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Healthcare Jujitsu: A Path to Medicare for All
Not surprisingly, today’s debut Supreme Court argument over the so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “tax,” and the question of whether the issue is ripe for review.
(File photo)
Behind this judicial foreplay is the brute political fact that if the Court decides the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the entire law starts unraveling.
But with a bit of political jujitsu, the President could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system – Medicare for all.
Here’s how.
The dilemma at the heart of the new law is that it continues to depend on private health insurers, who have to make a profit or at least pay all their costs including marketing and advertising.
Yet the only way private insurers can afford to cover everyone with pre-existing health problems, as the new law requires, is to have every American buy health insurance – including young and healthier people who are unlikely to rack up large healthcare costs.
This dilemma is the product of political compromise. You’ll remember the Administration couldn’t get the votes for a single-payer system such as Medicare for all. It hardly tried. Not a single Republican would even agree to a bill giving Americans the option of buying into it.
But don’t expect the Supreme Court to address this dilemma. It lies buried under an avalanche of constitutional argument.
Those who are defending the law in Court say the federal government has authority to compel Americans to buy health insurance under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives Washington the power to regulate interstate commerce. They argue our sprawling health insurance system surely extends beyond an individual state.
Those who are opposing the law say a requirement that individuals contract with private insurance companies isn’t regulation of interstate commerce. It’s coercion of individuals.
Unhappily for Obama and the Democrats, most Americans don’t seem to like the individual mandate very much anyway. Many on the political right believe it a threat to individual liberty. Many on the left object to being required to buy something from a private company.
The President and the Democrats could have avoided this dilemma in the first place if they’d insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option.
After all, Social Security and Medicare require every working American to “buy” them. The purchase happens automatically in the form of a deduction from everyone’s paychecks. But because Social Security and Medicare are government programs financed by payroll taxes they don’t feel like mandatory purchases.
Americans don’t mind mandates in the form of payroll taxes for Social Security or Medicare. In fact, both programs are so popular even conservative Republicans were heard to shout “don’t take away my Medicare!” at rallies opposed to the new health care law.
There’s no question payroll taxes are constitutional, because there’s no doubt that the federal government can tax people in order to finance particular public benefits. But requiring citizens to buy something from a private company is different because private companies aren’t directly accountable to the public. They’re accountable to their owners and their purpose is to maximize profits. What if they monopolize the market and charge humongous premiums? (Some already seem to be doing this.)
Even if private health insurers are organized as not-for-profits, there’s still a problem of public accountability. What’s to prevent top executives from being paid small fortunes? (In more than a few cases this is already happening.)
Moreover, compared to private insurance, Medicare is a great deal. Its administrative costs are only around 3 percent, while the administrative costs of private insurers eat up 30 to 40 percent of premiums. Medicare’s costs are even below the 5 percent to 10 percent administrative costs borne by large companies that self-insure, and under the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.
So why not Medicare for all?
Because Republicans have mastered the art of political jujitsu. Their strategy has been to demonize government and seek to privatize everything that might otherwise be a public program financed by tax dollars (see Paul Ryan’s plan for turning Medicare into vouchers). Then they go to court and argue that any mandatory purchase is unconstitutional because it exceeds the government’s authority.
Obama and the Democrats should do the reverse. If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate in the new health law, private insurers will swarm Capitol Hill demanding that the law be amended to remove the requirement that they cover people with pre-existing conditions.
When this happens, Obama and the Democrats should say they’re willing to remove that requirement – but only if Medicare is available to all, financed by payroll taxes.
If they did this the public will be behind them — as will the Supreme Court.
Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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93 Comments so far
Show All"Many on the left object to being required to buy something from a private company."
No.
We don't object to being required to buy "something" from "a private company".
We object to being forced to buy a defective product, to being forced to enrich the coffers of the immoral entities that caused the crisis to begin with.
That's what we object to.
As far as painting the Obama White House as impotent politically in 2008-2009, forced to compromise with the right, well we all know better by now, don't we, Robert?
If Obama had wanted Americans to have national health care, a public option (at the very least) would be kicking in about now.
