Here is the speech that Obama should have given on healthcare. I wrote it for him. I hope he appreciates it: …………………………….
Today I am announcing my support and my advocacy for true single payer universal health care for all Americans.
My plan will enhance and even provide more than H.R. 676 and will be a healthcare system that every American can be proud of. It will be a plan that will be rated as #1 in the world, as it should be. This IS America, and if we can send a man to the Moon and back in eight short years than we can have the best healthcare system in the world in less than a year.
But let’s get to specifics.
This new American healthcare system will include complete 100% coverage for medical, surgical, and hospitalization. No longer will American workers be denied coverage because they have lost their jobs. No longer will Americans be told they don't have coverage because they can't afford to pay for life saving surgery or treatment in a hospital.
This new American healthcare system will include something most Americans now desperately need but also don't have---full coverage for necessary dental work including annual preventative exams. It will include vision coverage so that Americans with eye sight problems can obtain quality eye care and the necessary prescription lenses.
This plan will include full coverage for prescription drugs with none of those absurd "donut holes" and without any unreasonable caps on drugs that are truly life savings and effective. We are going to have a whole new approach to health care in America.
This plan will include complete coverage for mental health coverage, something that is sorely lacking in today’s Corporate health insurance policies. It will include expanded home health care so that people who want to and who can, can recuperate at home. And it will include expanded long term care provisions so that we don't have American families going bankrupt trying to care for their sick elderly parents.
My plan will be a plan for the entire human body, head to foot, with full coverage for any medically necessary health problem.
No longer are we going to permit a system where insurance companies make policies that result in new mothers, giving birth, to be kicked out of the hospital after some arbitrary 24-hour stay.
No longer are we going to permit a woman to be discharged from the hospital after 48 hours after having undergone a mastectomy or any other serious surgery.
No longer are we going to have a system that when the family breadwinner loses their job, they lose their healthcare for not only themselves but for their wives and their children. No, we are no longer going to permit that. Every American will have healthcare coverage for their entire lives, without interruption.
Rest assured your children and family members will be safe when it comes to their healthcare needs. Should your child develop asthma, or diabetes, or some other childhood illness, you will feel relieved that they will receive the best medical care and treatment possible. No longer will there be a list of dozens upon dozens of childhood health problems that presently you are told are “not covered”.
You will choose your doctor. You will choose your hospital. You, your doctor, and your hospital will decide what treatment is best for you.
Your doctor and hospital and all other healthcare providers will be reimbursed on a basis that is fair and reasonable.
Logic, common sense, practicality, pragmatism, and what is best for the patient will be the underlying principal.
There will be no mandates for any employers to either offer healthcare insurance or to NOT offer healthcare insurance. There will be no mandates forcing anyone to use the single payer universal healthcare system if they choose individually to not use it.
As all payments to doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies will be adjusted to be fair, reasonable, and more than equitable to reflect the complexity of the treatment, the length of the treatment, the quality of the treatment, the skill of the doctor, and other regional and geographical factors------doctors and hospitals can be assured that they will be part of a system that reimburses them fairly, equitably, and expeditiously. They will never see and “unpaid bill” languishing in their records for months and months on end, and for years and years on end.
Patients will never see a medical bill. Direct payment from the single payer will be just that-----payment from a single payer. This alone will save more than $400 billion a year. Rather than doctors offices and hospital billing departments spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on armies of administrators trying to collect overdue bills; and rather than doing daily battle filing appeal after appeal after appeal to collect from Corporate insurance companies--------doctors and hospitals will be free to do what they are trained to do----treat patients.
An added benefit to such a system will be that once doctors and hospitals are once again free to “practice medicine” and when patients are assured that all their medical bills will be covered, litigation and lawsuits will slowly dry up. Doctors will be free to order the medical tests they truly believe need to be ordered for the best interests of the patients. They won’t be hamstrung by the policies, procedures, and stipulations and constraints of the insurance companies need to maximize their CEO salaries, stock options, shareholder value, bonuses, and those lucrative golden parachute retirement plans that serve no other purpose than to milk the American people out of their life savings at the same time they put doctors and hospitals under a financial microscope.
