Don't Get Sick!

Kaiser: Romney vow to repeal Obamacare will make Medicare insolvent by 2016 
By: John Presta  September 15, 2012

The leading non-partisan health care think tank, The Henry Kaiser Foundation, released a detailed policy data note on the impact of repealing The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PACA), or better known as Obamacare.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan promised to repeal all of Obamacare if they are elected President and Vice-President. In addition, they also promised to roll back the $716 billion in Medicare cuts that is part of Obamacare. The Kaiser Foundation addresses that vow by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to roll back President Obama's plan to cut $716 billion dollars from Medicare over a ten-year period.

For Those Who Don't Get That Obama CareS! Know The Facts!

Key Features of the Affordable Care Act, By Year

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. The law puts in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will roll out over four years and beyond. Use the links below to learn about what’s changing and when:

I know there will come a time when I feel like blogging again...when I feel like fighting again....Mem

Sometimes I have to let someone else voice the words for me because sometimes words are still too painful to speak.....

Doctors And Nurses With A Conscience...

Medical Professionals Protest Corporate Greed At Occupy Wall Street

October 23, 2011 9:12 AM

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – Doctors and nurses are joining the Occupy Wall Street movement on Sunday afternoon at Zuccotti Park to share their frustration over a lack of adequate healthcare for the 99 percent.

WCBS 880′s Monica Miller reports

Time has the ability to improve what we resist!

I have held firm to my beliefs that President Obama has done for this Country what no other President was able to achieve since Roosevelt.  Just like SSI, the Health Care Reform bill will take time to improve, to work for all people but it has great possibilities, just like SSI!  (Vermont has already paved the way for other states by
passing a bill for single-payer health care.)

This is a fantastic article and a part of history that we should all remember and share.-Mem

Sun Aug 28, 2011 at 08:00 AM PDT

Mr. Roosevelt's Social Insurance
by DemFromCT

This past week, I had the pleasure of a visit to FDR's home and library in Hyde Park, NY. The library was featuring a special exhibit on Social Security, which celebrated its 76th anniversary on August 14. The exhibit brought home to me the importance of this keystone of the New Deal, and reminded me why I am a Democrat.

From the Roosevelt Library and Museum exhibition:

Members of the Republican Party want "Obamacare" for themselves but NOT the people!

Send health care hypocrites the form to repeal their own insurance

Republicans just passed a bill to repeal affordable health care for 32 million Americans -- but most are still receiving heavily subsidized federal care. Call out health care hypocrisy by sending Representatives who voted for repeal the actual form to cancel their own federal insurance benefits.

*By the way for those of you on the right who don't know it! It's called Obama Cares! (cont. video)

Life Long Republican Says Obama, Reid, Pelosi deserve our thanks!

By Lynn M. Hansen (Guest commentary)

Last Edit: Apr 5 2010 - 2:31pm

As an American and a resident of Weber County, I salute President Obama, Sen. Harry Reid, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi for pushing the health care reform bill through the legislative process. Until the administration of George W. Bush, I was an avid Republican and served in the Reagan and Bush (senior) administrations as a political appointee. But I will not allow Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh to define conservatism for me, nor will I accept the half-truths and invectives with which they pollute the airways.

Those who listen to these hate-mongers should realize that they have become millionaires by peddling the views they do. I recall Limbaugh frequently stating that he hoped Obama would fail. That is tantamount to wishing America would fail for Obama is our freely elected president.

What has happened to civility in this country? I did not vote for Obama but we, the American people, did. I consider myself an American, not a Utahn. I served 23 years in the United States Air Force and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance to one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

For as long as he is president, I will respect the office of president and the person who occupies it. It is pure hypocrisy or worse for those who legislate (many, if not most of whom are millionaires) to try to deny basic insurance coverage to middle- and lower-class Americans. We must understand that each member of the House of Representatives and each senator -- Republican and Democrat -- has health insurance with the major portion of their premiums being paid by the taxpayer. I know because I having worked in the government also have such a policy. Where is the "justice for all" in this?

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation would extend coverage to 32 million Americans who lack it and cut deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade. If realized, the expansion of coverage would include 95 percent of all eligible individuals under age 65.

For the first 10 years, it will cost about $100 billion a year. This is about the yearly cost of the Iraq War. Why is providing health care to Americans less desirable than invading and fighting a protracted war in a country far away that did not threaten us?

