNDED SUBSIDIES. Democratic Senators baucus, conrad, carper, lincoln and nelson voted with the republicans to kill the public option 09-09-29.
Criminally corrupt politicians are the reason the U.S. is ranked near the bottom of every catagory when ranked next to other modern, industrialized nations. Time for publically funded elections.
mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M, conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M, boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M, j wilson 800K were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.(Source: OpenSecrets.org)
Co-Author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of a Recent Harvard Study on Annual Deaths of America's Uninsured, says the lack of coverage can be tied to over 47,000 deaths a year, 122 a day, in the United States. The only way to affordably cover all Americans is through a Medicare-for-All, Single-Payer System. A Single-Payer System would generate $300-$400 billion in administrative savings annually, enough to cover all of the uninsured, and to plug the gaps in coverage for Americans with only partial coverage. Obviously, Medicare-for-all is anathema to the insurance industry. What politicians are doing is saving insurance industry profits, by sacrificing American lives.12 Million Americans were denied health care coverage by the Medical Industrial Complex because they had a pre-existing medical condition. 12K Americans are denied insurance coverage everyday by a for-profit Insurance bureaucrat. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)
Medical malpractice lawsuits are a hot topic but, are they? Tort Reform is such a “Red Herring” and is easily disproved. A 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.
bush(43) economic speech writer david frum, at least, is willing to admit the idea about selling insurance across state lines is a crock:
New Jersey health policies cost more in large part because New Jersey hospitals and doctors charge more. If I buy a cheaper Kentucky policy that reimburses my providers at Kentucky rates, leaving me to pay the balance, how much good does that do me? And if the Kentucky policy is made to pay New Jersey rates, there vanishes my low Kentucky price.
These are some of the easily refuted arguments bought and paid for by the Medical Industrial Complex to derail any chance of their criminally massive profits being reduced.
Follow the Money: http://hmc-lavadogs.livejournal.com/20128.html
Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!
(Toll Free # House and Senate)
1-866-338-1015 _____ 1-866-220-0044
1-800-473-6711 _____ 1-866-311-3405
Sign Single-Payer Petitions: http://www.singlepayeraction.org/join.html
http://www.americacantwait.com/TrueMajority
Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.
SEMPER FI!
NAVDOC
You make several very intelligently written points. Obviously you are one of the few 'well informed' posting participants of CD.
Everything you point out in your posting is attributable to the Plutocratic Oligarchy and its many willing participants.
You seem to have a professional associations familiarity with the 'industry' and you reveal an enormous possession of information.
Taking this into consideration would you be willing participate in a large movement of other professionals from many other fields who realize that the 'PO' needs to be eliminated from the equation and are willing to participate in their own capacities to work toward such a goal?
Respond to this and we can go from there.
Thank you.
NativeSon
NAVDOC,
Thank you for a constructive, well-informed post with links and specific actions readers can take. It's a helpful step up from the often despairing (if cathartic) rants many of us post.
Of course you also clearly illuminate the mountain-moving necessary to reclaim our democracy and why so many lose faith. The correlation of naked public bribery with bad public policy and violent foreign policy is so starkly self-evident, but the weedy undergrowth of quid-pro-quo (and mainstream media malpractice) has somehow obscured that forest from many of our fellow sheep. I hope we can begin the selective clearing needed now to prevent a raging wildfire that brings wholesale destruction of an otherwise great ecosystem.
Your post is a helpful contribution. I presume you are a Navy or Marine doctor(?) Keep up the faith and good works.
Sorry doctors, Obama will be in Europe to promote the Olympics for Chicago - so he can't meet with you. Yes, we are in two wars, a health care and financial crisis and innocent young people are being killed frequently on the streets of Chicago's southside - but the Olympics is a "top" priority. I guess the economy is that bad - only the Olympics can save us. So, all those americans without health insurance - enjoy the Chicago Olympics. You can be sure some of the sponsors will be the incredibly wealthy and powerful health insurance companies in America. The only country were it seems to right to profit off the sick. But who is really sick?
Well, here's a simplistic but totally democratic solution from an outsider.
Allow people, changeable on a yearly or some other term basis only, to choose either a private medical insurance corporation or a government single payer.
