Across the country a funny thing is happening. Despite all the cries of "socialized medicine" and all the doomsayers that stated that America would be gasping her last breath if we got healthcare reform, support for the healthcare bill is going up. While I believe that the bill that was passed did not go nearly far enough, many claim it was a government takeover of the industry and it has been blasted since before it was passed. However, now it appears as if the whole country is figuring out what we here have known for a long time. The Right-Wing gasbags who preached doom and warned of the "government taking over your Medicaire" are completely full of hot air.
In Kentucky there is one person that working folks simply know as Congressman Awesome. With our depressing Congressional delegation, he is the one bresh of fresh air on the national scene. He is Congressman John Yarmuth of Kentucky's Third Congressional District in the Louisville area. He has been a godsend not only for Kentucky Democrats, but for all of those in the country who truly believe in Democratic ideals for our country. With the dangerous environment for incumbents, national Democrats need to do all they can do to help us get John Yarmuth re-elected.
While the healthcare debate has devolved and sputtered, we still see the need for real reform almost daily. Whatever one might believe is the solution it is almost impossible for anyone to admit we have serious problem. While the real solution, single-payer has been off the table, healthcare costs continue to spriral through the kitchen ceiling. Reports today show just how bad the recession has made things.
Let us make no mistake about it. The only good things in the healthcare bill have been viciously buried alive in a shallow grave. Single-Payer was the real solution that would have guaranteed fair, across the board coverage for all Americans. It met a slow, and tortured death buried alive. The Public Option was then our only hope to keep insurers honest, and it met with a long, torturous death buried alive with malice while the American people virtually begged for it. The employer mandate, like single-payer appears to have been buried alive. Yes, everything good that could have come from reform seems to be somewhere near Jimmy Hoffa, dead and buried never to be found.
Breaking the bills down, this is effectively what we'll get if either bill passes, or some combination from conference committee: unaffordable mandates to buy junk insurance, only a fraction of people covered, restrictions on access to abortions, unacceptably high costs, no bargaining power for the government, nothing kicking in until 2013 or 2014 -- more than enough time for the final bill to be used as an excuse to prevent any fixes further down the road. There's more, but you can read all that in the link above.
Call your Representatives and your Senators and tell them to kill these bills. If either of these bills pass, or some combination of them passes, we will not get another shot at true health care reform for years -- maybe never again. Thousands, indeed millions, of Americans will be dead before another chance comes. Don't let them down by refusing to kill this pretense at reform.
It's easier than you think. Every Representative and about a third of Senators are up for re-election next year. In order not to risk losing voters, they'll be nervous about doing anything they think will upset them too much. We've got them by the gonads. So all we have to do is tell the politicians who are up for re-election that they can either kill the bill and work to pass HR 676, or they can forget about money and votes. We'll support primary challengers from the left and independent challengers from the left in the general election (unless the primary challengers win, in which case we'll support them). Then we make stick to our word.
I know some of you think this is suicide, but why? The GOP is going to win precisely because voters are so sick of Democrats behaving like Republicans that they're likely to stay home in droves and not vote. They're not buying the Dems-better-than-Repubs argument anymore because Dems have spent every day since taking back power proving that to be a bald faced lie. Like it or not, we are in an ideological war that was waged by the conservative movement against the left (and the rest of America). We have to win this war, and we have to either purge the conservatives or tell them who's boss in the Democratic Party. We're not going to win it by allowing the enemy to always compromise our ranks with their moles. If we lose, so does the rest of America.
Across the nation many Progressives have been disillusioned with the leadership shown by President Obama on Healthcare. As a former single-payer proponent himself we simply hoped that he would fight harder for a better bill. Instead, he allowed the Congress to mostly write the healthcare bill and far from gave a ringing endorsement to a more Progressive direction. Many of us also feel this timidness also lost the momentum in a critical time for the debate.
According to a post on Pennsylvania blog, House speaker Nancy Pelosi will allow a mere twenty minutes of debate on single-payer, albeit indirectly.
The debate will actually be on an amendment put forth by Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York's 9th District, which would effectively transform the corporate giveaway that is HR 3200 into something very close to the single-payer form offered by Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers's HR 676. According to David Swanson, the debate on the Weiner amendment is being used as cover for dropping Kucinich's amendment, which would allow states to create their own single-payer health insurance systems.
This is probably our last, best chance to improve what is shaping up to be a disastrously bad bill that will force Americans into buying unaffordable insurance. Click on the House Telephone Directory link, call as many representatives as you can, and demand that they pass the Weiner amendment. This may be our only shot at getting something that will work for all Americans, instead of simply further enriching Big Insurance.