As it is, his disgusting collusion with the insurance industry has doomed millions of people, particularly the old and most vulnerable, to sickness, death, and medical bankruptcy.
The Democratic Party's impotence during the 2008-2010 period when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, confirms that the Party needs to admit it is redundant, and its only mission is to compete with the GOP for corporate funding.
Obama never met a corporate welfare program he didn't love. Obamacare is one of the biggest corporate welfare programs the world has ever seen. The Mississippi River will change course and flow into Hudsons Bay before Obama will allow single-payer or even a public option anywhere near the table.
It is not collusion with the insurance industry that has doomed millions of people to sickness, death and bankruptcy. It is the medical monopoly, that insurance companies are part of, that sucks us dry. Medicare is simply another way the monopoly bleeds us.
Ok. So private insurance is bad (i agree), but you also assert that public insurance is also bad... so how then do you propose health care be delivered?
Of course public insurance is bad. It means paying (i.e. spending) billions of dollars for care that is at best slightly helpful, at worst, deadly. Most illness is caused by poor diet/nutritional deficiencies, lack of physical activity and environmental toxins. You either treat the cause or spend money endlessly and uselessly.
The first thing that has to happen is that FDA be shut down or at least be required to follow the law. A recent court ruling that FDA ignored a ruling 35 years ago and now has to do something about animal antibiotics (80% of antibiotics are used by animals and this produces antibiotic resistance in humans along with superbugs like the e coli from hell) The FDA also has to stop pulling supplements from the market when a drug is developed from a natural vitamin or vitamin metabolite. It needs to allow truth in advertising and stop calling walnuts and cherries "drugs" because they can improve health and counter disease.
Next, states have to prohibit medical societies from punishing members who use "unapproved" therapies (even when their patients get well) Cite for damage to patients.
Primary health care has to be delivered on a cash basis. I have no grand plan but I know that costs have to come way down and the only way to do that is with honest competition. A "plan" would include medical savings accounts for everyone including medicare and medicaid recipients who would be given accounts. All MSA money could be spent with any licensed/registered therapist in your state--this includes therapeutic massage, naturopaths etc and could be used to purchase supplements.and lab tests. Currently, a test for vitamin d costs over $200 plus a visit to the doctor to order it. You can get the same test for $75 (includes shipping) from the vitamin d council website. If you had to pay for this yourself, which would you choose? Cash and choice are the only ways to bring down costs, and in the meantime, actually get well.
There is no "fix". The monopoly has to be broken and nothing positive will happen until that happens.
The latest egregious attack on healthy food comes from the totalitarian State of Michigan which has passed a law allowing the State to slaughter all pigs on small farms because they are "wild". Search killing pigs in Michigan if you don't believe me or go to naturalnews.com and find it.
"Most illness is caused by poor diet/nutritional deficiencies, lack of physical activity and environmental toxins."
That's chronic illness.
Pretty sure most illness is still caused by microscopic pathogens.
And most medical treatment -IIRC- is for such infections, pain, and injury.
I fully agree that "alternative" treatments should be given a fairer shake.
But that is not even almost close to our problem with medicine in the U.S..
Our problem is lack of treatment, full stop, not just lack of "alternative" and preventative treatments.
And this problem stems from the abscence in our Social Contract of a Right to Health (to compliment our other "social" rights, such as Right to Education), not the FDA or the lack of a "cash basis" for healthcare.
Your concerns should be properly addressed AFTER we establish a Right to Health.
matti--First off, I don't have a problem with a right to health care. I simply do not consider what passes for "health care" to be helpful in chronic disease, except to the practitioners who buy second homes in Aspen.
I don't have the statistics but I've worked in 3 different hospitals-2 urban, 1 rural and whether the census is 400 or 40 there have been far more people hospitalized due to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, auto-immune disease, and GI problems than for infection. And, regarding infection, IV vitamin C is proven to be a lifesaver with acute viral illnesses (not chronic, as in AIDS, although I'd sure like to see research pitting it against anti-retrovirals) and far outperforms and is far cheaper than the high end antibiotics and you don't get vitamin C resistance. Also, the super bugs that aren't coming out of CAFOs are coming from hospitals, like methycillin resistant staph aureus (MRSA).
