Dear Democrats

Dear Democrats:

You have a problem.

A serious problem.

Forget, for a moment, the war in Iraq.

Try the war at home.

Focus for a moment.

On the war between the American people and the health insurance industry.

Today, your likely standard bearer for President, the woman who would vanquish those corporate Republicans from the White House, one corporate Democratic Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, will announce her health care plan.

It will not be single payer.

It will not be Canadian-style cradle to grave, everybody in, nobody out, Medicare for all.

No, that would drive Hillary's key financial supporters - the health insurance corporations - out of business.

Instead, Hillarycare is a plan the health insurance corporations will love, something that Mitt Romney and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could love - a plan that mandates that every individual go out and pay for his or her own health insurance coverage - like auto insurance.

You must be covered - or you will pay a fine.

And it's not just Hillary.

Among the Democrat candidates on the Presidential stage - Dennis Kucinich is the only Democrat to support a single payer, Canadian-style health care system.

Not Obama, not Edwards, not Hillary, not Dodd, not Biden, not Richardson,
not even Gravel.

None of them will deliver what the majority of the American people want.

What England, and France and Germany and Canada have but we don't.

No premiums.

No deductibles.

No co-pays.

No in-network.

No out-of-network.

Just everybody take the money you are now paying for health insurance and put it into one pot.

And everyone is covered in a system that's more efficient.

That saves billions of dollars.

That covers everyone.

Cradle to grave.

That delivers higher quality health care.

For everyone.

It's the only decent way.

And the Democratic Party, the so-called party of the people, is on course to nominate a candidate for President who will put forth not a single payer plan, but a proposal that will save the health insurance industry and prolong the misery of the American people.

And you, the majority of Democrats who consider yourselves decent, honorable, progressive thinking people, will enter the voting booth next November and vote for that candidate.

The so called least worst.

And you will vote with the health insurance industry.

And against the American people.

Shame on you.

Shame on you all.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.

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