The Politics of Trashing The Single-Payer Health Care Plan
(ht/Jerry Mazza)
Jul 29, 2009, 00:20
The politics of trashing the single-payer healthcare plan, or any healthcare plan for that matter from Obama, have to do with the Republicans humiliating him so badly that they can recapture their power. So it is in their best interest to invite the Harry and Louise TV commercials back (from the Clintons 1993 run at healthcare), plus a bevy of slime ads, pr types and lobbyists to spread panic plus disinformation and defamation re Obama’s original intention of Single-payer healthcare.
The Republican point of view is simply not to come out with the best possible plan for you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and your children, but to seize power even if it means having a third rate plan, which includes a Public Option that would like to have only the most costly severe cases shuffled to it, a Medicare that will be privatized for the most severe aging cases, neither of which you might want to partake in.
“This is why Obama has been cryptically holding back on announcing any features of this plan: to avoid the Republican shredding machine.”
But, sooner or later, he has to speak, speak loudly and clearly and on the money.
Typically, the Republicans are in bed with Big Pharma not to improve Plan D with the $8 billion a year for 10 years (for name brands only), or to be able to say sayonara to the insurance companies that can only give you more care for way more money. This way they all make a bundle off your blood. They have the nerve to talk about rationed healthcare, and waiting for healthcare, when we already have rationed healthcare (look at your bill and your coverage) and we have healthcare you can wait for from mammograms in Florida to an appointment for a physical in anywhere USA.
In short, our healthcare is the pits but we are paying two and a half times more than any advanced country does for their healthcare, and the Republicans want it to stay that way or worse. We run far behind Canada in actual care, and Europe, Japan, and other parts of Asia, while we pay top dollar, and are told we need to put massive amounts more money into it to bring it up to snuff.
Baloney I say. The problem is not enough money, but not enough healthcare coming from the very-much-for-profit insurance companies that are already overpaid.
Their numero uno business is making money, not making people fit. Don’t ever forget that. It could cost you your life. That’s a fact, not a scare tactic like associating a single-care payer system with socialism. Medicare is single-payer healthcare born in the USA. It works fine for seniors and would work better with the for-profit insurers the hell out of it for good. And that goes for Medicaid for the poor, also singer-payer veterans’ insurance.
So the whole simple bottom line of scaring the bejesus out of America, young, middle-aged and old, rich, middle-class or poor, is for the for-profit insurance companies to keep their golden for-profit insurance goose laying more and more golden eggs. That’s it. I could call this un-American insurance, terrorist insurance, because it attempts to terrorize Americans into voting for it. I could call this the insurance from hell (and be right on the money) for you good Christians to fear it. After all, who wants insurance from the devil, to make a pact with him, greedy lost angel that he is, when it comes to life and death.
So that’s what it’s all about, misinforming you, outright lying to you, ready to kill to keep their golden goose laying golden eggs. And it’s about the Republicans humiliating Obama for ever mentioning single-payer care at the beginning of his speech, or at the beginning of the primary with Hillary, or during the campaign against John McCain. All three of these people knew the answer. They were all three potential, viable candidates for the highest office in the land. But none of them would dive in and commit to single-payer universal healthcare because some lout would shout, “Socialism, the Bolsheviks are going to eat us for lunch!” and their campaigns, maybe their careers would be finished for good.
To me, that’s one of the most un-American things you could do, to stifle the opinions of presidential candidates, to try to crush good ideas because somebody’s gonna lose a few bucks over it. Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Benefits are each as American as apple pie and single-payer plans. Anybody who says no must be a fascist who wants to see America weakened health-wise and financially. Unhealthy Americans make for a threat to our national security. Throwing money into a flabby, weak for-profit system is the best way to mess up American health. It’s tantamount to biological or chemical warfare, underhanded, nasty, like whomever, whatever’s poisoning the worker bees for the last 10 years, the bees that pollinate our very food supply.
