When It Comes To Health Care Reform, Who Can You Trust? John Kerry?

One of us? Or one of them?

Let me start by listing the half dozen top recipients of legalized bribes-- so-called campaign donations-- from the Insurance Giants who have spent so lavishly to keep Congress from enacting robust, workable health care reform:

John McCain (R-AZ)- $2,885,602 ($8,712,461)
Chris Dodd (D-CT)- $2,202,046 ($1,437,265)
John Kerry (D-MA)- $1,395,617 ($8,162,141)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)- $1,210,299 ($1,015,266)
Max Baucus (D-NE)- $1,182,613 ($2,853,781)
Arlen Specter (R-D-PA)- $1,037,205 ($4,048,133)

The dollar figures in parenthesis, in case anyone is interested, is how much the Medical-Industrial Complex "donated" to these fine gentlemen. Kerry doesn't even need the money. He's the richest member of Congress. With a fortune of at least $231 million, only Congressmembers Jane Harman, who like Kerry, married wealth and Darrell Issa, a successful burglar and car thief, come anywhere close. And the next wealthiest member of the Senate is a Rockefeller worth only a third of what Kerry reports.

I don't trust rich people to do the right thing for ordinary working families when push comes to shove. I have a gut feeling that senators who come from working families-- like Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley-- are more likely to understand what it's like to be desperate and poor in America. There has never been a moment I really trusted John Kerry. Better than a Republican? Of course. But really trustworthy for working families. Not to my mind.

And Wednesday evening, according to HuffPo's Ryan Grim, he put his cards on the table and the cards were exactly the ones Big Insurance wanted played: the "trigger" they've been plotting to use to derail the public option.

Under the plan floated by Kerry, a public health care option would only be triggered by private insurance companies failing to meet certain criteria after ten years. Known as the "trigger" in legislative lingo, the idea is vociferously opposed by health care advocates who consider it the death of reform.

Reform advocates say that the system is already broken and that there's no need to wait any longer, also warning that the insurance industry might be able to game the criteria and prevent the public plan trigger from ever being pulled.

Ratted out by two senate aides, Kerry is hysterical that he could be put into the same category as treacherous Democrats playing footsie with Big Business to deny Americans health care reform-- hated party poopers like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu. Even Snarlin' Arlen, knowing full well that he could never win the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania without supporting-- at the minimum-- a public option, seems to have come around... at least a bit. He'll never be a Bernie Sanders or a Dick Durbin and he's still an opponent of single payer and someone who we'll have to watch like a hawk when it comes to the fine points of a public option, but he has moved towards one-- out of political necessity. Let's face it, Specter may be a slimebag of the first order, but his opportunism works in many ways; and in this instance might just work for regular Americans. I wouldn't bet on it though.

Blue America is doing what we can to keep 'em honest-- as Blanche Lincoln is about to find out, very, very viscerally. And we can use your help in that endeavor. Find out the details and contribute whatever you can spare here at our Campaign for Health Care Choice.