Republicans constantly assert that we will pay more taxes. Wait a minute. Who will pay more taxes? Not people in my income bracket! In fact, we may well see tax relief. Those who will be taxed more are families whose income exceeds $250,000 annually or singles whose income is at $200,000. Why do those who claim we will pay more taxes never mention these details?

The insurance industry, which spent millions on advertising trying to block the bill, would come under new federal regulation. They would be forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions and from canceling policies when a policyholder becomes ill. Does the ordinary citizen understand that CEOs of insurance companies make millions of dollars every year? Some make as much as $24 million a year. Is this what we mean by free enterprise?

Never in the more than 15 years that I have resided in Europe have I met a person who wanted to trade their health care system for ours. I had a hip replacement performed in Germany. The procedure was no different or the care less than that I received for a like operation at McKay-Dee in Ogden.

It is disingenuous to say that we will receive inferior care under the legislation that Obama has signed. It is equally devious to cite horror cases from England or Canada. We have enough of our own. And it is simply wrong to call this socialized medicine knowing that people tend to associate socialism with communism.

Finally, my religious faith believes that governments are instituted of God for the good of the people -- all people, not just the rich and privileged! We are often reminded of our duty to care for the less fortunate. I therefore find it odd that the residents of this state are so anti-Obama.

West Haven resident Lynn M. Hansen received a B.A. from Utah State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Utah. Appointed ambassador by President Reagan, he served as head of the U.S. Delegation to the Geneva Conference on Disarmament and later with the CIA as vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He recently returned from Hamburg, Germany, where he served as LDS mission president.

By FRANK RICH

Published: March 27, 2010

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.

Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.

When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will “go for it” again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.) When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association.

But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

Correction: Timothy Geithner’s title at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was president and chief executive officer, not chairman, as I wrote here last week.

"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now"

"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now"

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.

Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama's agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I'll post it on my website.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!

4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)

5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?

FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:

1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.

2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.

3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.

4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here's how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!

I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.

And when you act, send me your stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure to post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter on my site so they can be shared with millions.

C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

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Mad As Hell Doctors

IT'S A BUNCH OF MALARKEY-Joe Biden

Obama's Health Care Reform In 4 Minutes

President Obama's Speech 9-9-09 On Health Care Reform And Letter From Sen. Kennedy

9-9-09 (See Letter From Sen. Kennedy By Scrolling Down)

The White House has released the text of the letter from the late Sen. Ted Kennedy that President Obama referenced in his address to Congress:

May 12, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

I wanted to write a few final words to you to express my gratitude for your repeated personal kindnesses to me – and one last time, to salute your leadership in giving our country back its future and its truth.

On a personal level, you and Michelle reached out to Vicki, to our family and me in so many different ways. You helped to make these difficult months a happy time in my life.

You also made it a time of hope for me and for our country.

When I thought of all the years, all the battles, and all the memories of my long public life, I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the President who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stretched across decades; it has been disappointed, but never finally defeated. It was the cause of my life. And in the past year, the prospect of victory sustained me-and the work of achieving it summoned my energy and determination.

There will be struggles – there always have been – and they are already underway again. But as we moved forward in these months, I learned that you will not yield to calls to retreat – that you will stay with the cause until it is won. I saw your conviction that the time is now and witnessed your unwavering commitment and understanding that health care is a decisive issue for our future prosperity. But you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.

And so because of your vision and resolve, I came to believe that soon, very soon, affordable health coverage will be available to all, in an America where the state of a family’s health will never again depend on the amount of a family’s wealth. And while I will not see the victory, I was able to look forward and know that we will – yes, we will – fulfill the promise of health care in America as a right and not a privilege.

In closing, let me say again how proud I was to be part of your campaign- and proud as well to play a part in the early months of a new era of high purpose and achievement. I entered public life with a young President who inspired a generation and the world. It gives me great hope that as I leave, another young President inspires another generation and once more on America’s behalf inspires the entire world.

So, I wrote this to thank you one last time as a friend- and to stand with you one last time for change and the America we can become.

At the Denver Convention where you were nominated, I said the dream lives on.

And I finished this letter with unshakable faith that the dream will be fulfilled for this generation, and preserved and enlarged for generations to come.