There are physicians who treat an attack of kidney stones in their offices with IV push (not even hanging an IV unless dehydration is a problem) ____ (fill in a common mineral, I don't want to be accused of practicing medicine without a license or of disseminating information on unapproved therapies) They often add some vitamins to the mix but the mineral relaxes muscles and the stones pass within 90 minutes for 90+% of their patients. The rest need a repeat treatment. I don't know how much that procedure costs but a friend's daughter had a kidney stone attack and spent several hours in the ER and 4 days in the hospital.
It is the FDA and AMA that keep these treatments out of "health care" The monopoly controls all of this and that is why it has to be broken or we will be broken by out of control costs for very little health.
So, as I see it, alternatives are the ONLY way to seriously bring down costs. And when costs come seriously down access will be vastly improved. I think it is an error to see this as an afterthought. The parts of medicine that work are some diagnostics, emergency/trauma care, and surgery if you truly need it. Let's provide universal coverage for that but just because people "get care" is irrelevant if the care makes them sicker or simply allows them to get sicker. I know it's hard for people with no experience with real alternative healing to grasp its power which is really about creating balance.
hear hear to both of you cassandra and matti. good points, especially taken together. as an alternative practitioner in a vastly underappreciated field i've seen way too many people who were not helped or were hurt by conventional practices.
i think, just to take your arguments to their logical conclusion, that if we have a right to life we have a right to both the physical and psychological health that are necessary for it, not just a right to health care but the right to not have it not threatened in the first place; the right to not have to go to war, the right to quiet, and no body burden of anything toxic, no radiation and a sufficient healthy diet and pure water, and shelter. maybe Occupy can help with that.
"Primary health care has to be delivered on a cash basis."
Hmm. To me, that sounds even worse than private insurance. As someone who lives in a country with Universal Health care, I have to tell you that it actually works pretty well. People don't die because they can't afford care. People don't go bankrupt due to high medical bills. Care is guaranteed. There are no death panels, or government dictated doctors, no pre-clearing a procedure with the insurance companies.
There are waits for non-emergency procedures, and in the past, they have been a little excessive but the provinces are working on reducing wait times.
There are some "user fees" but those are usually reasonable and for cosmetic things. For example, if you want to get a wart burned off your finger, you don't pay for the doctor visit, but you do pay around $20 . If you need forms filled out for some reason, then you'll pay $20 or $30 for that. Other than that, you're covered.
"Of course public insurance is bad. It means paying (i.e. spending) billions of dollars for care that is at best slightly helpful, at worst, deadly"
I don't quite understand how you arrive at that conclusion or where you're getting your information from. Universal health care works. It's not a perfect utopia, but the net benefit to society is HUGE. Especially compared to the fiasco that is health care in the United States.
Yes I would agree that the Canadian system has worked fairly well. But does Canada put serious restrictions on how much they pay or for what? This system was started in a less corporate scum sort of world. As I follow health care, I see danger signs in many universal care systems. The creatures who have taken control of the U.S. system (if you can call it a system) have their sights on Canada, Europe and the rest of the Western world.
Make no mistake. They are seeking monopoly control of food, water and health care. Their interests are monetary only and they own most of the Western governments. Unless we take a stand we will be too sick to care what they do. Many already are.
Also, they are still going after alternative care, the better to bleed you dry. See my response to matti below. As I said, other systems began before the corporate control was so dominating. I read of an American who was living in Austria for a while and ordered supplements from the US because they were not available in Austria. He was ordered into court to explain why he was "smuggling" illegal substances.
" But does Canada put serious restrictions on how much they pay or for what?"
Only for cosmetic things. They won't pay for your facelift... but they will pay for reconstructive surgery if your face was disfigured. There's very little hoops to jump through. I could go to the doctor 3 days a week for a year complaining of a runny nose, and still not have to pay. There are also provisions within the act to prevent doctors from excessively charging. In effect, the doctors are public employees. Now, they are well paid for sure, specialists more so, but not to the same insane degree as many US doctors.