Those senior citizens on Medicare will receive enhanced coverage for all your medically necessary needs. Those who are now on Medicaid will receive better care, and more complete coverage, and will have an incentive to work again and make as much money has you can, since your healthcare won’t be dependent upon you qualifying as being below the poverty level.
Recent college graduates who no longer qualify to have health insurance under their parents plan because they turn some magical age of 23 ½, will, under my plan be fully covered.
Your age, your gender, your family status (whether single, married, divorced) will no longer determine whether you can obtain healthcare.
Your work status, and whether you have been on the job for 40 years, 4 years, 4 weeks, or 4 days, will no longer determine whether or not you have healthcare coverage.
After all, it’s been said that the average worker will have about 12 jobs in their entire work career. Under our present system this is a ticket to disaster for most people because it means that you are now being re-examined by insurance companies for pre-existing conditions, at least 12 times in your lifetime, all for the purpose of denying you the ability to obtain a policy at any cost, or to obtain a policy that will cover everything BUT the health condition that your really need treatment for. This is absurd.
So no longer will your health care needs or your injuries, illnesses or medical conditions from ten, twenty or thirty years ago determine your ability to get health care.
Our Veterans will be able to get medical care at a VA facility if they choose, or if it is more convenient for them to get medical care at any other hospital or from any other doctor outside the VA system, our Veterans will be free to so choose.
And make no mistake about it. If you like your present healthcare policy and your employer likes paying for it, and likes providing it to you my plan will not prohibit in any way you or your employer entering into any contract that you and your employer agree on. But remember, 14,000 Americans today are losing their insurance mainly because they are losing their jobs. This is going to stop.
There will no longer be 50 million Americans without healthcare. There will be none without healthcare. Everyone will be insured.
Let me repeat. Everyone will be insured. Children, single people, families, single mothers, the employed as well as the unemployed, seniors, and young adults.
You will never find yourself in a position of not having access to healthcare.
You’ll be entitled to coverage for dental care, prescription drugs, visions exams and prescription glasses, mental health coverage for you and your family.
Americans who are struggling with addiction problems whether it be addiction to drugs, or alcohol, or nicotine will be entitled to drug rehabilitation services or programs to help them quit smoking.
And make no mistake. This will not be a so called “government run healthcare program” as some of my adversaries like to call it. This is not what some of my friends on the other side of the aisle like to call “socialized medicine” or “socialism”. And I might add that those who label it as such, my esteemed Republican Senators and Congressmen, sit on their lofty perches, having themselves, the best healthcare coverage that money can buy-----and who is paying for it for them. YOU are. The taxpayers are paying for your Senators and Congressmen to have the best healthcare that money can buy, but strangely, they don’t seem to want YOU to have the same.
Some don’t care that 50 million, mostly middleclass Americans can’t afford the astronomically priced monthly premiums.
Some don’t care that 22,000 Americans, yes 22,000, die every year because they either don’t have any healthcare insurance at all, OR worse, they find out that they are not covered for the illness or medical conditions they mistakenly thought they were covered for. All too often, patients are literally “kicked out” of the hospital after a few days when in fact they need to be in the hospital for a week or so, because of the dictates of the insurance companies.
It’s amazing today; it’s as if the insurance companies owned our hospitals.
It’s amazing today. It’s as if the insurance companies dictate to your doctor what he or she can or cannot do for you, based upon the insurance companies need for revenue, profits, bonuses, stock options, lucrative retirement plans for their Executive Staff and CEO’s, and those wonderful golden parachutes.
Our entire system is totally off-kilter. We have insurance company and pharmaceutical company CEO’s making tens of millions and hundreds of millions a year in personal salaries and earnings (one CEO made $1.2 BILLION in one year), and we have a Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, barely more than a teenage babysitter can make.
We have teachers that have not four years of college but rather 5 ½ years of college behind them with impressive teaching certifications, and yet in some States a starting teachers salary is barely $30,000 a year.
We can no longer afford to wait for the ranks of the uninsured to grow from 50 million to 80 million to 120 million to 150 million. It will kill our consumer based economy. And worse, it will literally KILL us.
Of the $2.5 trillion we presently spend on healthcare my plan will save more than $3/4 trillion (that’s $750 billion) in money that is now wasted on unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork and insurance policy provisions.
