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Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege

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Dalbeck
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« Reply #105 on: July 29, 2009, 03:29:09 pm »

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., head of the Blue Dogs health care task force, appeared pleased with the agreement, saying: "It cuts the cost of the bill significantly by over $100 billion. It protects small businesses and it saves our rural hospitals and ensures that if there is a public option, it will be just that. It will be an option providing consumers more choices. It will not be mandated on anyone. And it now will clearly be on a level playing field."
Senators trying to reach a bipartisan compromise also reported progress in paring the costs of the plan as they push for an agreement they hope will appeal to the political middle.
Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the Democrat leading the negotiations among three Democrats and three Republicans, said new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show the plan that's taking shape would cover 95 percent of Americans by 2015, and cost about $900 billion over 10 years – under the unofficial $1 trillion target the White House has set.
As Congress continued to haggle over various bills on Capitol Hill, the president flew to North Carolina to emphasize consumer protections that he said would be in any bill he would sign. He was making the same pitch later in Virginia.
Among those protections: Insurers would be required to set annual caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses, would have to fully cover routine tests to help prevent illness and would be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder paid the premium in full. Insurers also would be barred from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions, scaling back insurance for people who fall very ill, charging more for services based on gender or and placing limits on coverage. And, they wouldn't be able to deny children family coverage through age 26.
"Whether or not you have health insurance right now, the reforms we seek will bring stability and security that you don't have today – reforms that become more urgent and more urgent with each passing year," Obama said.
Many, if not all, of the consumer protections are included in legislation under discussion in both houses. But conservative-to-moderate Democrats are balking at the bills, making the legislative process move slower than the White House would like and presenting political challenges to the Democratic president.
The president is seeking legislation to extend health insurance to millions who lack it, even as he is asking lawmakers to slow the growth in the skyrocketing cost of medical care overall. To coax legislation from Congress, the president is making a major investment in his time and political capital. His trips outside of Washington and retooled message are part of that effort.
Greeted with cheers, he bounded onto a North Carolina stage backed by four huge American flags, a scene reminiscent of last year's presidential campaign. The audience was friendly, its questions hardly critical. The White House said people signed up for a drawing to get tickets through a Web site and phone number.
The welcome was in contrast to criticism Obama met as his motorcade made its way from the airport to Needham B. Broughton High School. Thick groups of protesters held signs that said "Obamacare is Socialism," "Politicians + Health Care Disaster," and "Hands Off Our Health Care."
Once inside, Obama got hearty applause as he introduced each element in his introductory remarks.
As he has nearly every day for weeks, Obama countered concerns about costs to taxpayers and the scope of government in any overhaul, saying, "No one is talking about some government takeover of health care. ... These folks need to stop scaring everybody."
He cast the debate as a choice between doing something to bring down rising costs, provide better insurance and control exploding deficits – and doing nothing, which he said would have disastrous consequences by doubling health costs over the next decade, making millions more Americans uninsured and bankrupting federal and state governments.
Obama dismissed critics' claims that he was playing politics with health care, telling the crowd: "You know this isn't about politics. This is about people's lives. This is about people's businesses. This is about our future."
____
Associated Press Writers David Espo and Erica Werner contributed to this report.
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Shayla
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« Reply #106 on: July 30, 2009, 11:34:03 am »

stein@huffingtonpost.com
Blue Dog Compromise Removes Billions In Savings From Public Plan
First Posted: 07-30-09 09:34 AM   |   Updated: 07-30-09 11:53 AM


Despite Blue-Dog claims that a compromise they engineered Wednesday would trim $100 billion from the cost of health-care legislation, their weakening of the public option for insurance coverage could end up erasing those savings.

Over the past two weeks, the seven Blue Dog Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have demanded that legislation crafted by their own party's leaders include more cost controls. On Wednesday, four of those seven ended their opposition after a series of changes -- some cosmetic, others substantive -- were made to the legislation.