You want fear, I’ll give you fear “in a handful of dust.” These greedy boardroom bastards look down from their skyscraper windows at so many ants scrambling down there, not human beings exerting great strength, daily strength in spite of all odds, to support their families, keep them healthy, defend their nation, protect the traditions of liberty and equality. This is who the Republicans are in bed with and the Blue Dog Democrats who aren’t worth the name Democrat. There’s nothing democratic about them. They want to sit in the laps of the Wall Street boys, too, and kiss their lips for money until they bleed.
Those Wall Streeters, you may remember, are the guys like Paulson who rushed in with a $700 billion ransom note to pay up from the Treasury post haste or the economy would tumble down on our heads. Well, he got his blood money, and the subprime crap is still stuck in the toilets of the Fed, while the investment bankers got cash for it and are writing huge bonus checks for their buddies, ushering back the lush life, warning us to feed them more and more cash. Just the way the insurance companies are demanding more and more for premiums with less and less coverage, bigger co-pays than ever. If you believe this scum you’re doomed.
Enter William Kristol
William Kristol, who’s one of their big “thinkers,” and I use term loosely, “urged his party,” noted July 24, 2009, in Bill Moyers Journal, “to block any health care plan for fear Democrats would be seen as, quote’ . . . the generous protector of middle-class interests.’ Now he’s telling the GOP. to “Go for the kill . . . throw the kitchen sink [at it] . . . drive a stake through its heart . . . we need to start over.
”So in lockstep are the Republicans that when strategist Alex Castellanos issued a memo on the battle plan, party chairman Michael Steele echoed it word for word in a speech at Washington’s National Press Club.
“Castellanos: ‘Slow down, Mr. President. We can’t afford to get health care wrong.’
“MICHAEL STEELE: ‘Slow down, Mr. President. We can’t afford to get health care wrong.’
“BILL MOYERS: Castellanos: ‘The old, top-down Washington-centered system the Democrats propose will empower Washington to restrict the cures and treatments your doctor can prescribe for you.’
“MICHAEL STEELE: ‘The old top-down Washington-centered system the Democrats propose is designed to grow Washington’s power to restrict the cures and treatments ‘your doctor can prescribe for you.’
“BILL MOYERS: Castellanos: ‘President Obama is experimenting with America, too much, too soon, and too fast.’
“MICHAEL STEELE: ‘Your experiment promotes — proposes too much, too soon, too fast.’
“BILL MOYERS: As the Republicans fired away, big business stepped up the attack, too, their lobbying and advertising guns blazing. In certain key states where members of Congress remain on the fence, the airwaves are vibrating with television commercials aimed at shifting hearts and minds away from any change that might threaten profits.
“[ADVERTISEMENT SOT]: What will happen to your family’s health care if Washington runs it?’
“[ADVERTISEMENT SOT]: ‘Now Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the US.” BTW, read this entire link for your own good.’
The Republicans look at this imminent defeat of single-payer healthcare as Obama’s, Waterloo, the 1815 battle which ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule as Emperor of France, “a humiliating defeat and a turning point in European history. Right-wingers like Glenn Beck see Obama as Napoleon, an emperor who must be stopped.”
There are the true sickos
Somebody throw a net over them. They’re frothing at the mouth. They’re stark raving nuts. And what does Congress do? They sit on the fence, waiting for the next campaign contribution. As Moyers says, “The big drug companies are already so pleased with what they’ve been promised that they’ve brought back Harry and Louise [as mentioned earlier] –the make believe TV Couple who helped take down the Clinton healthcare plan.”
But this isn’t new. This crap’s been going on since 1948 when Harry Truman (not exactly a socialist by any stretch) tried to introduce a universal health care single-payer plan to the US and got hit in the face with the same pies these guys are throwing today, except their grenades now. This is 61 years ago, folks, sixty-one! And the Repuglicans are up to their same old tricks. Are you going to buy this and sell your health down the river? Believe me, Harry and Louise are going to have a big fat laugh on you, because they’re in on the scam, and the agency that created them, and the high-rollers that paid for it.