When it comes to prescription drugs, the amount covered by the government depends on your income declared on your taxes. Since I make a decent wage, the government does not cover any of my prescription costs. I'm fine with that. The less you make, the more the government covers. That being said, additional coverage is often part of workers benefits. Otherwise, people will get something like Blue Cross for $50 / month.
The government health plan does not cover dental or vision care (for those over 18). Something I disagree with. I've often thought that dental should be covered through the government plan as well, due to the direct impact on someone's health from bad teeth.
Anyways, I digress. Basically what it comes down to, is if you require medical attention for whatever reason, it will be provided to you at no cost. If I end up with cancer, my care is covered. If I have a heart attack, I'm covered. Even something as major as a transplant, I'm covered. Broken Leg, no problem.
Now if I require hospitalization, there is no charge if I am just placed on the ward (usually rooms with 4 beds)... If I want a private or semi-private room, that's something I can pay for and get. Now if the hospital is full and there's only semi-private or private rooms available, then they will put you in one at no charge, but move you once a bed on the ward is available. In palliative care, the rooms are often 2 bed rooms.
" The creatures who have taken control of the U.S. system (if you can call it a system) have their sights on Canada, Europe and the rest of the Western world."
Yes, yes they have. But our Health care system is something the vast majority of Canadians hold near and dear and will fight tooth and nail against attacks upon it. That being said, our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a neo-con, zionist shithead. He personally would like to see our entire system privatized. He's said as much. I seriously doubt that even with his current majority government, he would dare to attempt that. His attack on the system is much more nuanced. Slowly but surely, private hospitals are starting to appear, in direct opposition to the Canada Health Act.
The delivery of Health Care is the responsibility of the provinces and each administers it's own plan. It's not a national thing, but is mandated by federal statute. The federal government does transfer funds to each province to help pay for delivery of services. The feds have been quietly reducing that funding. But they can only go so far. IF they fuck with our health care system too much, it's political suicide.
One thing that stresses the Canadian system the most is the lack of qualified heathcare professionals. Doctors, nurses, even clerks are in short supply. This impacts wait times, which continue to be problematic. You want a guaranteed well paying job? Become a RN and come to Canada.
Anyways, I'm no expert on the Canadian universal system. I only know what i've experienced living here all my life. Personally, I find there is very little to complain about, with the exception of maybe wait times in the ER and for elective surgeries. I've had several trips to the ER over the years. Since they are short on staff, there is often a wait. There is a direct correlation between how serious your condition is, the number of other patients and how long you have to wait. A couple of my trips to the ER have been for something rather serious and I didn't wait at all. Other times, weren't so serious and I've waited several hours.
Overall, I would say the Canadian system is pretty darn good... but even that pales in comparison to the system in France. Now THAT'S an excellent system.
Thanks for your explanation of the Canadian system. It is a good system that, as I said, was put together in different times. Actually, you and others get prescription drugs at a much lower cost than here. That is an area in the US of pure thievery. Besides, most prescription drugs do more harm than good.
Some years ago I read that in Australia, if you have high blood pressure the only diuretic that will be reimbursed was Lasix, because it was off patent. That is an example of single payer taking control.
My problem with the example of ongoing treatment for a runny nose is nobody is looking for the cause of the runny nose. Therefore, the patient doesn't get well, just gets "treatment" and the doctor keeps getting tax dollars.
"...IF they fuck with our health care system too much, its political suicide" That's what they used to say about US Social Security, but our "socialist"/"communist" Prez recently cut the SS tax rate and then argued that putting it back would hurt struggling families. Much of the left took his side, despite how that weakens the system.
I agree with you about dental care. That's one reason I like having Medicaid provide medical savings accounts and letting people spend it to meet their own needs, because then poor people could get their teeth fixed.