No longer will our healthcare system need 10,000 insurance company office buildings where armies of insurance bureaucrats and claims administrations sit in cubicles devising ways to deny you coverage.
No longer will we need a system that offers thousands of different insurance policies, all of them different depending upon what State you live in.
No longer will you need to experience the incredible stress of losing your job---------and then to make matters worse, losing your families health insurance.
No longer are we going to have almost a million Americans a year filing for bankruptcy because they can’t pay their medical bills. My goal is to have ZERO Americans filing for bankruptcy because of medical bills.
No longer are you going to be locked into your job because you are working just for the company’s healthcare plan.
If you are a small businessman, or want to take the risk and start your own business, you will no longer have hanging around your neck, the exorbitant monthly premiums that would interfere with you making your small business a success.
This is the United States of America. No longer will you be locked into living in your State because you fear losing your insurance should you relocate to another State.
You’ll have complete coverage to choose any doctor, any hospital, in any State you choose.
And with new and innovative healthcare initiatives and plans we will be able to save billions by encouraging Americans to quit smoking, drink moderately and sensibly, and to start to think of nutrition and good eating habits as a way of life.
Some will say we can’t do all of this. Some will say it’s too big a change.
Is going to the doctor when you need to go to the doctor too big a change?
Is going to the hospital and actually being admitted to the hospital for a serious condition, too big a change?
Is NOT having to declare bankruptcy because you, your spouse or your child experienced an unexpected injury or illness, too big a change?
Is getting something as simple as an annual dental checkup or an annual eye exam too big a change?
When President Kennedy proclaimed that we were going to the Moon in back and would do it in eight years time, he didn’t talk about how we couldn’t afford it. He talked about how we couldn’t afford not to pursue that incredible national goal.
When General Eisenhower gave the final go-ahead for D-Day he didn’t announce to the nation how we shouldn’t go forward with it because it might be too expensive. Europe’s and our own nation’s survival depended upon its success. Failure was not an option.
If your first question is how as a nation can we afford it, I say this: “How can we NOT afford to do this”. Doing nothing is NOT an option.
And make no mistake. The system I propose will be based upon the free market and capitalistic principals that have made our nation great. Doctors will be able to for the first time be fully reimbursed on a fair, equitable, and even generous basis. And they will be paid expeditiously and on time. Hospitals will operate profitably because everyone will have healthcare coverage.
50 million to 70 million Americans with no healthcare, and with 14,000 more losing their healthcare everyday is unacceptable. I don’t accept it. You shouldn’t accept it. Our nation shouldn’t accept it. And I’m going to change it. No American will be without healthcare insurance.
Some have projected that my plan will cost too much. How much is too much for one’s life, one’s livelihood and one’s ability to get a job and hold a job? How much is an individual’s health worth?
Some have said that my plan will cost $1 trillion over ten years. I disagree. And why did we not have this “cost discussion” about the cost of the Iraqi War which will have cost an estimated $3 trillion by the time the last American soldier leaves Iraq, if one wishes to include all the “lost opportunity costs” of that endeavor and the medical bills that we will be paying for, for decades to come. That $3 trillion expenditure, which seems to have been allocated not from a budget but rather “out of thin air” would apparently pay for about 30 years of my proposed healthcare plan.
As for my adversaries, many of them will talk about taxes, taxes, taxes, in order to scare the American people and in order to protect their Corporate benefactors. I ask this question: “Would you rather pay a small percentage more in taxes per year or would you rather keep paying $5000 to $15,000 to the insurance companies, for a plan that can leave you bankrupt anyway.
I call on all Congressmen and Senators regardless of their position on my plan, to make public exactly how much the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical supply and device industry, and other hospital and medical special interest lobbyists have contributed to their campaign donation coffers over their full tenure in the Congress or the Senate. Americans deserve to know what the motives are for such a massive transference of lobbying money from big Corporations and special interests to the legislative branch of Government that was elected by the people and that is supposed to be representing the people.
22,000 Americans (and that figure may be a gross underestimation) dying every single year----year after year---is untenable. It’s unacceptable. It’s a national disgrace. I don’t accept it. You shouldn’t accept it. Our Senators and our Congressmen, ALL OF THEM, EVERY SINGLE ON OF THEM, shouldn’t accept it.