In addition, we’ve got another golden egg, the Mandated Insurance Plan, that’s supposed to cover the uninsured, that is, with the help of government subsidies, that’s for 85 percent of the 47 million that can’t pay for anything now. So this is another pre-packaged cash gift for the for-profit insurance companies. On and on, it goes. And what we have to do, with one voice, is tell them we don’t want a damn dime to go to the for profit-health insurers any damn which way. Period, story over.
Let them go back to hurricanes, terrorist hijacking airliners, and other disasters to make their untold billions. But get ’em the hell out of healthcare. Or we will be their victims. Let’s wipe that big greedy smile off Bill Kristol’s face and put one on every single-payer insured Americans.’
I mean, whether this takes a month or a week to do, let’s do it right. And right means single-payer. We can expand it state by state, year by year, or use Medicare, starting by lowering the age of admission to people in their 40s, as one healthcare expert suggests. But let’s just get on track with the right train to take all the people to a better place and not crash at the next turn in the economy. For in the long and maybe even in the short run, we will be saving money, money not wasted on the fat cats’ bottom lines, on investor “expectations,” Wall Street “predictions.”
So Obama, come out come out wherever you are. Show your face; make us all proud. Speak up, and as the same healthcare expert said, go down on your sword for this one if you have to. If this will be your measure, let it be for the truth, for the health of the people you chose to lead and who chose you to do it. Half-solutions, bebop botched solutions do nothing for anyone except the greedos. And nobody gives you awards for half-finished work, or for finishing fast. Sock the real thing to ’em, brother. Beat the politicization of single-payer healthcare. Just do it! Jump like Jordan for the stars. Guaranteed, you’ll land with the rest of us in a good place. I do believe that. Amen.
As you’ve probably heard, Obama is asking Americans to “snitch” on one another if someone is dissing his Health Care Plan. Instead they are sending in The Bill of Rights and a copy of the Constitution telling Obama this isn’t Chicago, this is the US of A!
The snitch email address: flag@whitehouse.gov site.
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http://online.wsj.com/video/why-obamacare-may-fail/8CEAFB8B-43A9-4888-8FCC-DF6CDC6F5225.html
This just in:
# wbb Says:
August 7th, 2009
According to FOX Obama is now saying he will hit back twice as hard. (anyone dissing his HC Bill)
Who does he propose to hit? Seniors? People who seek to exercise their first amendment rights? The American People?
That is just about the stupidest thing he could say at this point. It will incite his minions to step over the line and it will brandish his credentials as the dictator he is.
We do not want a dictator cramming a business friendly health care bill down our throats, period. The harder he tries, the more we are inclined to dig in.
**************
update:
reports are now saying, the “WH” said the above.
To me, means Emmanuel, as per Obama’s approval. (so, whats the difference?)
update:
White House Move to Collect ‘Fishy’ Info May Be Illegal, Critics Say
The White House has been under fire since posting a blog on Tuesday that asks supporters to e-mail any “fishy” information seen on the Web or received electronically.
FOXNews.com
Friday, August 07, 2009
“The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it,” Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst, said Friday.
“There’s also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can’t try to rewrite history by pretending it didn’t receive anything,” he said.
“If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute.”
Napolitano was referring to the Privacy Act of 1974, which was passed after the Nixon administration used federal agencies to illegally investigate individuals for political purposes. Enacted after Richard Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal, the statute generally prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.
The White House has been under fire since it posted a blog on Tuesday that asked supporters to e-mail any “fishy” information seen on the Web or received electronically to flag@whitehouse.gov. “There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there,” the blog said, adding that “since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help.” The blog was posted partly in response to a video posted on the Web that claimed to show Obama explaining how his health care reform plans eventually will eliminate private insurance.
The video, featured on the Drudge Report, strung together selected Obama statements that the White House said were taken out of context.
