Monday, October 12, 2009

Health Care Reform-- The Latest Wrinkles

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Dianne Feinstein's name is spelled incorrectly-- and she's on board now anyway

The lobbyists outnumber members of Congress 6-1; they're well-armed; and they're not giving up. They mean to kill meaningful health care reform and they don't care what it takes to do it. They know no one is going to shoot them or put them in prison, not even someone who's family members are dying because of the screwed up status quo they're defending. This morning the most venal and untrustworthy of the Insurance Industry lobbying groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), ramped up its full attack against Obama and Senate Democrats, basically calling them liars and claiming that health care legislation would drive up premiums, rather than making coverage more affordable. They've spent billions on bribing politicians in the last two decades just for this moment. Even one of the really bad corporate whores, unscrupulous Nashville Blue Dog Jim Cooper admits “The lobbyists are winning." No detail of the complex legislation is too small for them and the politicians they own are willing accomplices to their perfidy.

But this isn't an obscure intra-banking regulation that people can't understand that theyy're trying to kill. This is health care reform meant to make the lives of tens of millions of Americans better and more livable (literally). Saturday in his national radio address, the president said the national consensus for reform is unprecedented (watch the clip below).

If Obama can't pick up the bipartisan support he so craves from the vicious obstructionist pygmies in the Republican congressional caucuses-- even self styled co-president Olympia Snowe is better at playing destructive cat-and-mouse games than at actually doing anything constructive-- Obama will take the support from Republican-lite governors, mayors and former office holders, even calling them "distinguished leaders." The Republicans in Congress... different approach, probably based on a growing sense of frustration:
[T]here are some in Washington today who seem determined to play the same old partisan politics, working to score political points, even if it means burdening this country with an unsustainable status quo. A status quo of rising health care costs that are crushing our families, our businesses, and our government. A status quo of diminishing coverage that is denying millions of hardworking Americans the insurance they need. A status quo that gives big insurance companies the power to make arbitrary decisions about your health care. That is a status quo I reject. And that is a status quo the American people reject.

The distinguished former Congressional leaders who urged us to act on health insurance reform spoke of the historic moment at hand and reminded us that this moment will not soon come again. They called on members of both parties seize this opportunity to finally confront a problem that has plagued us for far too long.

That is what we are called to do at this moment. That is the spirit of national purpose that we must summon right now. Now is the time to rise above the politics of the moment. Now is the time to come together as Americans. Now is the time to meet our responsibilities to ourselves and to our children, and secure a better, healthier future for generations to come. That future is within our grasp. So, let’s go finish the job.

Still not frustrated enough to say anything about the Blue Dogs and corrupt DLC Senators from his own party-- Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson-- (not to mention the always treacherous Joe Lieberman) who are also working full-time with the lobbyists to wreck the aspirations of the nation. I mean Bill Frist and Tommy Thompson, let alone confused ole Bob Dole, don't get to vote. Blanche Lincoln does and she and Ben Nelson are the two most likely to join the GOP filibuster to prevent an up-or-down Senate vote, something the Democrats would win. And now that most people acknowledge that the lobbyist-written Baucus Caucus (basically him and Conrad and a gaggle of the most corrupt of the reactionaries) plan for co-ops is dead, no telling how he'll vote on cloture. The new new strategy is for an opt-out provision for states that would rather do without health care for its poor (mostly minority) citizens. As many as a dozen states, primarily from the libertarian west (i.e., Idaho and Wyoming) as well as the worst of the old slave-holding Confederate states could go in that direction. The idea, even before that debate is taken up, is to get something on the table and agreed to so that the bill will get into the House-Senate conference committee, where it will actually get written.

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1 Comments:

At 4:24 PM, Anonymous johnpauljones said...

The Corporations own America lock stock and barrel. Insurance companies are threatening to black mail us over health care and Wall street and the banksters are too big to fail so no matter what, they will get theirs legally or otherwise. Of course none of these people produce anything of value being mostly gambling institutions which systematically steal off the top while being intermediaries for people who actually produce something of value. Add the burden of the military industrial complex and it's hard to see how we have gotten this far. Only by being 6% of the worlds population while using 50% of the resources and through an going design science revolution has it been possible.

The population is kept in debt through mortgages and credit cards and of course student loans making us all the indentured servants to those who have systematically stolen humanities common wealth calling themselves industries when most make nothing of value. To call insurance an industry is an insult to our intelligence.

Absolutely nothing can fix this corruption without a totally new way of looking at life and how to make it work for everyone.

Our economic, social and political systems were invented in a time when the economic model was based on scarcity and not enough to go around. The political system has one purpose, to get contributions from the rich so they can win the next election. In order to accomplish this the main task is to get the fat cats fatter and everyone else by on as little as possible and totally stupid. These people are so pathetic that they cut off welfare to those who needed it most while giving the store to the corporations.

The banksters have cleverly given the public credit cards so they could buy the things they want and need and not having the income or savings to buy while they rip the merchants off the top and the consumers forever. They have largely succeeded in these efforts but now everything is threatened since the system cannot survive when its' credit lines are full and income can no longer cover the payments or purchases.

Making money and making sense are mutually exclusive. The insurance, banking and wall street gangs have been set up to make money, therefore they will never have any redeeming social value, and are destined to fail.

It is time to start making sense which will require the unlearning of most of what we think we know. Insurance companies are set up to make money not to make anyone healthier or to cure illness. They are a total scam making Bernie Madoff look mild in comparison.

Nothing is so invisible as the obvious.

 

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