I’m going to do something about it. We are going to do something about it.
The time has come to do something about it.
I’ve submitted a bill today outlining my entire proposal.
I encourage all of our Senators and Congressmen to read it. I encourage all Americans to read it and to keep in mind the dire straits you would find yourself and your family in should you lose our job, or lose your spouse, or lose your health, or injure yourself, or have one of your children be stricken with an unexpected illness when you were between jobs and out of work and without insurance.
I encourage all of you to support this plan.
If we can bail out Wall Street Banks and insurance companies, surely we can help out ordinary, middleclass Americans.
If we can bail out Wall Street Banks and Investment Bankers surely we can show some compassion and help for all Americans, especially the sick, the suffering, the injured, those with chronic illnesses, those in horrific physical pain, those in need of ordinary medical treatment for their ordinary healthcare needs.
Surely America can do that.
And if you do decide to call you Congressmen and Senators and tell them to support this plan which I have written for all Americans, please be sure to remind them who is paying for their healthcare insurance. It’s YOU. YOU are paying for THEIR healthcare insurance.
The time has come. The time is now. The time is here for all Americans to have the right to high quality healthcare. The time has come for all Americans to have access to the doctor of their choice; to have the right to medically needed surgery and hospital care based upon logic, reason and the safety of the patient-----not the bottom line or the quarterly results of some Corporate insurance giant.
The time has come for all Americans to be able to coverage for all aspects of their health and the health of their spouses and families whether it be for a doctor’s visit, hospital, surgical, dental, vision, prescription drugs, mental health coverage, help with rehabilitation for physical therapy, help with rehabilitation for substance addiction, medically necessary home health care, or medically necessary long term care for one’s elderly parents where expenses today sends many people into bankruptcy after being financially drained of their entire life savings.
America can do better. We will do better. And I am determined to make it better. It will be better with single payer universal healthcare for all who wish to have it.
We need to get moving on this. Nothing can stand in our way of getting true, single payer universal healthcare for all Americans; for all Americans who want it. We can’t let anything stand in our way. Now is the time.
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JamesPB, you are awesome
It is great seeing JamesPB's writings on medicine show up as full-fledged articles. I have always enjoyed his comments. A hard hitting speech like the one JamesPB describes might be beyond Obama or any other recent president, but FDR could sure give them. I think JamesPB is channeling FDR. :)
One of the best FDR speeches was his address at Oglethorpe College in 1932:
http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/1932d.htm
Some of my favorite quotes from it...
"Indeed, if you were observant, you would have seen that many of your elders had discovered a still easier road to material success. They had found that once they had accumulated a few dollars they needed only to put them in the proper place and then sit back and read in comfort the hieroglyphics called stock quotations which proclaimed that their wealth was mounting miraculously without any work or effort on their part. Many who were called and who are still pleased to call themselves the leaders of finance celebrated and assured us of an eternal future for this easy-chair mode of living. And to the stimulation of belief in this dazzling chimera were lent not only the voices of some of our public men in high office, but their influence and the material aid of the very instruments of Government which they controlled."
"Some of you--I hope not many--are wondering today how and where you will be able to earn your living a few weeks or a few months hence. Much has been written about the hope of youth. I prefer to emphasize another quality. I hope that you who have spent four years in an institution whose fundamental purpose, I take it, is to train us to pursue truths relentlessly and to look at them courageously, will face the unfortunate state of the world about you with greater clarity of vision than many of your elders."
[I love it. He's pissing on the 'believe in hope' approach. Ouch.]
...
"This failure to measure true values and to look ahead extended to almost every industry, every profession, every walk of life. Take, for example, the vocation of higher education itself."
[He then rags on the Universities for overproducing graduates in some areas. At a commencement speech!]
...
"Such controlling and directive forces as have been developed in recent years reside to a dangerous degree in groups having special interests in our economic order, interests which do not coincide with the interests of the Nation as a whole. I believe that the recent course of our history has demonstrated that, while we may utilize their expert knowledge of certain problems and the special facilities with which. they are familiar, we cannot allow our economic life to be controlled by that small group of men whose chief outlook upon the social welfare is tinctured by the fact that they can make huge profits from the lending of money and the marketing of securities--an outlook which deserves the adjectives "selfish" and "opportunist.""