Cassandra I'm with you 100% on the need to break the medical fascism of the FDA/AMA/PhRMA contingent in this country, and usher in alternative & nutritional therapies & prevention. However, your blind rejection of single payer in favor of "cash" delivery systems, in the face of the overwhelming positive evidence from everywhere in the world using single payer, makes you sound like a complete Ron Paul/"libertarian" wacko, which unfortunately dilutes or negates your medical industrial complex message. Medicare really does work great, has expanded to increasingly include coverage for chiropractic and other formerly "alternative" therapies. The gov't is only as good as we the people demand. The fact that FDA is packed with corporate insiders isn't something that can't be exposed and fixed, and most important, does not remotely mean that public insurance was the cause or even remotely related as a cause.
"No.
We don't object to being required to buy "something" from "a private company". I disagree, many of us do object. Having the State or the Feds. force us at gun pt. to buy something from their political pals is EXTORTION plain and simple no matter how supposedly noble the cause. If its so important that he and his party pals feel it necessary to force us to buy their cronies policies then it should be a Nat'l Gov't program funded by a TAX like the other Nat'l programs we all support. Obama only fooled the fools out here that want to believe in him when he played his not so clever Kabuki dance back in 2009 killing single payer then the so called Public option. Now he and his shills are whining in front of the Court about how the mandate is the core of this plan etc. Scew him and screw the Ins. pirates that own him. I hope the mandate is found to be unconstitutional because it will hasten the day this whole corrupt thieving so called system collapses of its own rotten evil weight.
Arguments about Constitutional law/precedent before the SCOTUS might perhaps be direct correlates to concepts of 'economy' in the classical sense compared to the all pervasive application of 'fractional reserve banking'.
The republicans made me do it.
This is almost hilarious.
So, next we will be hearing, "Their dog ate my homework."
The truth is that the democrats and their allies, the republicans are the ones who belong in the doghouse.
It is getting harder for the delusional democrat hacks, like Reich, to hide their deceitfulness and collusion.
Mixing metaphors,
the chain which constrains the junkbond dogs is only as good as its weakest link.
This is exactly why they want all of the rest of us in a weakened position.
Reich is indeed disingenuous in blaming the GOP. It was not the GOP who (during the 2008 campaign) serially chastised drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin for preventing Medicare from negotiating drug prices and then met in secret with Tauzin (during Obama's first month in office) to guarantee that Medicare will never be able to negotiate drug prices.
"The Republicans made me do it."
Very good!
Next they will have all our eyes poked out so we can't see that the emperor has no clothes.
Under Obama's overall healthcare "reform" plan, the protection for people with pre-existing conditions won't kick in until 2014--at least for two years from now! What are people with pre-existing conditions supposed to do in the meantime? Watch while they die? It makes no sense at all, to me.
What's equally, if not more disgraceful is the fact that the Obama Administration allowed abortion rights to be taken off the table in order for this 20-year-old, warmed-over GOP-written healthcare "reform" bill to pass.
Not only that, the actual costs to the beneficiaries (premiums, co-pays, etc.) and the actual benefits won't be detailed until the so-called exchanges are set up in 2013 or even 2014.
So there's all this noise about a clearly horrible proposal that passed before its most horrible details are even decided. All to protect Big Pharma, insurance companies, stock speculators, the medical technology industry, privatized hospitals, overpaid specialists and privatizers of Medicare, Medicaid and TriCare.
But as others have pointed out, Dick Cheney and his ilk will continue to draw millions of dollars in tax-paid health care benefits (he just had his fifth heart surgery, this time a transplant).
Dave Lindorff has a much better article.
Google:
"Why the Supreme Court Should Kill ‘Obamacare’"
It's up at Counterpunch among other web sites.
I read that also - too bad that CD seems to be using more and more mainstream articles and reporters....
We can Only exist inside the 2 party duopoly - no others need apply.
Or be heard from even.
Jill who?
People need education so as to automatically note that Democrat = Republican = The Enemy.
"Finally Getting it Right? Here’s Hoping the Supreme Court Tosses Out ‘Obamacare’"
by Dave Lindorff
_____________________
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1113
Lindorff is dreaming when he says that what will follow from killing "Obamacare", is the formation of Medicare for all. Healthcare has been in crisis for 30 or 40 years and the best solution the political process has allowed is Obamacare. Yes, Obamacare is an effing disaster. No, something better will not rise from the ashes after/because it is killed off. I don't have any answers but Lindorff's optimism about what the majority of people will demand (and what the plutocracy will allow), is not supported by history.