With deep respect and abiding affection,

[Ted]

We Can't Afford To Wait

Obama's Choice

Open Letter To The President

Before I post this letter that I think say's it all I would also like to Remind the President that many of us left a Party we had grown up with. As horrible as the Party has become over the years, we were familiar with it and we left it for you. We left it to dream, to hope and to believe that All person's could be treated equal, we left it because we trusted you to see your promises through.~Mem

President Obama: You Promised Healthcare, Not Futile Wooing of GOP Obstructionists

By Anne Lamott, Los Angeles Times. Posted September 3, 2009.
An open letter reminds the president of the major campaign vow that got him into the White House.

I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding since that election in 2008, during which 66,882,230 Americans cast their votes for you. Perhaps one of your trusted advisors has given you bum information. Maybe they told you that we voted for you -- walked, marched, prayed, fund-raised and knocked on doors for you -- because we hoped you would try to reunite the country. Of the total votes cast that long-ago November day, I'm guessing that about 1,575 people wanted you to try to reconcile the toxic bipartisanship that culminated in those Sarah Palin rallies.

The other 66,880,655 of us wanted universal healthcare.

You inherited a country that was in the most desperate shape since the Civil War, or the Depression, and we voted for you to heal the catastrophic wounds Bush inflicted on our country and our world. You said that you were up to that challenge.

We did not vote for you to see if you could get Chuck Grassley or Michael Enzi to date you. The spectacle of you wooing them fills us with horror and even disgust. We recoil as from hot flame at each mention of your new friends. Believe me, I know exactly how painful this can be, how reminiscent of 7th-grade yearning to be popular, because I went through it myself this summer. I did not lower my bar quite as low as you have, but I was sitting on the couch one afternoon, thinking that this adorable guy and I were totally on the same sheet of music -- he had given me absolutely every indication that we were -- and were moving into the kissing stage. Out of nowhere, I thought to ask him if he liked me in the same way I liked him.

He said, in so many words, no.

And Mr. President, that is what the Republicans are saying to you: They are just not that into you, sir.

This may have thrown you for such a loop that you have forgotten why you were elected -- which was to lead your people back to the promises of our founding parents. Many of us no longer recognized our country after eight years of Bush and Cheney, and you gave us your word that you would help restore the great headway we had made on matters of race, equality and plain old social justice.

People, get ready, you said; there's a train a 'coming. And we did get ready. We hit the streets. We roared, whispered, cried, whooped and went door to door, convinced that even if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had not specifically dreamed of you, his dream of justice and equality and pride might come into being through your vision, your greatness, through the hope that your words gave us, through the change you promised.

He dreamed of a leader like you. Just like you. And something in the deepest part of this country's soul heard.

After eight years of Bush, and then the Palin nomination, we were battered and anguished and punch-drunk. But in rallying behind you, we came back to life, like in Ezekiel when the prophet breathes the spirit of bearing witness and caring onto the dry bones, and those bones come back to life, become living people again, cherished and tended to.

We did not know exactly how you would proceed to restore our beloved Constitution. It seemed beyond redemption, like my kitchen floor did briefly last week after my dog, Bodhi, accidentally ate 24 corn bread muffins. You said you would push back your sleeves and begin, that it would take all of us working harder than we ever had before, but that you would lead. While acknowledging the financial and moral devastation of the last eight years, you said you would start by giving your people healthcare. You would do battle with the conservatives and insurance companies. You said in your beautiful way many times that this was the overarching moral and spiritual issue of our times, and we understood this to mean that you took this to be your Selma, your Little Rock.

I hate to sound like a betrayed 7-year-old, but you said. And we believed you. Now you seem to have abandoned the dream. That is why moderates and liberals and progressives like myself all seem a little tense this summer. It is time to call your spirit back. We will be here to help when you get back from vacation. We want to help you get over the disappointment of Mr. Grassley's cold shoulder, of Mr. Enzi blowing you off, even that nice Olympia Snowe standing you up. We can and will take to the streets again, march and hold peaceful rallies, go door to door, donate to any causes that will help get out the truth of what a public option would mean. But we need you to shake off the dust of the journey and remember the promises of Dr. King, and we need you to lead us toward what is no longer so distant a shore.

Do it for Teddy Kennedy, boss. Do it for the other Kennedys too, for Dr. King, for Big Mama, for the poorest kids you met on the trail, the kids who go to emergency rooms for their healthcare, do it for their mothers and for Michelle. Just do it.