They got the headlines they wanted -- "House Democrats Trim $100B From Health Bill," The Washington Post wrote - but sources on Capitol Hill and outside of government say the changes to the public plan could actually increase the cost of the bill anywhere between $60 billion and $100 billion, wiping out all or most of the ostensible savings..

Going into the Energy and Commerce debate, House Democrats had proposed a fairly robust public option that would have structured payments for doctors and health care providers at a rate modified from the one used by Medicare. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such a system would cover around 10 million people and would have an operational cost that was roughly 10 percent lower than that of private health insurance.

On Wednesday, Blue Dog Democrats pared down that outline. The compromise bill would still have a public option. But it would allow doctors and other health care providers to negotiate their payment rates.

The Congressional Budget Office has not yet made an estimate of how cost-effective the revised public option would be. But The Walker Report blog, which has done detailed analysis of all variations of health care legislation, noted that the new public option is similar to that put forward by the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The CBO was vague on how much the HELP Committee's public option would cost, but Walker writes that it "would not be noticeably cheaper than private insurance or save the government much money."

Politico, meanwhile, reported on Wednesday night that the savings lost by switching to the Blue Dog public plan would be $60 billion.

On the far end of cost-savings analysis is a June 2009 report issued by the Common Wealth Fund, a private foundation that conducts health care analysis and promotes a better performing health care system. Titled "Fork In The Road," the report concluded that a public option paying providers Medicare rates (which are lower than any proposal put forward to date) would produce savings for the government of roughly $3 trillion. A public plan that provided rates somewhere between Medicare and private plan rates (where the Blue Dog approach would likely be) would yield only $2 trillion in savings.


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« Reply #107 on: July 30, 2009, 11:39:33 am »

Progressive House Democrats Balk At Health Care Compromise
AP/Huffington Post
First Posted: 07-30-09 08:28 AM   |   Updated: 07-30-09 12:30 PM



WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats are determined to show progress on health care overhaul by pushing President Barack Obama's top domestic priority through two critically important committees before they head home for their August break.

Wednesday in the House, Democratic leaders gave in -- at least temporarily -- to numerous demands from rank-and-file rebels from the conservative wing of the party. The so-called Blue Dog Democrats had been blocking the bill's passage in Energy and Commerce.

The House changes, which drew immediate opposition from liberal lawmakers, would steer away from using Medicare as the blueprint for a proposed government insurance option, reduce federal subsidies to help lower-income families afford coverage, and exempt additional businesses from a requirement to offer health insurance to their workers.

The House deal was worked out over hours of talks that involved not only Democratic leaders but also White House officials eager to advance the bill. Senior congressional aides cast it as a temporary accommodation, saying leaders had not committed to support it once the bill advances to the floor of the House in the fall.

As word of the agreement spread, liberals fired back. "We do not support this," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Progressive Caucus. "I think they have no idea how many people are against this. They can't possibly be taking us seriously if they're going to bring this forward." At a press conference, she said, "[W]e might have to come back and start over."

Plans to convene the Energy and Commerce Committee for a vote slipped until Thursday as leaders sought to allay concerns of liberals.

"Waxman made a deal that is unacceptable," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told Politico, after meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Wednesday.

"We signed a pledge to reject any plan that doesn't include a robust public option, and this plan doesn't have a robust public option," he added.


"We just need to get everybody on board," said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who chairs the panel's subcommittee on health.

In the Senate, the pace of negotiations appears to have accelerated in recent days, with lawmakers all but settling on a tax on high-cost insurance plans to help pay for the bill, as well as a new mechanism designed to curtail the growth of Medicare over the next 10 years and beyond.

More problematic from the point of view of most Democrats is a tentative agreement to omit a provision in which the government would sell insurance in competition with private industry. In its place, the group is expected to recommend nonprofit cooperatives that could operate at the state, regional or even national level.

