Tag: Universal Health Care

Or at least, that’s what I did.

Watch this movie from Rosie (O’Donnell’s) blog — with her unerring taste.

http://www.rosie.com/blog/2009…

Crossposted at Agent Orange, ~7pm EDT, Saturday

This short essay started as a comment on a Docudharma Diary,  but its something that’s been percolating in my head for a while, now.

First, yes, of course, the Administration is acting like a representative of the moderate wing of the Corporate Party, because after all … that’s what they are. That is, after all, what they ran on … if they had pivoted to act as progressive populists, they would, indeed, have given substance to the radical reactionary lies about running as a moderate while secretly yearning for a radical agenda.

Instead, it turns out that the radical reactionary charge is more of the same projection … since they have for such a long time been running as more moderate than their actual radical agenda. The marketing genius of labeling a program of ripping out not just the New Deal of the Democratic Roosevelt but also the Square Deal of the Republican Roosevelt “conservative” … the tagline of the Fox Noise Channel as “Fair and Balanced” is just a pale shadow of that rhetorical trick.

Still …

The Single Payer Scourge.

There is already a very large single payer health care system operating in this country.  It’s called Medicare.   It has been around since 1965, beginning 44 years ago.  The relevant Wikipedia article reads, in part…

“Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria. Medicare operates as a single-payer health care system …(emphasis mine).”

Did you note that the first sentence described Medicare as a “social insurance program?”  If the talking heads on the major television networks are to be believed, doesn’t that sound like socialism, which is at least a first cousin, if not an identical or fraternal twin of communism?  

Thank God or the Goddess for Teddy Kennedy!  He has done so much for America over his lifetime, and even in sickness, the “Lion of the Senate” is roaring again:

May 29 (Bloomberg) — Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of one of two Senate panels drafting health-care overhaul plans, said he will include a government-run program to compete with private insurers in a measure to be considered in mid-June, asserting his role in the emerging debate despite his battle with brain cancer.

snip

“An important foundation of our legislation is the following principle: If you like the coverage you have now, you keep it,” Kennedy wrote in an op-ed article in the Boston Globe. “But if you don’t have health insurance or don’t like the insurance you have, our bill will give you new, more affordable options.”

Bloomberg

Make no mistake.  One of the central issues in this election is reforming a healthcare system that is designed to generate large profits for the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.  Blue Cross just provided more ammunition for why the parasitic insurance industry must be dismantled and destroyed, not given a seat at the table.

Blue Cross of California is asking physicians to violate confidentiality and report pre-existing conditions that new members may have omitted so their insurance coverage can be cancelled.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Citing an effort to hold down costs, health insurance giant Blue Cross wants doctors in California to report conditions it could use to cancel new patients’ medical coverage, it was reported Tuesday.

The state’s largest for-profit health insurer is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose “material medical history,” the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.

– Source

And so we see the field narrowing again!  John Edwards appears to be on CNN’s not viable list.  My advice to Edwards and his supporters:  Be like my candidate, Dennis Kucinich!  Fight the bastards every step of the way.  And while your at it, embrace Dennis’ call for Universal Health Care!  🙂

It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.  – Eugene Debs

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E…