[Ooops. Geitner and Summers would be in trouble]
"Here again, in the field of industry and business many of those whose primary solicitude is confined to the welfare of what they call capital have failed to read the lessons of the past few years and have been moved less by calm analysis of the needs of the Nation as a whole than by a blind determination to preserve their own special stakes in the economic order."
[!!!!!]
"But it seems to me probable that our physical economic plant will not expand in the future at the same rate at which it has expanded in the past. We may build more factories, but the fact remains that we have enough now to supply all of our domestic needs, and more, if they are used. With these factories we can now make more shoes, more textiles, more steel, more radios, more automobiles, more of almost everything than we can use.
#
No, our basic trouble was not an insufficiency of capital. It was an insufficient distribution of buying power coupled with an over-sufficient speculation in production. While wages rose in many of our industries, they did not as a whole rise proportionately to the reward to capital, and at the same time the purchasing power of other great groups of our population was permitted to shrink. We accumulated such a superabundance of capital that our great bankers were vying with each other, some of them employing questionable methods, in their efforts to lend this capital at home and abroad."
[Enough said. FDR was close to JamesPB than to Obama...]
Interesting
That's an interesting FDR speech. Sounds like it would be appropriate for today. And of course, he sure as hell was talking about scoundrels like Prescott Bush who was in involved in lending and financing of the Nazi war machine back in the 30's.
The day Obama was inaugurated I thought for sure he would use the power of his office, and the extraordinary event of tapping into the Treasury for $800 billion to bail out Wall Street Banks to force an almost total freeze on home foreclosures for the millions of people who has been sucked into the greed machine by buying homes with ARM's and balloon payment mortgages.
Instead, he really didnt seize the moment.
Unless, the so called public option is a full coverage plan and costs under $200 a month I doubt it have many takers.
JamesPB does it again,....commenting on costs however
My right-wing and other misguided acquaintances keep telling me that we can't afford the "Public Option" because it will cost too much. There is no reason that it should cost anything at all. Take the money that we presently give the insurance companies and give less to the 'public option agency" with the efficiency of the system, there certainly can be a net savings for all involved.
You are correct that if the plan isn't full coverage and under $200/mo, there will be few takers.
I am of the opinion that if we don't get this, don't bother now and wait until things get even worse. Then we can shut up all of the distracting noise and get something practical and affordable. Take the gross profiteering out of the health care business and we can afford it. Anything else seems immoral to me.
911 Emergency
Those right wing and misquided associates (I know many too) need to be asked if they would avail themselves of the 911 Emergency system if they got in a car accident and went flying thru the windshield, or if they had a heart attack at home.
911 is an example of pure "socialism", at it's best I might add.
We all pay for in in INCREASED taxes. One may never have use for it their entire life and yet we may see everyone else uisng it, poor people, rich people and everyone in between.
911 is a perfect example of a "public option" and when it was designed and implemented our nation couldnt afford it, and we did it anyway. It was deemed something that was NEEDED. And it was a system based upon "single payer" in a way. A single entity pays for it all----the Government. And it's designed to NOT make a profit although all the people that answer the calls make a salary. The people that built the system made salaries building it. And the ambulances that generally respond pay the EMT personnel good salaries.
Most right wingers are hellbent on just sticking to their ideology. You dont hear them uttering a word about the $3 trillion Iraqi war and that fiasco. Most of them will in due time be screwed by some insurance company. They just don't know it's coming down the pike for them.
They think Al Qaeda is going to come storming in their door tomorrow, with black ski masks on, and spray their living rooms with machine gun fire. Little do they know its much more likely they'll have a heart attack and have to call that "socialized 911 system" and be driven away to to hospital by drivers who actually get their salaries paid by the evil local Government.
Exactly Mr. Jamespb,So good
Exactly Mr. Jamespb,So good to see you made the "big screen" with this...The Fire Department is SOCIALIZED,so are the police,they dont run a credit check on you before responding,Imagine if insurance companies decided which 911 calls to respond to,or which car wrecks could make them a profit...Also if this evil public option is so bad,why does Public TV make the very best shows you can watch,Its PBS and the quality of its unadvertised content is the best in the world.