Those that choose the private option will not have any of their premiums going towards supporting those who can't afford or are denied private insurance. Actual healthcare services remain as they are now. Those with heavy coins are still free to buy whatever medical services they want.
Since the majority of people will opt for single payer and likely more will join at every anniversary then you have democratic free choice and competition where the best will prevail. Without the onerous bureaucratic middle man AKA private medical insurance sucking up all the funds the single payer side will likely more than cover those currently uninsured.
Single payer or single term.
Public option is not an option.
I'm waiting for our intrepid Medicine Men to deny their services to Reich Wing Republicans.
And Reich Wing Democrats! The two parties are very merged. The differences are rather superficial.
Let's reduce the long frenzied debate on health care to its simplest meaning. The profits of insurers and pharmaceuticals versus the lives of people.
Who are we? What do we stand for? Even European conservatives, e.g. Sarkozy and Merkle will not deny health care to the citizens of their countries.
Memo to Cherenkov:
Great post.
But let's be clear.
When Primary season is upon us, we MUST RUN AS INDEPENDENTS.
If we run in a primary as Democrats, especially against entrenched Democrats (which would be about 95%), we would get trounced because the DNC will give millions to the incumbents.
But if we run as Independents we have at least a chance to still be left standing for the November election.
I may be wrong, but I think if you run as an Independent in the primary, regardless of how many votes you get, you move on to the general election.
Which means, regardless of your funding, you will be invited to ALL the forums, ALL the debates, ALL the newspaper interviews etc.
Whether we win or not, we will have a season in at least 435 Congressional districts and a third of the Senate that is up for re-election, to get out our message.
And by now we ALL know what that message is.
Abbybwood, R.N.
News for the author: progressives aren't reduced to supporting a meaningless public option. They support a Single Payer system.
Medicare For All, also known as single-payer health insurance, is favored by a majority of Americans.
How can we convince our Members of Congress to enact what the people want?
Let them know that unless they support Medicare For All, you won't support them.
Take the Medicare For All Pledge today:
http://bit.ly/medicareforallpledge
Question ----- How can we convince our Members of Congress to enact what the people want?
Answer ----- We act in unison. One Million Citizens are More Powerful than Lobbyists.
Go here:
www.medicareforall.org
and sign up, make one call and log it. Read on for more.
FLOOD CONGRESS ---- You will get a monthly reminder each month to spend 10-15 minutes that month to print an already addressed letter to your U.S. Representative. WHY? Because every month each participant gets a fresh set of suggestions that make it easy to personalize your letters .... either by using one of those suggestions as an idea ... or simply picking one of the suggestions and hand-writing it on the letter.
Finally, if you want to do more, get more participants.
To learn more, select "Help Get Care" on the home page.
Bob Haiducek
Don't rely on letters alone. If that's all Congress members receive, no serious public demonstrations of large kind, then the members of Congress won't feel particularly threatened, politically. March in large numbers on DC and state capitals or capital houses, whatever they're called; and send in letters too.
Don't rely on marching either! Has peaceful permitted marching or demonstrations worked for any other issue in the past few decades?
When will people learn that appeals to "morality", being "nice", and even the most reasoned logical arguments to these elites even by milloins in the streets, absolutely do NOT work!
The elites ONLY change their behavior if we impact their material interests. They must be put in a situaiton where the material consequences of NOT acceding to our demands are worse than acceding to them. This can only be done through direct action that disrupts their wealth-acquiring machinery until thea accede. No; contrary to what the bourgeis peace-extremistts say, such disruptive action is NOT "violence"; even Gandhi approved of such tactics.
The sit-down actions at insurance company headquarters are a start, and should continue; but, they must go beyond this, and include forcible occupations of the offices and disruptions of their means to operate.