You’ll remember the Administration couldn’t get the votes for a single-payer system such as Medicare for all. It hardly tried. Not a single Republican would even agree to a bill giving Americans the option of buying into it.
------------------
You'll remember, Bob, that Obama refused to request that the CBO provide a cost estimate for HR 676.
How can the public make a decision about a plan that the media censors, the president refuses to acknowledge and for which there's no cost estimate?
An informed public would've demanded a Medicare for all type plan if the information was made available and the president barnstormed the country advocating for passage.
The president did neither because his loyalty is to BCBS and Aetna, not the people.
Actually, the public was strongly in favor of a Medicare-for-all program, but the Congress, in its wisdom would not even consider one. After all, it would put out of business those nice insurance companies which pour campaign contributions into the members' coffers.
"But with a bit of political jujitsu, the President could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system – Medicare for all."
Democrat Reich is writing pure propaganda. He himself, a former Cabinet member, has great health insurance, so this healthcare debate doesn't apply to him one way or another. However, he will shill for Obama with impunity, for Reich, secure in his own wealth and well-being, doesn't really care about all the harm this dangerous president--with the acquiescence of the Democrats-- has done to us, this country, and the world.
For sake of swaying the citizens to vote for Obama and the Democrats, however, Reich makes the assumption that Obama and the Democrats have good intentions, and if they had their way, we would have Medicare for all. Of course, that is a false assumption, and Reich knows it. Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report shatters Reich's pro-Obama propaganda:
"The prevailing assumption on the Left is that Obama has good intentions. He intends to the Right Thing – or, at least, he intends to do better than the Republicans intend to do. It’s all supposed to be about intentions. Let’s be clear: There is absolutely no factual basis to believe he intends to do anything other than the same thing he has already done, whether Democrats control Congress or not, which is to serve Wall Street’s most fundamental interests."
"But, the whole idea of debating Obama’s intentions is ridiculous. It’s psycho-babble, not analysis. No real Left would engage in it."
http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil
Please read Ford's "Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil." It's an insightful, important piece.
~Please read Ford's "Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil." It's an insightful, important piece~lefttown
~No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks”~Mary Shelley
* * *
it's a dirty job (it pays well and garantees your name written in the his-story book) but somebody's gotta put a human face on the empire! he's a cog in the machine. don't you know, humans, you are disposable!
Mary Shelley got that wrong. Many people choose evil because they love it. Killers love to kill, rapists love to rape. Obama loves to kill children. He has made jokes publicly about killing children with drones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWKG6ZmgAX4 "You think I'm joking," Obama the baby killer said.
The entire 1% has chosen evil as their way of life, under my view of evil. I believe that when millions have little or nothing, those who have millions and billions are evil. If you have millions or billions of dollars in a world such as ours with billions of people suffering from terrible property, you are an evil person.
I think you mistake them for something they're not. The right carries the shadow of the left and vice versa; people mistake evil for good because they've taken the opposite tack on dealing with what is maybe the essential paradox of life: that like light we are both particle and wave, both separate and one. Civilization is based on a hard right tack, the veering into overreliance on belief that we're separate, because the alternative, to believe we're not separate by nature but "I" can't feel connected, is too painful. It's not so much a choice to evil because it's fun. It's like the guy who's found looking under a street light for his keys. he's asked where he lost them and says, the next street over. Then why are you looking here? he's asked. Because the light's better here, he says. Evil is not for fun, it's not a force but as Gregory Bateson said, "an epistemological mistake," a search in the wrong place because of a fundamental disjointedness between reality and perception.
Thanks for the link, lefttown. The Black Agenda Report is an important voice crying in the wilderness, and Glen Ford's report nails Obama squarely as the greater evil. We were warned long ago to beware of false prophets as the greater threat --- the ravening wolves that come to us in sheep's clothing. BHO clearly fits that cast.
