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Health Reform Truth Oozes Out: And It Is Not Just
"Everything there is to say about healthcare has been said and just about everyone has said it," Obama said. "So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform healthcare so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America's families and businesses." Not just...
So, who is listed first and foremost as the beneficiaries of this reform? The insurance companies. Ah, let the truth roll down. It will set you free. Not just...
It is an aside, an afterthought, if any of the provisions of the current reform bills actually relieve the concerns patients have about being the widgets of the healthcare business and not human beings with a basic human right to care when sick. The first priority has been to make things better for those in power in this system - those who control the profits. Not just...
Health insurance companies will enjoy new pools of customers the likes of which they've never enjoyed before. They'll have to insure all (wink, wink) and they'll have to stop rescissions unless fraud is at work (wink, wink), but they'll be able to charge a lot for their coverage and deny claims - patients will still have to fight them or die. And many, many will still die. Many will still go broke. Not just...
I suppose in a turn of words I find more appropriate, this process has failed to flush out all of the reasonable alternatives in an honest way. The option of expanding and improving Medicare for all has not been explored seriously, and that made the outcome less just. The President said from the start that the only way to get to true universality was through some sort of a single-payer system. So, he decided from the start of this reform process that true universality, true justice for all in the delivery of healthcare in the United States, was not at the top of his priorities. And Congress followed along. Not just...
Justice for all was never really discussed or vetted as the priority in health reform. This started out being about protecting the money interests and that is where it will end. So what will result? Whether it's through reconciliation or not, this reform will miss the mark for healthcare justice by a long shot. It's not just at all.
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72 Comments so far
Show AllI heard it too. Shameless. And people still back the democrats. Shameless.
The republicans are every bit as guilty as the Dems - if not more so - for creating the current healthcare fiasco. People still back them. Why is that fact not shameless?
q
Absolutely. The parties are really two branches of the same tree. Around here, I take it as a given that people understand the blatant corruption of the republicans. It is the democrats that pretend to fight for the left.
quickstepper you are obviously a very humane person but your loyalty is counterproductive. May I suggest a more appropiate handle, like,
"Custer"
Loyalty to what and counterproductive for whom?
q
loyalty to democrats and counterproductive to change.
I apologize, I confused you with ezflyer who always defends Obomber and the lesser evil.
Well, duh, the fact that Republicans are against single payer has long been known.
But not everyone knows yet that Obama is in the same camp as the Republicans. In fact, Obama's plan is to give insurance companies millions of brand new customers! Lucky them, eh? Yet We the People get close to nothing, just more of the same ... only in a prettier package.
When over 60% of the American people say they want Medicare for all and the Obama administration ignores that, pretends this finding doesn't exist, what else is there to think or say? He's a sell out, pure and simple. He could give a rip about the people. He's in it for money and power. This is an empire, what do we expect?
Obama has far more important things to think about anyway, like getting the 33+ billion dollars for another escalation in Afghanistan.
Although it appears increasingly unlikely, it is my sincere hope and desire that this dreadful turkey of a bill fails.. This blatant accommodation of the 'for-profit health care insurance industry is just another bad idea from the party without any good ones.
Forget Obama, he's a nothingburger.. This phony baloney media narrative of Dems vs GOP is dishonest.. it's not about that.. It's about We The People vs the corporate establishment and their 'elected' slaves in both parties.
The American People better wake up and figure out what time it is.
Damned straight. The non-media approved axis is populist-corporatist. The media nurses the left-right, R-D paradigm to keep us from noticing that the corporations, especially in finance, own two parties in Washington and our representative government works for them.
For example, remember how television covered the angry righties at the town hall meetings, demanding congress defend their right to be ripped off by insurers? Compare that coverage to the single payer advocates' civil disobedience. Hmmm, always one story told, the one the corporations want everyone to think they know is so.
Private, for-profit health "insurance" is not worth having.
My "provider" walked away from my quadruple-bypass operation before I was out of intensive care.
"This phony baloney media narrative of Dems vs GOP is dishonest."
It's not just a mainstream media narrative. We see plenty of trolls on this site trying to single out one party or the other while ignoring the real issues.
The narrative may be dishonest (Is anything in the corporate media honest?) but it's also very effective at distracting public attention away from the realities of this and other matters.
q
Thank you, Lord, thank you, Jesus. I didn't want to read tfa, afraid of what BS I'd find. But if it outed the utter dog whistle that is the partisan argument, then I still might go back and give it a look.
People who did not see through this shyster Obama, and thought he was their savior - their heads must be asploding left and right...
The snake has two heads. The debate Obama refers to never happened. I didn't hear anything about actually having a humane and less costly health care system which is possible with a single-payer system.
Universal Health Care wasn't just taken off the table like impeachment, but locked out of the room with the phone off the hook.