Trusting you, Mr. Obama
Anne Lamott
© 2008 The Los Angeles Times

Obama-Biden is making this material available in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

French Health Care

To Your Health

Olbermann: Legislators For Sale

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Healthcare - The Real Facts by Dr. Copp

Not wanting to repeat what you’ve been seeing and hearing on 60 Minutes, Bill Moyers’ Journal and the evening TV news shows,... I’m going to try to give you my “big picture” approach to health care systems,... and try to debunk some of the myths and lies the heath care industry has been trying to sell you.

Please note that I refer to our delivery system as the HEATHCARE INDUSTRY. In a nutshell, I believe that is the real root of the problems we face. Uniquely,... healthcare in the United States is an INDUSTRY,... a for-profit business which is designed with the primary goal,... not of tending to your physical and mental welfare,... but of making money for its providers and investors. That’s a simple fact and should not come as a surprise! We live in a capitalistic society, and our political leaders long ago decided that healthcare is a commodity,... not a right of citizenship, like our public education, judicial system, fire protection, and other public services.

But that means any attempt to “reform” healthcare delivery and reduce the cost of healthcare will have a negative effect on the income and profits of pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, clinics, medical laboratories, and the manufacturers of medical equipment (such as expensive MRI machines, respirators, power wheelchairs, laser devices, pacemakers, etc.)

You should expect them to resist and fight back! Think about it,... for years, the drug companies have been spending millions trying to convince you that you need to take regular pills. They dream up curiously-named syndromes for common discomforts and get to sell you expensive remedies which could be treated by simpler, much less expensive means. These same pharmaceutical companies lobbied your congressional representatives to the absurd extent that recent reform legislation on prescription drugs specifically forbade the Medicare and Medicaid programs from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for better prices on their drugs. Ridiculous,... but true!

Those same drug companies tell you that the reason your prescription drugs cost so much is that they have to spend enormous amounts of money on research to find new and better medications. In fact, most of the investment in developing and testing new drugs is shouldered by the federal government (as a tax-payer, that’s you), through the NSF, NIH and direct grants from HHS. The pharmaceutical companies spend three times as much on promotion,... detailing doctors, advertising on TV and in medical journals,... as they do on research.

The drug companies are not alone in these endeavors. Every part of the healthcare industry,... health insurance companies, hospital associations, nursing homes, health professionals and manufacturers of medical equipment,... provide your congressional representatives with generous contributions for their reelection coffers.

Let’s look at a few of them:

Over the last 6 years,...

Max Baucus, Chairman, Senate Finance Comm. has accepted over $2,350,000 from the healthcare industry as campaign contributions. Do you suppose he feels somewhat obligated to them? This year he’s earning it, as their defender against the massive popular demand to get a single-payer health insurance system. As chairman, he has outright refused to consider any single-payer proposals,... barring from the hearings any single-payer advocates despite vocal protests,... and he’s forging ahead with a plan that promises to discipline the industry,... but keeps them in charge.

His Republican counterpart on the committee, Charles Grassley, helping him write the reform legislation, has gotten nearly 25% of his campaign funding from the industry. He has accepted almost $1,500,000 from them.

Democrat Christopher Dodd has received almost as much as Senator Grassley to his campaign fund. A total of $1,444,522 from health insurance corporations alone.

John Boehner, Republican minority leader in the House, has received over a million dollars in the past 6 years. Which makes him a “piker” compared to John McCain, who received campaign contributions (including his run for the presidency) to the tune of well over $5 million, just from health professionals alone.

This is a high stakes game that’s being played and there seems to be no shame demonstrated by any of the participants. So far, in the absence of any serious consideration for a single-payer system (which would be the TRUE reform we need), the Obama Administration’s persistent efforts in the healthcare reform debates have managed to assure that we might get a “public option” for healthcare insurance in the final resolution of the bill. This is the very least we should settle for. And if there are no troublesome loopholes in the final bill, a federally supported “public option” should be sufficiently more efficient and less expensive, so that it would either drive the commercial health insurance plans out of business or force them to compete at a greatly reduced cost level.

If you’ve been hospitalized recently, you already know that present healthcare costs are completely unjustifiable. As you are undoubtedly aware, since the beginning of this century, just 10 years ago, the cost of healthcare has doubled.

