http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/831
from govegan’s blog
We’ve bought your Reps. in Congress, we write the words they parrot on T.V.
Revolving door from government and back to us,their staff’s our staff, you see.
Ten mill. a week to grease the works, we write your legislation
Go back to work, leave this to us, Elites control this Nation!
Bend over, you can trust us, we’re the Health Care Industry
Bend over, you can trust us, we’re the Health Care Industry
…Pay to play, Pay to play…………
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/2722
(Kevin Zeese)
Michael Moore says Democrats healthcare bill is giveaway to insurance industry In a speech broadcast on Canadian television Tuesday, Michael Moore savaged the Democrats’ healthcare bill, calling it a gift to the health insurance industry, which he argues will make $70 billion more as a result of mandated health insurance.
"The health insurance companies are going to make an extra $70 billion dollars as a result of Americans being forced to buy their health insurance," Moore quipped. "What company wouldn’t love this bill?"
[snip]
"It’s not universal health care," he continued. "Thirteen million people will still not have health insurance in the United States. "And the drug companies signed a deal with Obama to keep them out of it, because they agreed to reduce their prices by $8 billion in the first year of the healthcare bill," he asserted. But he noted that because these companies allegedly raised prices in the last year by $10 billion, they still come out $2 billion ahead.
[snip]
"A hospital will hire a foreclosure company to go after someone’s home and have them thrown out on the curb because they haven’t paid the hospital bill," he added. "Something is seriously wrong with this."
Statement by Dr. Margaret Flowers:
Written Wednesday, October 28, 2009, the night before going to jail:
“Let me begin by saying that I don’t have any desire to be arrested. I am a pediatrician with 3 teenagers and a husband who would prefer that I do not spend time in jail. I have never actually spent the night in jail and I imagine it is not very pleasant. To be honest, I am a bit frightened. But, I expect that these are normal feelings and I am dedicated to act despite my reservations because there comes a time for action. That time is now (or “way past now” as doctors and patients whom I’ve met in my travels have told me).
In short, I am going to be arrested again because I believe that it is my professional responsibility to advocate on behalf of those who can’t and because it is clear that the other traditional advocacy tools are not working. The phrase that runs continuously through my mind is “To be silent is to be complicit.” I cannot be complicit in the face of an industry that profits at the cost of human lives and in the face of an administration and Congress that are too dysfunctional to stop this practice.
[snip]
I have decided to join other doctors and citizens in the mobilization for health care reform – a nationwide coordinated nonviolent civil disobedience campaign for Medicare for all. As we saw in other social justice movements such as women’s suffrage and civil rights in the 1960’s, change will not come unless we take a stand. I do this reluctantly because I am still on probation from my arrest in May and so I will likely have to stay in jail. But I do this with resolve for those who would like to act but cannot – the patients who are suffering and the doctors who are trying to provide care. And I hope that others will join and support the campaign in whatever way they can. The website is www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org.”
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/2780
Excerpts from Weak Public Option Myths That Liberals Believe By Kevin Gosztola
The public option that came out of the House, according to Dr. Flowers, is “even worse than we could have imagined because they’re predicting that maybe 2% of the population will be able to go into that public option, that it will be run by private insurance companies, and that it will actually cost more than private insurance.” What’s so public about something only open to 2% of the population? As Kevin Zeese from the Prosperity Agenda explains, “No matter how much you hate your current insurance, no matter how much they’ve abused you with premiums, co-pays, denials of care, no matter what they’ve done to you, you can’t leave your insurance and go to the public option,” said Zeese. “90% of Americans can’t even choose it. So much for choices.” Flowers adds the government would be subsidizing the purse of private insurance to try to help people buy their products. Government would be putting public dollars into the pockets of private insurance companies. And, a private corporation would be allowed to run the public option. How many Americans really think putting reform in the hands of those who have created this crisis in health care in America will ultimately work or produce any favorable results?
[snip]
Doctors, nurses, and patients following the de-evolution of health care reform closely know that the public option (especially the idea of a robust public option) is a carefully calculated political carrot being offered to progressives so they will sit down, shut up about single-payer, and support this current corporate giveaway to private insurance companies, which is moving through Congress right now. Hendrickson explains, “The reason why the public option was introduced, according to congress people that have spoken to the single-payer movement, was because of the single-payer movement. There was such an upswell in the progressive part of this country for single-payer that they opted for some compromise that would not have been given if there wasn’t so much support for single-payer.”
If you ask Zeese, this won’t do anything to get us closer to single-payer. This bill will “enshrine and deepen the power of the insurance industry.” Hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue, according to Zeese, will now be available for corrupting and influencing Congress. It will be even harder to get single-payer if a weak public option remains in the bill. And the money government gives away will help private insurance fight any additional reforms to legislation passed by Congress and Obama. Metz concludes that the public option will make it impossible for us to achieve universal coverage for at least a decade. “Every passing year we’ll see more Americans with worse health and nobody will do anything because we will point to our legislation and say give it another couple years to work,” says Metz. “And in five years, we will have exhausted the financial resources of the government, we will have exhausted taxpayers, we will have exhausted the good will of voters, the patience of voters, and no one will want to attempt health reform again.”