Good news! Obama is presented with a wonderful opportunity to do the right thing! All he needs is some juzitsu to pull it off! ...now that he doesn't have the "coveted" majorities - a joke, really, because the Dems hate having a majority. It makes them look bad.
Obama will try very hard with his jujitsu act but we won't see it, because .... stalking his every move are those dastardly Republicans! They'll stop his every good intention, every time. Why, even though he's so very eloquent and smart, they won't let him near a bully pulpit so that he can explain to voters why single payer is the best health care option. They got a hold of his voice, they force him to play golf all the time, they shove million dollar bribes into his pockets from corrupt oligarchs, they push down his head onto to the ass of BP's CEO and say, "now, kiss it!" The NDAA was really their idea, they put a gun to his head, threatened to chop off his balls, they have a nuclear bomb up his ass, he wants justice for war criminals but instead, they force him to commit war crimes! Is there anything these evil Republicans won't do?
Vote Obama in 2012! Mr. Orwell, you can go back to sleep, all is well on the Western Front. We the People will now turn our attention to this season's Theater of the Absurd: The Audacity of Jujitsu!
Reich is blowing smoke -- again -- or he has gone completely off his nut.
When the newest so-called "health-care debate" took off during the 2008 election, Obama said quite explicitly that single payer was the best insurance plan.
Obama, being Obama, then said that it was "unrealistic" so he wouldn't discuss even the possibility of it any more.
Then he won and his party took up the mantra: "Single payer is not an option. It is not on the table."
To expect Obama and the Dems to reverse position, as Reich claims is possible, is either a blatant lie, or a fantastic delusion.
This being a nation of "choices," make yours. Lie or Delusion? Delusion or Lie?
Bobby is a sad victim of Terminal Cognitive Dissonance, or TCD. It's incurable, untreatable, and in it's later stages, invariably fatal.
Please give now to 'Invisible Truth', and help stop the needless suffering of those who can't see the forest for the trees...
(theabovewassharpsatireintendedtocausecriticalthinkinganddiscomfort)
"...but with a bit of political jujitsu the President could turn a defeat (for Obamacare) into ... medicare for all."
.
Annnnnnd stop. I must have something more important to do than read this fiction ... like watch re-runs of Springer or something.
The Republicans want to trade Obama-care for I-Don't-Care.
Just like education, the republicans want only the wealthy to have an education, a job, a home, and health. Why can't the Republicans stop obstructionism and beat Obama honestly instead of undermining him at the cost of 45,000 American lives a year due to the lack of health care. If the GOP would take their thumb out of their asses and spend half as much energy and money trying to fix the health care law instead of fighting it just to make Obama look bad, we would all benefit.
45,000 deaths a year without insurance...that study did not say anyting about what people died of. Then there's the 100,000 deaths/yr from taking prescription meds AS PRESCRIBED. Having health insurance is no "insurance" against unnecessary death.
Good point, Cassandra. Even if we get single payer some day, we would have to change the entire pharmaceutical $ based "medical" system before we would get real health care.
Thanks for the acknowledgement. The way I see it, based on history (how about those NAFTA changes for labor and environmental protections?!) if the system doesn't change, single payer will cement it in place. Too much power in the hands of the gov't that is controlled by corporate interests.
Tom, so your theory is, give up, don't even try, you people are so fucked.
Cassandra, shouldn't we start somewhere? We are not going to be able to take on everything at once are we?
constitutional
You have offered a case of Obot's lament -- calling for "baby steps" and cautious "pragmatic" incrementalism.
So, what do you actually get with Obama's baby steps?
Dirty Diapers!
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constitutional--"...shouldn't we start somewhere" Yes, it's a bitch, isn't it? But, in my opinion, we have to start at the core (I think that means being a radical and going at the root) and that is to allow truth to be told and to break the AMA's monopoly and stop it from taking its' pound of flesh from each of us, even when we don't owe them anything. Siouxrose calls it renting your body, except you pay.