Nor is any bipartisan recommendation likely to include a requirement for large businesses to offer insurance to their workers. Instead, they would have a choice between offering coverage or paying a portion of any government subsidy that noninsured employees would receive.

Like the House bill, the bipartisan proposal under discussion would expand eligibility for Medicaid to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

It provides for federal subsidies for individuals and families up to 300 percent of poverty, less than the 400 percent in the House measure.

Even if the negotiations succeed before the Senate's vacation, which starts next week, it isn't clear when the Finance Committee would vote.

_____

Associated Press writers Liz Sidoti, Alan Fram and David Espo contributed to this rep

 
 
 
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Tory Patrick
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« Reply #108 on: July 30, 2009, 01:31:08 pm »

PELOSI BLASTS INSURANCE "VILLAINS"
"They've Been Immoral All Along. They Are Doing Everything In Their Power To Stop A Public Option"





Forget the Blue Dogs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday. The real "villains" in the fight for health care reform are insurance companies.

Work on the legislation resumed Thursday morning after more than a week of delays to accommodate conservative Blue Dog Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Blue Dogs won significant concessions and also forced delay of a full House floor vote on the final bill until after Congress returns from its upcoming month-long recess.

But Pelosi on Thursday cast the blown deadline as a positive, arguing that the process is further along than it would have been with no date set. Meanwhile, her blistering attacks against health insurers offered a good preview of what to expect from Democrats trying to rally support for reform back at home.

"They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way," Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. "It's almost immoral, what they are doing," she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option. "Of course, they've been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it."

The current system works so well for insurers that they don't even want subsidies, Pelosi claimed. "They've had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country," she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. "This is the fight of our lives."

Pelosi referred to the health insurance industry's campaign against reform -- specifically, the public option -- as "carpet bombing" and "shock and awe" during the press conference. She also sought to present a unified Democratic front, dismissing complaints from progressives that they have been shut out of negotiations dominated by swing Blue Dogs on Energy and Commerce.

"Progressives have been well represented," she said, noting that all three House committees that have worked on health care bills are chaired by progressives.

The public option currently outlined in the Energy and Commerce Committee is significantly weaker than the other two House committee bills, and more closely resembles that of the Senate health committee, in that it unlinks the plan from Medicare rates, leaving negotiation to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Pelosi reiterated her desire for a stronger public plan Thursday, but did not commit to it.

"I am for the strongest possible public option," she said. The Senate health committee bill "is one that I think would be okay. It's not my preference. My preference is a stronger bill. But it meets the test of having an effective public option."


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Tory Patrick
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« Reply #109 on: July 30, 2009, 01:33:17 pm »

Mike Lux
Author, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be
Posted: July 30, 2009 11:59 AMWho Wins the Battle During August Recess Will Determine the Fate of Health Care Reform

Usually when I leave DC for a few days, as I did recently, my mood and hopefulness about the country improves -- it's a lot easier to be hopeful when you meet real people working in their communities for change. And usually when I talk with my insider Democratic friends in DC, my optimism fades because everyone in DC tends to be so cynical and overly-cautious. But on this trip, I got really depressed with the steady drumbeat of bad news coming out of the traditional media about health care. When I got back yesterday, though, and started talking to people who were actually working on things here, I remembered how relentlessly negative big media tends to be, how every story emphasizes the conventional wisdom story line about how health care reform is impossible to pass.

This health care fight is just one motherf-er of a battle. Every step of the way will be really hard and really painful. The final trade offs will **** virtually everybody off. Passing something real, something that actually matters, has never been more than a 50/50 proposition. But talking with people on the Hill and at the White House, and watching what has happened over the last 24 hours, I now believe our chances at real reform are still alive.