Whether Congress does or does not pass this insurance company enrichment legislation, won't put much of a dent in the number of medically uninsured or underinsured, nor in the number (45,000 annually) of Americans who die from being uninsured, nor in the number of bankruptcies and/or foreclosures due to unpaid medical bills. What Cogress' failure to deliver single payer will do, however, is to so dampen public support for anything else that President Obama and Congress, if so inclined, tries in regards to the progressive agend, including but not limited to troops out now and reversing global warming. Which means that in matters dear to progressives his presidency will end up being a complete bust, setting Republicans up to take back our government by 2012 or earlier and for another 8 years, at least, after which, even if there's a groundswell of popular support for a Turnabout, sorry, no chance, much too late, what with perpetual wars + global warming + economic collapse = doomsday. Which means that it's now or never, and, since President Obama's turned out to be a sell-out, let the peaceful revolution begin with mass uprisings in support of single payer. Why single payer and not, say, troops out now? Because that's the issue that's on the table now and because at least 65% of the public already is for it, that's why. Who'll lead? All of us, since in a revolution each and every one leads. And no, there is no alternative, since everything else that's been tried has failed.
After voting "no" on the latest incarnation of the public option, Sen Orrin Hatch stated, "Washington isn't the answer!". Really, Orrin? Then WTF are you doing there? Or Orrin, is "Washington not the answer" precisely because of you and your fellow pay-for-play jackals? Have you noticed, Orrin, that the public option is polling 60% favorable and Congress is polling less than 20% favorable?
And do Dems Conrad, Nelson, Carper and Baucus feel better with a little cover from a wingnut reactionary? The whole thing is priceless...
A pox on both their houses...
Orin therein lied in two ways, by saying Washington, that is, the federal government, is not the body to ensure universal, single-payer healthcare for everyone, which is his open lie; while his lie by omission is about the fact that he and all other politicians, if not all government employees, have single-payer, very universal healthcare paid for from The People's tax dollars. Or is he honest and doesn't accept this government employee benefit? I doubt it.
That's a fact or reality that ALL voters need to be informed about, repeatedly, and carefully keep in mind, always.
We need more Mad as Hell Doctors, Mad as Hell Nurses, Mad as Hell Patients and their loved ones to speak out 24/7 and 'make them do it'....make them take "democracy" seriously and knock it off with this lame pretense that the health care 'debate' has anything whatsoever to do with health or care.....Some people can be fooled all the time, but this charade had wasted precious time to please only corporate persons ALL of the time and to hell with flesh and blood PEOPLE!!! If any industry should be relegated to the dustbin of history, it's the insurance industry and their lobbyists. Maybe if those folks get laid off like so many of the rest of us, they'll develop a case of humanity and develop the capacity for 'right livelihood'. Too big to fail? Too big to NOT fail! We need localized economies and liberation from the tyranny of parasitic corporations, not an overpriced life-support system for an industry that sucks up precious resources that could benefit actual human beings...maybe there's a hospice care option for the insurance behemoths, but would just pulling THEIR plug be any worse than continuing to harm all the uninsured, underinsured & ripped off?... and frankly, folks, do they give a damn about YOUR palliative care? No more toll booths barring the way to decent health care!
And why should it only be "Mad as Hell Doctors, Mad as Hell Nurses, Mad as Hell Patients and their loved ones to speak out 24/7 and ...", when it should be the whole population?! Are you trying to exempt yourself from contributing to this activism you appear to be making only other people responsible for; or only misexpressing yourself?
The MIC should also be relegated to the dustbin. Also the CIA operations directorate and U.S. NED, and USAID, which aren't industries, but definitely work for them and NOT for the populations of the USA or of any other countries. Add the CFR, also.
when the nwo shill obama says: "I am not the first person to take up the cause of health care but I am determined to be the last,"
i think he's got that right - should be another 50 years before anyone will try that again
Yah, and, well, since he's "determined to be the last" to "take up the cause of health care", I guess he plans on making sure that no one else does in the near future; ensuring that he'll close the coffin's cover and keep it closed, for as long as he has a say in this. And what do people expect when his presidential campaign received a LOT of money from the non-health insurance cies, anyway. He'll close the coffin for them.
Important News Alert to Oregonians
The Green Party is looking closely at a candidate to replace sold out, and quite rude, Ron Wyden. It was Wyden who answered a question at one of his town hall meeting: "Why don't you support single payer, given 60% of Americans and 87% of Democratic voters prefer it?" Wyden's answer: "I don't think Americans are ready for singly payer."
The gall! Let's show him who's ready and who isn't!
So yes, the Greens are coming close to putting on the ballot an Oregon Dr., a past progressive Democrat who now sees the light. He works tirelessly for single payer. If you're from Oregon, your chance to rid the state of Ron Wydens and his arrogance is coming up.