Here's an example. During the rercent swine flu non-epidemic (declared a pandemic by the WHO who changed the definition of a pandemic thereby requiring governments around the world to purchase their useless vaccines) a New Zealand man with undiagnosed leukemia got the flu. His family demanded IV vitamin C and after much international information exchange and family lawsuit threats, the hospital grudgingly offered the therapy, which provides upwards of 100 grams/day of vitamin C or more than 1000 times "Dietary Recommended Intakes". Definitely not a do-it-yourself project. Despite the fact that doctors had insisted he be taken off the ventilator and left to die and despite the fact that the full therapy was never provided, he recovered; although he still had to deal with the leukemia. Now, what was the FDA response to this "miracle"? Well, they tried to shut down production of IV formulations of vitamin C.
I know there are those with a different perspective, which I respect, but I cannot support and promote a system this saturated with fraud and deceit in order to steal us blind. The IV C is the tip of a very large iceberg beyond what most people think of as alternative medicine and I believe that is what will bring costs down and there will be more than enough to care for the truly ill. It's the same as everything else in this turned upside down free country, before anything gets fixed, the special interests have to be cut down to size.
Let me again recommend "Next Medicine" by Walter Bortz, MD (quote: "my profession wants you sick for one reason--to send you a bill") and "Death by Modern Medicine" by Carolyn Dean, MD, ND. See www.drhyman.com about functional medicine and www.anh-usa.org for political action and info.
constitutional
"Just like education" -- WTF?
Perhaps you haven't noticed Obama and Arne Duncan's Race To The Top™ -- their well-orchestrated cunning plan to privatize, corporatize, and charterize the nation's public schools and to bust the teachers' unions and fire the highly-qualified, veteran, instructors and principals with years of experience, who possess advanced degrees in education and their subjects of expertise. Obama and Duncan seek to make the charter schools ripe for Teach for America™ clones from Ivy League schools, who receive five weeks of "teacher training" and quit after a year or two with their résumés enhanced for greener pastures.
The GOPers don't need to "make Obama look bad" -- because Obama has done, and continues to do, a spectacular job of "looking bad" all by himself without any help from them, thank you very much.
There is nothing the GOPers or the Democrats could do to "fix the health care law" because it has nothing to do with health care -- it's about "market reforms" with a mandate for the private for-profit health insurance indistry and PhRMA and featuring the IRS acting as the enforcer. Some things are so bad they can't be fixed.
If the situation is so urgent that 45,000 Americans lives are lost each year due to lack of health care -- and that figure was well-documented in 2009 when Obama was sworn in with the largest Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in more than a generation -- then why did Obama and the Democrats postpone implementation of Obamacare until 2014?
D'oh! -- Two years since Obamacare was passed in March 2010, no one has seen an actual Obamacare health insurance policy...because those "plans" don't exist!
PS -- Your comment contains tragic echoes of Thom Hartmann -- "Those Evil GOPers will do anything, including drive up gasoline prices, to make Obama look bad so they can defeat him in 2012!" -- but the Democrats took the identical approach to Bush after 2000 and in 2004. What else is new in the world of tribal politics?
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You are singing a very tired old song, I'm sure you will be happy voting for the Romney, Ryan ticket, it can be called the dip and shit ticket, Mitt will no doubt sell off the rest of America and Ryan, well Ryan will still just be a Wisconsin piece of GOP shit. The Roberts court will probably repeal Obama care, but we won't get single payer, we will end up with fucking nothing, just like when Hillary tried to help the working class. Yes education, taking collection bargaining away is Republican union busting. Obama has nothing to do with The likes of Scott Walker.
Obama-care IS I-Don't-Care.
"dmgreenaz"
No,
the republicans and Obama and the democrats ALL really do care
about Wall Street's domination
over everything.
dmgreenaz:
Are you aware that the blueprint for "Obamacare" was developed by the Heritage Foundation and Liz Fowler (the former Wellpoint Vice President)? The Obama administration then hired Liz Fowler to write the rules and implement the new health care law. Yet, your post implies all the problems are a result of the Republicans???
It appears that some people get so caught up in protecting a party that they refuse to look at what that party is ACTUALLY DOING.