The fact is, Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi forged a deal with the Blue Dogs that didn't require them to give up anything that really mattered very much on the substance. While the Energy and Commerce bill will be the worst of the 3 bills reported out of House committees, it still has most of the important things you would want to see in a health care reform bill, including a decent public option. It is a great thing that progressive members of the House are pushing back hard against the bad compromises that were made, though, because progressives need to send a clear signal that they will not be rolled. When the 3 bills are merged during the August recess, that pressure will help deliver a very solid version of the legislation.

Speaking of the August recess, while I am not thrilled that the House put off the floor vote until after it happens, that is also not a disaster for us. But it is a test for those of us who believe in serious health care reform. The battle over who wins the organizing and message fight in the August recess -- grassroots reformers or the astroturf insurance lobby in league with right wingers everywhere -- will decide the fate of health care reform, pure and simple.

The conventional wisdom in the media is simply wrong about the nature of the health care fight: the Senate Finance committee is not determinative. That's what the Republicans, the insurance lobbyists, the conservative Democrats want everyone to believe, and that mantra is being pushed day and night in the offices and hallways of the DC establishment. But it doesn't have to be that way. Four committees out of five did the right thing, and the signal that I'm getting from the White House is that they are still fighting hard for the public option, and Senate Finance is not the end all and be all. What will change the dynamic is progressives winning the organizing and messaging fight in August. Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate, and at least two Republican Senators from a small progressive-leaning state in play. If our side out-organizes the insurance/right wing astroturfers, if the White House and Reid and Pelosi put every bit of muscle into winning the fight for real reform, it can still happen. Everything is at stake here, as I wrote yesterday: if we don't win this fight, the Obama Presidency, Democratic prospects in the 2010 election, and any hopes we have for victories on other big issues are all in deep, deep trouble. But we still have a real shot at winning this battle, and now is when we need to pull out all the stops to do it.
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« Reply #110 on: July 30, 2009, 11:42:58 pm »

Laura Dean ldean@huffingtonpost.com
Reid Blames Press For August Deadline, Baucus Hedges

First Posted: 07-30-09 05:44 PM   |   Updated: 07-30-09 06:03 PM

 
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he is "cautiously optimistic" that a health care bill will make it out of the Senate Finance Committee before senators head home for their summer recess. But he accused the media of inflating the importance of an August finish.

"You folks have created the deadline," Reid chided, asserting that President Obama's original goal was simply to pass legislation by the end of the year.

Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus (D-Mont.) was also cagey when asked about the progress of his high-profile committee. "We'll just keep working," he said, "We're ready when we're ready."

At a press conference with family physicians, Sens. Reid, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) discussed the legislation in language liberally laced with medical metaphors.

"America's had a check-up and the prognosis is not very promising," Reid opened.

"You've heard the diagnosis," warned Durbin, "the health care system is chronically ill."

The plan is supported by 450,000 doctors and medical practitioners, said Jim King, a family physician of Selma, Tennessee. "That's enough to fill Wrigley Field 11 times over -- imagine, 11 Wrigley Fields, full of doctors."

Joe Stubbs, president of the American College of Physicians, pressed for a timely resolution: "Debate must not be the excuse for delay." He ended on an emphatic note. "My patients will experience irreparable harm... if we leave it to a future Congress."

Reid seemed to ignore the growing fissures in his own party when he called the Republican leadership in the Senate and the House the only causes of obstruction in passing the legislation. However, he was quick to point to the inclusion of 161 Republican-authored amendments in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) bill and emphasized his admiration for Sens. Snowe (R-Maine), Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) for "hanging in."

Durbin was rather more critical of Republican stalling, and joked: "What you're hearing from the other side is light up, eat up, drink up and live it up -- that's not the way to get well."
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Shayla
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« Reply #111 on: July 30, 2009, 11:43:23 pm »

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Volitzer
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« Reply #112 on: July 31, 2009, 04:52:41 am »

Health-Care is Orwellian-speak for eugenics under Obama.