That's almost unbelievable of someone who's supposed to represent DEMOCRACY and the Green Party or any party to say and think. He's basically telling the party's supporters and most U.S. citizens, and immigrants wanting to some day become citizens, that he'd love to see you all suffer due to rich elites' GREED; flipping a large majority the BIRD, literally (through definite implication) saying he sides with TREASON!
Is it Ralph Nader, or someone else, who I heard or read say that ALL politicians, if not all government employees, HAVE single-payer health-care and all they need? Well, whoever this was, the person's right! He or she was also right about saying this in contrast to the rest of the population not having single-payer care.
Ooh, me me! I am in Oregon and I want that! Does this candidate have a name, or are we looking for someone who fits that description?
I just fired off another letter to Wyden expressing my strong dismay at his incomprehensible exchange system, and noting that I saw him on C-SPAN praising Baucus for his great efforts and telling him his odious bill had many fine qualities. I saw Wyden saying the private system must be preserved because it has an important part to play. He said similar words about our employer based system.
I admire both the ethics and the courage of the "Mad as Hell Doctors", but their political acumen could probably stand a little tweaking.
So far, they can't even get their own union -- er, excuse me, AMA professional association -- to reflect their positions on health care. One can't help wondering how, in the circumstances, they expect to have any greater success with an entire system of national governance that is at least equally corrupt and opposed to their demands.
Only 25% of active, practicing physicians belong to the AMA. 59% of practicing physicians support single payer healthcare reform.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_doctors_revolt
The AMA isn't even a professional association...it's the Chamber of Commerce for the medical industry.
The answer is simple. Run primary challengers in those districts which house the turncoat Dems.
One of four things will happen:
1. The member of the district will spend down his or her campaign chest and the Repug will win.
2. The member of the district will spend down his or her campaign chest and the member will win.
3. The progressive will win the primary and lose the election.
4.The progressive will win the primary and win the election.
In which of these cases does the the public win? Only number four. It is time to face the facts. The Democratic party has sold out. It is the Lite Wing of the Repugs.
We need to run progressive candidates not only in order to perhaps win office, but to force the existing Democrats to revoke their Junior Repug Ranger status, to make them more like the majority which WANTS THE DAMNED SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM!!!
If all you care about is putting your brand into office no matter what they do once they get there, then vote for the corporate Dems. Go ahead. Bite off that nose to spite your face.
The way to get votes is to pursue votes from people who feel powerless. SEIU and ACORN have it right. While the corporations can buy Congresspeople, they can't buy the people. The way you make people feel like they have power is to provide the things they need and should rightfully have. Universal health care, like the civilized world already has, is one of those things.
If you give the people this one thing, the Democratic party will remain in power for at least a generation, maybe two. At that point, the Repugs will be outed as ideologically bankrupt for all to see. What will they run on? Taking away health care? They would be committing political suicide.
The opportunity to do something amazing and spectacularly good for one's party and for the people one represents comes only a few times in the life of a republic. The only question is, are you a little man, a little woman, scampering about at the feet of corporate masters hoping they won't stomp you, that they will drop you some crumbs while the people get sick, or are you a giant? A representative of the PEOPLE?
Which is it?
You, as a representative of the people, have the chance to be part of a major event, a once in a lifetime chance to be like the founders at Liberty Hall, to have signed your name to a piece of paper that says, "We work for the people and not for the Crown...err, Corporations!"
Sign onto single-payer. Do it for your career, do it for your soul, do it for the people, do it for the nation.
I sure hope these medical heroes are still in DC when we get there next week I would sure like to shake their healing hands. In my 60 plus years of living on this planet, I've have had the pleasure to deal with medical and dental professionals who were truly exceptional in the fact that they seemed to be motivated by giving their best rather than taking your money. Many young interns now a days are from poor and middle income backgrounds and this makes all the difference in the world on where their hearts are. May God bless them and keep them from harm, and may their deeds be recorded in the Book of Life. By the way the weather will be outstanding for the beginning of next week--you all come out and make history--if you don't it won't.
FIVE DAYS AND COUNTING!
"I am not the first person to take up the cause of health care but I am determined to be the last," President Obama declared to great applause in his recent speech before Congress."