I can always count on Donna -- God bless her -- to listen to Barack when it comes to health care reform and bring out the salient points. I can't stand the sound of his voice and his BS -- it's not good for my uninsured health. He let a big one slip. You think anybody else caught that? I sure hope so. I did hear about the AMA white-coat prop doctors coming back for an encore and had a good chuckle over that one. That is the only thing worth a chuckle. It's so Bush-like, except that everybody else wears the costumes.
Surely any "business" that exists by virtue of legislation is not a business but a tax.
Think about it?
Socialism by Stealth.
No. It's theft.
Socialism implies a benefit to society, which is, if you've been paying attention. notably absent here.
It is time to set the record and the "programmed" straight about the TRUE tenets of Democratic Socialism. If we don't start to trend in that direction, you can believe that the top 1% will soon become even wealthier right before our eyes while the working class continues to try and survive with the Gucci shoes holding us down.
http://dsausa.org/pdf/widemsoc.pdf
But it is all SO simple; as the article indicates, a easy solution is to fix and expand Medicare to cover everybody. Whew. work done, now on to actually capping and decreasing greenhouse gases, setting up a sane energy policy favoring alternative sources, putting people back to work in green jobs, cutting the bloated Pentagon budget, ending our wars, and ending corporate personhood,
Whoo. That all would rile up our plutocratic masters and they might declare martial law and mow the rioting crowds in the streets and the gutters will flow with blood.
Wow, my meds must be facked up.
Gary
"Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it's the rule."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
The health care "debate" has revealed the two-party system for the sham that it really is.
absolutely correct.
it isn't pretty, but there it is, staring you in the face.
the duplicity, the lies, the shameless paternalism.
Obama says we discussed the entire gamut of solutions,
the Republicans say that America does not want government between the patient and the doctor.
I'm embarrassed, I'm disheartened, I'm bereft of hope.
We can say vote for 3rd party across the board, and we should especially at the local and state levels. On the national level, I'm afraid 3rd party candidates will be ignored by the MSM, blocked from national debates, and will be again effectively discounted by the general population as something less than mainstream, thus too dangerous to seriously consider.
Actually, this opus operandi occurs at the state level as well, when the big money floods into the anointed one's campaign chests for massive TV advertising during the last weeks of campaigns.
you see, the foxes are guarding the hen houses, they are in the hen houses, and they will not let anyone else in. They have closed the doors behind them, and they have and will change the rules to maintain their hold.
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What we really have in DC is two so called Corporatist teams that represent different groupings of Corp. power. The people are nowhere represented by these groups. The people are merely customers thats all and to be treated as such ( in the modern sense) the customers are rubes to be ripped off the way the banks do business these days. The deals and benefits and tax breaks go to the owners and the top managers and everyone else gets to pay for all of this. Crony Capitalism , neo-liberalism, Fascism whatever u call it it all boils down to a form of official corruption that reigns in DC these days in both parties. Its a given and the President has made it clear that real reform means more profits for the select few and whatever for everyone else.
It's a very sad state of affairs.
Did anyone read 3/2/10 or could be 3/3/10 NYT's Tom Friedman 'A Word From The Wise'? For me, this column summed up his, the elite's, the wealthy's, the corporate's, utter and total disdain for the American populace ... ordinary, everyday citizens. But, I am also going to include all politicians and our entire government in that list.
Check out that Friedman column ... specifically note the comments regarding healthcare. I almost vomitted. But those few words will clue everyone in on how we are looked upon and therefore treated.
It's a very sad state of affairs.
I have seen some of the representatives for the health insurance industry and the destain they held for the common person was palpable from the look on their faces. Pretty disturbing stuff. IMHO many of these people are just plain sick.
If the Senate had ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, healh care would be a civil right because it's a human right. The UDHR could still be ratified, but no president has bothered to even try, which speaks volumes, IMO.
VP,
Well said!
Chelsea
I've always been afraid not to vote Democratic because I've been scared of the Republicans. But after 8 years of war-mongering and absolute corporate rule, this current administration doesn't seem very different. Next time I'm voting third party, but I'm not sure which one to choose.
President Palin sounds scary, but at least it will be entertaining.
Eagle ------- Congradulations ! Try Green
ANY of the Green/Socialist Parties will do.
Great choice. It wouldn't take that many million Eagle Bills to turn around this country's policies, both domestic and foreign, in a major way. If we don't elect a President we put the fear of a Third Way into both the parties. And you don't have to wait til 12; there are Green, independent and other third party candidates that will be running for Congress this fall. Check 'em out! Bernie Sanders is lonely. Make your voice heard at the voting booth, they sure-as-hell don't listen to much else.
There are also real progressives who are going to challenge incumbents or empty seats in the primaries. I think we need to keep that option open as well
4thefuture: Agreed, and since congressional primaries are held during the summer, the "message" of progressive electoral power can be demonstrated even sooner than November. From the other side of the ideological perspective, see how a Tea Party candidate shook up the Republican primary for governor in Texas; even though she didn't win that election, she probably promoted Rick Perry's Tea Party credentials.