They aint building the FEMA Camps and stockpiling coffins for nothing.

http://www.disclose.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6705
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Qoais
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« Reply #113 on: July 31, 2009, 10:30:23 am »

What?  Coffins for giants?  Those boxes are bigger than an average human.  What do they need coffins for Volitzer?  If you want to hide the fact that you've killed people, why would you bury them where their remains can be found in the future?  Why wouldn't you do like the Nazi's and burn them?
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An open-minded view of the past allows for an unprejudiced glimpse into the future.

Logic rules.

"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong."
Casey Palmettiri
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« Reply #114 on: July 31, 2009, 10:43:25 am »

The latest Republican lie is that the Obama health care plan is out to encourage Seniors to kill themselves or "plan their deaths." 

I am just floored at how stupid people are in America that this has caught on. 

People have to declare bankruptcy for their medical bills, have to pay monthly $1000 premiums and are even denied care if they don't have insurance.  And they are letting the muli-billion dollar health industry scare them into resisting change again?

Come on!  Don't be stupid again, America.
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Colleen Gallion
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« Reply #115 on: August 04, 2009, 01:27:41 am »

Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Health Care Reform

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"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true."  President Obama
Colleen Gallion
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« Reply #116 on: August 04, 2009, 01:29:01 am »

Republican (and some Democratic) prostitutes for big Pharma and the Insurance Industry! 
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"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true."  President Obama
Colleen Gallion
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« Reply #117 on: August 04, 2009, 01:38:22 am »

Health-Care is Orwellian-speak for eugenics under Obama.

They aint building the FEMA Camps and stockpiling coffins for nothing.

http://www.disclose.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6705

More paranoid propaganda to get YOu to let the health insurance companies continue screwing you over.
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"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true."  President Obama
Harconen
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« Reply #118 on: August 05, 2009, 09:12:54 pm »

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting For Health Care For Everybody
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/top-ten-ways-tell-your-president-his-party-arent-fighting-health-care-everybody



By Bruce A. Dixon
Created 07/29/2009 - 10:30

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the corporate media relentlessly distorting the public discussion around health care reform, it time for some clear, bright lines to help us tell who is doing what to whom, and whether any of it leads to health care for all of us.  Here are ten of them.

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting For Health Care For Everybody

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate were swept into office on a promise they would deliver affordable and accessible health care for all Americans. But the corporate media journalism limits the national health care conversation to what insurance companies, drug companies, for-profit health care professionals, their executives, lobbyists and politicians of both parties and other hirelings have to say. So it isn't as easy as it ought to be to tell what the politicians are doing about accomplishing health care for everybody. Hence we offer these ten points. This is how you can tell whether your president and his party are fighting for the health care you deserve.

1. Their plan [1] doesn't cover the uninsured till at least 2013 [2].

2013 isn't “day one.” It's not even after the midterm election. It's clear after the president's second term, if he gets one. Congress passed Medicare in 1965 and president Lyndon Johnson rolled out coverage for millions of seniors in eleven months, back in the days before they even had computers.

22,000 Americans now perish each year because they can't get or can't afford medical care, and this year three quarter million personal bankruptcies will be triggered by unpayable medical bills. Why this president and these Democrats are in such a hurry to pass health care now that doesn't take effect till two elections down the road doesn't make sense in any kind of good way.

2. Their “public option” isn't Medicare, won't bring costs down and will only cover about 10 million people.

The “public option” was sold to the American people as Medicare-scale plan open to anybody who wants in that would compete with the private insurers and drive their costs downward. But in their haste not to bite the hands that feed them millions in campaign contributions each hear, the president and his party have scaled the public option back from a Medicare-sized 130 million to a maximum of 10 million, too small to put cost pressure in private insurers [3]. Worse still, the president and his party are playing bait-and-witch, not telling the public they have reduced the public option, to nearly nothing.

This remnant of a public option is not Medicare, as Howard Dean insists, and it will not lead to the sort of everybody-in-nobody-out health care system that most Americans, whenever they are surveyed say they want.