11 Comments







Support Bernie Sanders’ bill S 703. Give the president a call at 1-800-578-4171, and/or call a Senator or more. Four toll-free switchboard numbers for the Senate and House: 1-800-828-0498, 1-866-338-1015, 1-866-220-0044, and 1-800-473-6711. Or email or write. It matters. The more the better.
List of senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Thanks, libby. Although I support standing by S 703, the single-payer priority now has got to be on restoring language to the final bill that facilitates states’ ability to enact their own single-payer systems.
The last two email alerts I’ve gotten from Progressive Democrats of America have really ticked me off. All the emphasis is on 703 and next to nothing on supporting a Senate amendment analogous to the torpedoed Kucinich amendment in the House.
It’s a little unclear right now whether Sanders is going to introduce a state SP amendment in the Senate debate; if I find out more, I’ll post. Either way, we need to keep the pressure on to push this in conference.
It’s as if PDA and affiliated groups have learned nothing from the Weiner/Kucinich debacles in the House. Passing national SP this year is impossible; passing language to facilitate state SP systems is merely a deep long shot. Deeper still if universal health care organizations themselves downgrade it as a priority.
Thanks, ralph. I will stress that amendment in my calls, also. Bernie is said to be extending that I had heard too. Last I heard it was still his intention, but things change in a heartbeat so often, usually not for the good. sigh.
lets, got a lot out of your last diary! bravo. you certainly know the players in all of this, re blogosphere, and elsewhere. a good education, as spork said.
Hi lib, Nice piece as usual.
Ralph, why are they doing that? Can’t they walk and chew gum at the same time?
See these excerpts from dispatches from Healthcare-Now! (both available from their HC-N! Announcements column). First this, from the report coming out of their national convention last week:
And this posted today by Donna Smith:
So Donna is carefully not asserting that Sanders will be inserting state SP language as an amendment. I don’t know what’s up with that. Like libby, I thought he was definitely planning to do so.
The S 703 substitution amendment is analogous to the Weiner amendment in the House. Purely symbolic. A state single-payer amendment, still a longshot, would have immediate practical value for California, Pennsylvania, and other states with strong SP initiates. What’s more, not that arguments matter nowadays, but the case for a state SP waiver amendment is stronger in the Senate than House bill, because the Senate bill contains a public option opt-out, and as I’ve noted before, states with the right to choose something weaker than the PO ought to have the right to opt for something stronger.
But as with the Weiner amendment, major SP organizations seem to be pushing harder for the miracle than the longshot.
thanks, ralph. i have more holiday time coming up to hit the phones.
re your final line. the “miracle” is so compelling and is where the heart goes. it is where there is renewal and sanity. i get the “long shot” reasoning.
all that money and influence corruption … there is so little honor left. are they capable of inserting anything positive… even groupthinking wrapping their minds, let alone hearts, around it? No honor among thieves, or their prostituting helpers it feels.
Lockstep of two teams, Congress — like in a rotten marriage, where both partners are getting deranged and losing perspective from the malice and fighting and insanity. And the children, their welfare … the citizenry … has stopped being a serious let alone mutual priority for them.
And Obama … wow… does he give a toss about the real people of this country?
And then, pilgrim, our eyes will open wide and we will see all of the culprits without their disguises, just like special sunglasses allowed John Nada to wake up and see through the cloaks of the alien invaders and realize that they had taken over the world in John Carpenter’s 1988 movie “They Live.” The plot goes like this, compliments of IMBd: “John Nada is a man without a job who walks around a big American city trying to find something to do. He finally finds a job as a worker and a place to spend the nights, but one day something terrible happens to him. John discovers a pair of sun-glasses through which he can see the true face of people. Many persons in this city are in fact aliens (from the Andromeda) and most of them are important members of our society. They keep humans in ignorance and they rule our world as they like. Nada must find the rest of the men that know what’s happening (those who made the strange sun-glasses) and join them in the fight against the aliens.” I found some of those sunglasses the other day and I am wearing them now. It’s an ugly site, but we have to look.
wow, cb! have to check that out. well-told.
i still relate to bradbury’s fahrenheit 451, the book people, who emigrate to a secret colony and memorize one book each for future generations (since books are banned and burned), those who will re-learn to cherish them. and the media disinforms the public that such people were cornered and killed for defying the regime.
amazing as you leave the fog of denial, at least the thick fog, it is so frustrating and lonely around those who have not. but it is precious enlightenment and there is a base camp of folks who also get it.
:)
Is that 2% of the population or 2% of the 36 million uninsured?
hey sunshine. 2% of the population of 300 million, 6 million, is what I have read in a number of places.