Today I saw a video that sums up what the pretend reform bills now being floated by right-wing Democrats really do and why we must see that they do not pass (hats off to FreeSociety for posting it at Docudharma.
Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich weighed in on the gutted legislation now being considered. Here's a video clip from The Ed Show that's worth watching (courtesy of tahoebasha3, obtained it from the RAW Story link).
It's imperative that we on the left kill this shoddy pretense at reform. If we don't, genuine reform will be sent to the bench for another generation. You can look up contact information for your representatives in the House at this location. To find contact information for your senator, go here. (Of course, senators don't often respond to letters and e-mails, so here's the Senate phone list.)
Man, leave it to the health insurance companies. They are getting a sweet deal in the Senate Finance Committee. The legislation there amounts to nothing more than corporate welfare on the backs of working Americans for the health insurance companies. This should please them right?? I mean, when someone mandates millions of new costumers for you without making you compete honestly with a public option for their business that is a good thing right??
You know, single-payer was taken off the table before the table was ever sat down at by anyone. Now, most of the focus on healthcare is centered around the Baucus bill which is equivilant to more Corporate Welfare and does not even include a public option. While some Democrats are showing disgust at some of us that are being critical of our party's leadership, I believe that at this time in this debate and to effect the debate on policies that will follow after the conclusion of the healthcare fight, critical voices are now needed more than ever. To me, it seems as if most of our leaders in our party are merely running around in circles trying to avoid the real solutions Americans need to solve our healthcare crisis.
Anyone who has followed some of my writing knows that I admire Howard Dean. I think he did an awesome job at the DNC and I think he has the fire to fight for Democratic ideals. I found a recent interview with him as he talks about the state of healthcare and things in general.
In a report that underscores the need for real healthcare reform and a public option it has been found that healthcare premiums are far outpacing wages and inflation in growth. With more employers paying more and passing it on to employees, those employees are now paying much more for premiums and recieving much less in benefits. Deductibles are also rising.
With all the arguments over Public Options and Death Panels one solid truth is constantly overlooked. Single-Payer is the best option to fix the healthcare crisis in America. Although it is not the most profitable that is what makes it the best option for the most Americans. That is because private insurance has failed on many levels.
We are coming down to the home stretch on healthcare, and we have seen the results of the first couple of rounds of crazy that have been sent forth in an effort to stop the process.
In addition to the Town Halls, opponents are flooding the email inboxes of America’s “low information” voters with no end of lies. Those emails are getting passed around and around and around, and by now some of them have probably appeared in your inbox.
But it’s summer...and who has time to respond to this stuff?
Well, guess what, Gentle Reader: I’ve already done the hard work for you.
Today’s story is an email response that you can send right back to your “inbox friends”. It’s a reminder of some of the frustrations that we all share in this country and some explanations of what’s being proposed...and a few words about socialism, to boot.
So get out there and copy and paste and forward and reply, and let’s see if we can’t fight the madness, one email at a time.
With all the crazed lunatic "tea-baggers" storming townhall meetings to protest "government-run healthcare", one must wonder about their intelligence level as well as their eternal souls, if one believes in such things. The truth is that what is being proposed by Democrats in Congress and President Obama is far from "government-run". A true government-run system is called single-payer and if Democrats had any guts and Republicans weren't so beholden to Big Insurance it would be the system being debated now, and eventually enacted.
You know, much has been made about the Corporate Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition and the Republicans and their opposition to any kind of real health reform. However, these groups are not the only ones in office and they are not the only ones that expect certain things from the Healthcare bill. The Congressional Black Caucus has worried aloud about the watering down of real reform and today Rep. Lynn Woolsey of the Congressional Progressive Caucus has released an ideas piece in which she vows not to vote for any Healthcare bill that does not provide a robust public option.
I may miss a Tuesday now and then but Tuesdays are a look at some candidates and campaigns I have taken interest in. I hope anyone will feel free to tout their own candidate I may have missed in the comments.
As one of the almost 50 million Americans that does not have health insurance I have been following the fight for healthcare very closely. Lately, with even a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress seeming to take single-payer off the table, I have watched with much more disgust than hope. Now, it seems as if even a public option is at risk.
Here at Hillbilly Report we have been following Rick Scott, and his fight to deny millions of Americans the healthcare they desperately need with the propoganda peddling organization called "Conservatives for Patient's Rights". Fortunately, Mr. Scott has caught the eye of more than just a couple of Hillbilly bloggers from Kentucky. Think Progress is refuting Mr. Scott too.
After supposedly taking single-payer off the table activists and the fifty million Americans with no health insurance who are just one disaster away from being financially destroyed have worried we will see little progress on Universal Healthcare. Now it seems with some bi-partisan agreement as if some progress may be made. It will come at a price, and may not be what this country really needs, single-payer.