Let’s consider why that’s the case. In the June 1st issue of the NEW YORKER magazine, there was an article by Atul Gawande, entitled “The Cost Conundrum.” You can pull it up from the internet on your computer. It’s definitely worth a thoughtful reading if you want to understand one of the reasons for skyrocketing healthcare costs. He analyzes, in considerable detail, the reasons why McAllen, Texas has one of the highest health expenditure rates in the nation. In 2006, Medicare spent $15,000 per enrollee here,... almost twice the national average. While in El Paso, with very similar demographics, Medicare spent only $7,504 per enrollee. The huge difference lies in how the local providers practice medicine.

Consider the fact that they’re probably treating elderly “snowbirds” who are virtually all covered by Medicare,... and not he local year-round population whose average income was about $12,000 a year. I asume that a few of you are eligible for Medicare and understand that when you see your personal physician for an annual visit, he or she is inclined to order a great many blood tests, an EKG, mammography, a chest Xray, perhaps some allergy tests, and maybe suggests seeing an orthopedic specialist for that low back pain or knee discomfort. Some of those things are ordered because, IF they missed something on your physical exam you might think your doctor was negligent in not detecting the cancer, or diabetes, or emphysema earlier. So, it’s a way for the doctor to minimize the chance of a malpractice suit.

You may have actually felt pretty fit, but all those additional tests and referrals serve to provide you with a level of assurance and comfort. As a result, instead of the routine visit and exam being, maybe $200,... it costs $500 or even $1,000. But It’s mostly being paid for by Medicare, TriCare or some other health insurance program, so that’s OK with you! Your insurance coverage separates you from the cost-benefit decision that you normally make in buying a car, household appliances or planning a vacation trip. I bet that many of you can’t tell me the total cost of your prescriptions per month, much less how much an MRI costs,... or what a battery of liver tests would run. Your providers can easily charge excessive prices because they’ve effectively separated the consumer from the paying of the bills. In addition, there are a few unscrupulous folks engaged in defrauding the programs, billing Medicare or Medicaid for services and supplies which were never provided.

What SHOULD we be paying for heathcare? How far out of line are we?

Other than the U.S., here are 9 of the highest spending nations per capita for healthcare in 2007, the latest year for which we have these figures...

France $3,040 Holland $3,092 Australia $3,123

Belgium 3,133 Germany 3,171 Canada 3,173

Iceland 3,294 Austria 3,418 Switzerland 4,011

These figures would be slightly higher now, but notice all but one fall between $3,000 and $3,500. The unchallenged champion spendthrift was the United States, with $6,096 per capita in 2007. That expenditure is currently approaching $8,000 per person, though the state of Hawaii has kept their health expenditures at about $5,000 per capita. Obviously, it can be done! It seems we could have a generous system with excellent care provided to everyone for much less than we are spending now. France has one of the highest rankings for their health care services and outcomes,... and spends half of what we do.

Let me summarize the myths you should discount,... and what it might take to set the system on the right path.

MYTHS:

The United States has the world’s best health care.

(This excerpt is from a recent study by U.S. physicians) - “Compared with five other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes. The U.S. health system is the most expensive in the world, but comparative analyses consistently show the United States underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance.”

Don’t let a bureaucrat come between you and your physician.

If you have private health insurance, it is an insurance agency employee who gets between you and your physician, creating problems. If you’re on Medicare, a single-payer system, you know that problem does not arise. Maybe that’s why Medicare recipients are so satisfied with their care.

“Socialized” medicine is terrible. Canadians, Brits and the French hate it.

That is what the health industry folks want you to believe and have tried to convince you.

I encourage you to talk to one. Those recipients are really very pleased with their services.

Also they are enjoying better health outcomes and life expectancy than we are.

Government run health care will have to be rationed.

Health care is a limited resource and, as such, has always been rationed. In our current system, it is rationed by price,... what the individual can pay for, he gets. Under a public system, it would be rationed more equitably and fairly.

WHAT WE NEED TO DO:

• Preferably, adopt a universal single-payer system like France or Canada, (or like TriCare or Medicare) which covers everyone and is paid for through taxes. But our elected representatives are apparently lacking the political will to do that, so a “public option” coverage is absolutely necessary as a minimum.

• For that “public option” program, we must enable the administrators to negotiate with providers to assure top quality services and to obtain the best possible prices.

• Since everyone would be insured, insist that patients access their healthcare through a primary care provider and limit hospital ER access to genuine trauma and medical emergencies.

• Provide support for any qualified healthcare provider student to get their education in exchange for years of dedicated service after completion of their training.

• Set some clear limitations on reimbursable “end-of-life” health services and support individual hospice services at home, rather than in hospitals, during those final months of life.

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