I remember this speech, and I laughed! With his advocacy for "health insurance reform" instead of "health care reform," it was clear to me from the beginning that Obama was not on the side of "we the people."
I salute the doctors from Oregon who took the time out of their busy schedules to put the public interest -- our health care needs -- ahead of their own needs. I wish I could have made the trip to D.C., and stood with them, but I am amongst the unemployed, and the uninsured. I deeply appreciate their efforts!
It was clear to you that he's "not on the side of" The People and it should be clear. After all, he's quoted saying that he's ["determined to be the last"] person to "take up the cause of health care". Now, can someone please explain why those words drew applause? What the heck is wrong with the audience; are they all DEAF and/or illiterate? Or is he being misquoted? He's literally quoted saying he'll be the last to care!
Amen Kay. These docs have proven themselves far beyond ethical!
Go Doctors! It's like Obama said we need a Bike to get to the promised land of healthcare reform. Then the Dems tried to sell us a Skateboard. Finally the Mad as Hell Doctors (and Kucinich of course) remind us that the promised land is in fact on the other side of the RIVER, and only a boat will do!
Excellent article, Mr. Harris. You write, "Other than to perhaps prove what a reasonable man the President is, the question to be asked is just: Why?"
Why indeed. The lack of fire in Obama's belly is bewildering; his "hope express" is out of steam and about to derail. Another hint of his maddening ambivalence came with this quote:
"This is sort of like the belt and suspenders concept to keep up your pants. You know, the insurance reforms are the belt. The public option can be the suspenders," the president added.' (CNN) Say what? Who do you know who wears suspenders? Clearly, the public option is as expendable as yesterday's suspenders.
A YouTube video skit “Bloodsuckers” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVs2HG1u8Vw may be inelegant, but it clearly highlights the most incendiary feature of the current Bogus “democratic” healthcare bill. Not only are single-payer, non-profit choice and competition abandoned without genuine negotiation---but in a stark example of adding injury to insult, this dirty act of congress compels the American people to buy corporate insurance--- a profiteers' mandate to be enforced by the IRS through compulsory tax withholdings, fines and penalties.
Really! No one is making this stuff up! The bipartisan solution to our healthcare crisis is to exploit it by bleeding people with corporate leeches---taking us back to the Dark Ages.
Such audacity of cynicism and betrayal is so mind-boggling that the progressive community seems largely speechless in a state of stunned disbelief. Which Republican could possibly have devised such brilliant ‘strategery’ to destroy the Democratic Party--- a party now poised to jump from a cliff, wearing a hangman’s noose of its own design? Surely Republicans are wetting and herniating themselves to stifle their guffaws.
In reality, of course, through perfectly transparent public bribery, the game has been fixed for decades, from long before voodoo reaganomics. Though there are still many earnest, committed people in government, they have been effectively stalemated in a grand psych-out game of move-counter-move by the same players wearing different corporate colors, with many DINO dems once again fumbling on purpose.
Only now, after so much war profiteering, free-racketeering, and casino bailouts, we may hope that this fatal healthcare farce becomes the final wakeup for a critical mass of people on both sides of the net. Then we can finally unmask the fixers and crooked umpires, eject them from the game and administer a lethal injection to this parasitic insurance industry.
I interviewed one of these doctors, an emergency room doctor in Corvallis OR at the beginning of this year and sent in an article to be published at different I web sites and I don't know if it got published but it surely should have to show something from someone who deals with this issue first hand and knows and tells all just what the problem is and that AARP, which pretends to be for retired people which is officially represents is really on the side of the health insurance industry or at least it is at its top level and has been for sometime. These have been the health insurance industry's fifth columnists and collaborators to this morally bankrupt health care mess in the USA.
But these doctors and those backing them are the chief hope of real health care reform in this country, and if this president won't listen to them, he sure as hell doesn't deserve a second term.
As someone who's now a direct victim of the health insurance industry tyranny over health in the USA, I speak from direct and painful experience of this ruthless, money grubbing, green back dollar worship, phony corrupt US health care mess with its private health insurance industry rationed health care and death panels and shortage of surgeons in remote rural areas across the USA which have al to often slavishly handed their votes to those doing them the most harm and harmed the country as well due to their lack of access to the truth which would otherwise set them free of this tyranny.
AD