Some Senate and House Democrats want to ditch even the pretense [4] of a “public option” in favor of something they're calling a private insurance “co-op [5]”, which as near as anybody can tell has the same relationship to an actual cooperative that clean coal has to actual coal.

3. The president and his party have already caved in [6] to the drug companies on reimporting Canadian drugs, on negotiating drug prices downward and on generics.

This explains why Big Pharma, the same people who ran the devastatin g series of anti-reform “Harry and Louise” ads to spike the Clinton-era drive to fix health care are spending $100 million [7] to run Obama ads using the president's language about “bipartisan” solutions to health care reform.

4. The president and his party have received more money from private insurers and the for-profit health care industry than even Republicans, with the president alone taking $19 million in the 2008 election cycle alone, [8] more than all his Repubican, Democratic and independent rivals combined.

Democratic senator Max Bacaus got $1.1 million in 2008. Democratic senators Harkin, Landreau and Rockerfeller each got over half a million, and Senator Durbin got just under half a million. Other Democratic senators got a little less. Four Democrats in the House, Rangel, Dinglell, Udall and Hoyer got over half a million apiece in 2008, with other Democrats not far behind.

Is there any wonder that the insurance companies, like the drug companies are also running “bipartisan health care reform” commercials using the president's exact language?

5. The president's plan, and those of Republicans and Democratic blue dogs too, will require families to purchase health insurance policies from private insurers.

This is something the policy wonks call an 'individual mandate [9]”, under which Individuals will be “mandated” to purchase affordable insurance, though companies would not be required to offer it. In Massachusetts, the prototype state for the Obama plan, a family with an income of $33,000 can be required to spend $9,000 in deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses before the insurance company is obligated to pay a dime. As in Massachusetts, public money is used to purchase private insurance for the very poorest citizens. With the revenues of insurance companies on the decline, individual mandate programs are a welcome bailout for the private insurance industry.

6. The president's plan, and those of Republicans and Democratic blue dogs too, could force you to buy junk insurance [10].

Think about an insurance policy that costs a lot, but is full of loopholes, exceptions and steep deductibles and co-payments. That's junk insurance, and for many it's the only insurance companies offer. Even more pernicious is the widespread practice among insurance companies of “recission” in which claimants are routinely investigated and disqualified in the event that they finally make a claim. Insurance companies admit they do this to half of one percent of policies per year. That means if you hold a health insurance policy twenty years, you don;t have insurance – you have a ninety percent chance of having insurance.

7. The president's plan, as well as those of Democratic “blue dogs” and Republicans, are to be funded in part with cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

Private insurance companies have always hated Medicare because it is far more efficient than they are. Medicare's administrative expenses are under five percent, as compared with the one third of every health care dollar taken by the for-profit insurance companies for their advertising, bad investments, billing and denial machinery, executive salaries and bonuses. Private insurers have, over the years, purchased enough influence in Congress and previous White Houses to restrict Medicare's payment rates and partially privatize it. But president Obama's plan, perhaps the most friendly to Medicare and Medicaid, calls for over $300 billion in cuts [11] to the programs that now provide medical care to those with the fewest options, while failing to guarantee that care will come from elsewhere. In Massachusetts right now, hospitals are turning away poor people they used to be able to provide care for because funding that used to go to those institutions is now plowed into the state's “individual mandate” system.

8. The president, with the cooperation of corporate media and the Republicans is trying to make the argument about himself instead of a discussion on the merits of his policy.

The president and his critics are happy to talk about whether this will be “his Waterloo [12]”, or his Dien Bien Phu, as if that matters more than the 22,000 Americans who die each year from lack of medical care, or the three quarter million who will go bankrupt because of unpayable medical bills. The concentration on whether the president looks good or bad takes up air, ink, and coverage time that might otherwise be spent explaining what is and isn't in the various proposals, and why.