The White House said it wanted to be made aware of “fishy” comments about its health care plan because it wants to set the record straight. But critics called White House move an Orwellian tactic designed to control the health care debate.
“This is a very troubling attempt to stifle the free speech of Americans who have the constitutional right to express their opinion and concerns about health care,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. He called on Obama to repudiate his blog. “This move is an attempt to intimidate those who have legitimate concerns about the health care plan,” Sekulow said. “And, worse, it turns the White House into some sort of self-appointed ’speech police.’ This new White House reporting program strikes at the heart of the First Amendment and has no place in this important debate about health care.” Sekulow said he imagines that opponents of mandatory abortion coverage are engaging in what the White House considers “fishy” speech and should be reported. “What the White House is touting is absurd,” he said.
But Napolitano said the White House probably cannot be sued because of sovereign immunity, unless someone was harmed by what the government did with the records. But that’s unlikely, he said, because the person would probably be unaware of the harm. “That’s a silent violation of your right to privacy,” he said.
The ACLU said in a statement to FOXNews.com that the White House blog is a “bad idea that could send a troublesome message.” But the organization added, “While it is unclear at this point what the government is doing with the information it is collecting, critics of the administration’s health care proposal should not fear that their names will end up in some government database that could be used to chill their right to free speech.”
The White House Thursday denied that it was playing “Big Brother.” “Nobody is collecting names,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “We have seen, and as I’ve discussed from this podium, a lot of misinformation around health care reform, a lot of it spread, I think, purposefully.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who has called on Obama to end the program, rejected the White House explanation. “Of course the White House is collecting names,” he said, arguing that anyone with access to the e-mail account has access to private information. “The question is not what the White House is doing, but how and why,” he said. “How are they purging names and e-mail addresses from this account to protect privacy? Why do they need the forwarded e-mails, names, and ‘casual conversations’ sent to them instead of just the arguments that they want to rebut?
Asked by FOX News whether the White House was using the blog post as a way to expand the e-mail list for the administration and Obama’s political arm, Organizing for America, Gibbs said the two are “not in any way connected” and repeated that the White House is not collecting names. Pressed about the program’s goal, Gibbs said it was to clarify for everybody what the misinformation is, adding that’s not a new tactic.
“When you make a mistake in your report, sometimes I e-mail you,” Gibbs said to FOX News’ Major Garrett. “Occasionally, I call. Sometimes I just throw something against the wall. Occasionally, it’s all three.”
Garrett asked why it’s necessary to ask so many people to e-mail the White House.
“All we’re asking people to do is, if they’re confused about what health care reform is going to mean to them, we’re happy to help clear that up for them. Nobody’s keeping anybody’s names. I do have your e-mail. …Maybe that’s because I assume future mistakes. But I’m not going to say that,” Gibbs said, drawing laughter. “But nobody’s collecting information,” he added. “Everybody is trying to give people only the facts around what we all understand is a very complicated issue.”
http://foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/07/white-house-collect-fishy-info-health-reform-illegal-critics-say/
The single payer system of universal health care is the most cost effective, economical, and efficacious form of the same.
It can be paid for through appropriate taxation such as increasing the taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals both of which have been reduced dramatically over the last 30 years.
The two party “winner take all”, gerrymandered, and bought political electoral system has resulted in the concentration of both political and economic power in a few individuals and entities. The same has and is, in part, responsible for the failure of the USA to enact some form of Universal Health Care for all American citizens.
We should, therefore, change our current electoral system to some form of “proportional” electoral system to ameliorate the aforementioned unjust concentration of economic and political power so that the just interests of the American people can both be represented and promulgated.
Amazing post, thanks much.
Ve, vill be rrreportd if ve do not accept BOs offa
uf Poverrrty R US!
Single payer health care is the most desirable and cost effective if you are going on the assumption the government is acting in the public’s best interest.
To date, all I see is government leaning to HC providers and government interference with our right to privacy and choice. I see nothing beneficial in the way of HC to the general population.