President Palin is a horrible joke.
A horrible joke for a horrible country.
the Oval Orifice?
Maybe not, it might get people like Ezeflyer off his butt and out in the street when she is permitted to do the exact same things as Obummer by the people in the think tanks that actually write the scripts spokesmodels like Obummer & Pale-In read. The only way she'd be different is in culture wars issues that do not effect the bottom line of bankster military industrial complex that funds the think tanks that write the position papers the pols read before firebombing third world countries.
The light is Green. Go!
Greens are recruiting the best progressive candidates. If you think you are qualified or you have suggestions, I think you can reach them on the national website: www.gp.org
Pass it on.
Well I tried that route. I registered as a Green, and attended the monthly business meetings, and nothing meaningful ever came from the Green Party. Well intentioned good folks, but wholly unable to run an effective political party and therefore in my view inappropriate for support.
We need SOME third party to crash the gates of the duopoly we have now. Once the door is broken in and people see it's possible then other parties can come forward. I thought it might have been Perot's Reform party, or the Green Party, but it wasn't meant to be. As much as I think they're misguided and naive, the Tea Party folks might be the ones to do it if they aren't co-opted by the Republicans. As such, even if you don't support the Tea Party folks, let them have their day in the sun and we'll see if they can gain the momentum to achieve elected office in D.C.
I agree with wildwood that any "business" that exists by virtue of legislation is not a business, but a tax.
That is why the favored "Insurance Business's" -exemption from antitrust laws status- needs to be "unlegislated" or taken away.
A business made profitable by legislation is an extreme form of privatized government. Take the post office, for example. Because so many of you internet slackers are paying your bills online and emailing instead of writing letters, the post office is failing. Therefore, to keep this service, everybody must either show they spent a minimum of $1000 a year on postage or pay a tax. Because we need the post office, we need to mandate that everybody pay more to support it. Meanwhile, the government mandate won't stop the price of a stamp from going to a buck forty.
Excellent article.
Just wait until the Repugs habitually start using reonciliation, after they take Congress.
No reform is better than fraudalent reform.
Obomber needs to be punished as you would any out of control child, time out from Office.
Donna, I not only share your anger but after witnessing how even the poorest of the developed nations go out of their way to offer a decent form of universal health care, it pisses me off even more that this already lost soul of a nation relies on us hapless souls to steer the war ship with some of them even railing against single payer health care. There is also something else you should know. In other countries where universal health care actually exists, there are no prohibitions against natural plants such as cannabis and there is still a sizable majority in each country teaming up to counter those western multinational drug companies and keep their healthy cultural traditions alive despite a growing percentage of the population of each of those nations falling for disaster capitalism. I looked up some of your articles I may have missed while I was away after reading this one and I pray for your son to make it back alive even as our nation is still a lost soul with a war machine that counts on some of us to fall for false hope, false pride, and false everything to keep the machine running. I have slowly come to realize that it is impossible to steer the war ship away but it is better to leave it stranded. I believe that your son will wake up and take your gifted thinking of healthcare not warfare into consideration before it is too late. Good luck Donna.
Hey everybody, thanks for the encouragement. I'm quite new to the internet and this is the best political site I've found. I'll have to grow thick skin because if the Rethugs reclaim the Congress in September, my family and friends will hold me accountable. I have two choices. Choice one is to lie and tell everyone I voted Democratic. Choice two is to tell the truth and tell everyone; kiss my liberated ass!
Please remember that it's even more important to support third party cadidates at the local and state levels than it is to elect a third-party president.
Also, you'll learn fairly quickly how to identify the right-wing trolls who show up here to disparage respected Progressive figures.
q
quickstepper: thanks for encouraging Eagle Bill. As for "identifying right-wing trolls," I don't put much store in that kind of activity. Fractious cusses that we progressives are, we sometimes attribute trolldom to someone just because they disagree with us on a strongly-held opinion. You may have identified by at least one fellow poster of being a troll and I have been so "identified" as well. Neither one of us is a "troll" but if we were, what of it? Let our ideas stand or fall on their merits and our ability to defend them rather than some ad hominem dismissal of others' ideas as being those of a troll? Besides, like the Devil, even trolls can be learned from.
Does anyone know why on earth the health care reform Obamanation is being supported by MoveOn? No way to contact them to object or at least quit supporting them and encourage others to do so as well. What happened to them?
What happened to them? They need the eggs!*
* Old joke cited by Woody Allen in "Annie Hall":
A man mentions to his psychiatrist that he has a brother at home who thinks he's a chicken.
The psychiatrist suggests that the man bring in his brother for treatment.
The man replies, "Well, I would, but we need the eggs."
ยท Yr Obd't Servant
LOL!