If the president were not afraid of his own supporters publicly examining the merits and demerits of his proposals, he would mobilize those 13 million emails and phone numbers collected during the campaign. The reason he has not sone so already is that most of his own supporters favor a Medicare-For-All single payer health care system, HR 676.

9. The president and his party, and the corporate media [13] have spent more time and energy silencing [14] and excluded the advocates of single payer health care, mostly the president's own supporters, than they have fighting blue dogs and Republicans.

But no matter how diligently the spokespeople for single payer are excluded from media coverage and invitations [15] to Obama's policy forums and round tables, no matter how many times the White House cuts their questions [16] from transcripts and video of public events, the calls, emails and letters keep pouring into Congress and the White House demanding the creation of a publicly funded, everybody-in-nobody-out system, a Medicare-for-All kind of single payer health care plan.

10. Despite the president's own admission that only a single payer health care system will deliver what Americans want, he and the leaders of his party insist that Medicare For All, HR 676, us utterly off the table.

Before he became a presidential candidate, Barack Obama identified himself as a proponent of a single payer health care system. All we had to do, he told us, was elect a Democratic congress and senate, and a different president. Now that this has been done, he insists that “change” is just not possible, and we have to settle for less. The president continues to admit that only a single payer health care system will cover everybody, but insists that America just can't handle that much change.

The truth is that Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of change, and a health care system that covers everybody from day one with no exceptions is what people imagined they voted for when they swept him and an overwhelming number of Democrats into office.

A single payer Medicare-For-All system will eliminate 500,000 insurance company jobs and replace them with 3.2 million new jobs in health care for a net gain of 2.6 million new jobs [17] according to a study by the National Nurses Organization. That's as many jobs as the US economy lost in all of 2007. Single payer will create hundreds of billions in annual wages and local and state tax revenues for cash strapped cities and towns. It will lift the shadow of bankruptcy for medical reasons from two thirds of a million American families yearly. It's what we deserve.

It's what we voted for, and we won't stop demanding it.

Bruce Dixon is based in Atlanta GA and is managing editor at Black Agenda Report. 

He can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.

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Links:
[1] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3200
[2] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hiiWnivT__38YVG-emF9zy6xVW_AD99ICP600
[3] http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10400/07-26-InfoOnTriCommProposal.pdf
[4] http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/28/does-the-congressional-progressive-caucus-care-about-its-public-option-principles/
[5] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=arrJ7R3CbF18
[6] http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/07/obamacare-is-at-war-with-itself-over.html
[7] http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=4733
[8] http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=H&cycle=2008&recipdetail=P&mem=N&sortorder=U
[9] http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/27/758427/-Health-Care-Reform:-Pros-and-Cons-of-Individual-Mandate
[10] http://www.consumerreports.org/health/insurance/health-insurance/overview/health-insurance-ov.htm
[11] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/14/nation/na-obama-radio14
[12] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/07/20/obama_pushes_back_against_talk.html
[13] http://www.opednews.com/articles/Poll-Excludes-Single-Payer-by-Jerry-Policoff-090312-353.html
[14] http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/909
[15] http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/march/obama_to_single_paye.php
[16] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8311060&mesg_id=8311060
[17] http://www.calnurses.org/research/pdfs/ihsp_sp_economy_report_charts_011509.pdf
[18] http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/top-ten-ways-tell-your-president-his-party-arent-fighting-health-care-everybody
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Ignis Natura Renovandum Integra
Volitzer
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« Reply #119 on: August 05, 2009, 11:47:29 pm »

What?  Coffins for giants?  Those boxes are bigger than an average human.  What do they need coffins for Volitzer?  If you want to hide the fact that you've killed people, why would you bury them where their remains can be found in the future?  Why wouldn't you do like the Nazi's and burn them?

The idea is the NWO is going to kill us faster than they can cremate us so they are having those coffins made to hold an average of 3 humans.  That way they can stockpile them at the FEMA Camps while they incinerate others.
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