American medical for all could be the best in the world also,we just have to demand it....
Whats really amazing is that Entropy and Evolution take place simultaneously...
-Classwarfare
some additional perspective
For the post-hypnotic pinhead demographic: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31krugman.html?_r=1&em=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1249135440-GlivL9J5SHyVl6qkMTcFwA
Also, Bill Maher had a good take on the evil of for-profit death: http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/index.html
(scroll down about halfway to "And finally...").
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
When the treatment is the disease
I agree that the current system of a protected and mandated corporate monopoly for what passes for healthcare is a crime, not an inadequacy. How is total corporate control and regulation of the healthcare system superior to that of allowing medical personnel to make medical decisions while being overseen by elected government officials held accountable by voters? How is a corporate CEO, and gutless major shareholders hiding behind a veil of secrecy, denying healthcare superior to that of a government bureaucrat doing her job overseen by officials we elected? Do we get to vote on anyone or anything in the corporate monopolies responsible for the healthcare holocaust?
That said, stubbornly insisting on single payer or nothing is dooming tens of millions to a (near) future of corporate monopolized deathcare for profit. That is almost as criminal as the suits currently running the final solution for those foolish enough to get sick and decrease corporate profits, or the shareholders knowingly funding it. The public option isn’t as good as single payer because single payer treats all patients equally and prioritize their service based upon medical need, not the thickness of their wallets and skulls. But it is 100 times better than the alternative: more of the corporate monopoly same. Those bitching and moaning over the miracle single payer pony that Obama didn't give them, should stand in line behind those crying over the "Obama didn't give me my own personal Neverland" pony. They brought their delusional grievance first.
It is just as stupid to blame a poker player with two-of-a-kind for not having a full house. Obama is playing with the political cards he was dealt, and there is no single payer ace in sight. Why waste time getting massacred over the impossible (at this time)? A public option is second best but it is still a major improvement. If it weren't, corporate insurance wouldn't be going ballistic. They project a loss of over one hundred million victims fleeing for their lives (personal and financial) to the public option. Perhaps someone here should reassure the insurance industry with some stats countering the ones they are relying on.
Ever notice how the insurance lobbyists spend exactly zero seconds telling us how great the current system of corporate monopolized healthcare is? Instead, all the insurance company propaganda ads say the same thing: government healthcare is a bad thing. The message that private insurance run genocide-disguised-as-healthcare is a good thing is so blatantly absurd that it is usually left to the mainstream media (MSM) propaganda machine to make the inference or implication instead, since most know that the current system has long surpassed being a disaster and has progressed into outright criminality. Fortunately, everyone with a few neurons still firing has managed to figure out that even if what the ads are saying were true (never mind that they are full of the proverbial shit), then all that means is that they just say no! to the public OPTION. Notice that an option means that there is at least one alternative. Those stupid enough to keep being leached by Big Insurance will be free to do so. This is the biggest advantage the public option has over single payer: unlike the Boss Tweed private criminal insurance cartel that must force itself upon us because no one would choose to be victimized by them, the public option plan is, well, an OPTION, a choice.
Corporate insurance apologists will lie about evil "socialized" medicine being forced upon them against their will with single payer. The non-delusional and cool-headed can merely look the rat wing lackeys in their beady little eyes and retort "Then just say NO, if you don't want the public option". Repukes actually hate choice all across the board, not just in Roe v. Wade. They want to control your lives to maximize profits.
I believe single payer is the best. I also believe in democracy and justice. Some people are not able to reconcile the difference between what they want and what they get. You have to accept reality before you can begin to change it. The single payer pony lives in the same ecological niche as his playful cousin, the unicorn. You are equally as likely to get either, at this point in time.
"There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by... corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses." President James Madison
“My duty is to my stockholders. The public be damned!” “Commodore” William Vanderbilt (Oligarch and hubric asshole)
_______“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
“Do you even remember when you first sold out?” –Rudy Baylor
physician, thou contradicts thyself
"That said, stubbornly insisting on single payer or nothing is dooming tens of millions to a (near) future of corporate monopolized deathcare for profit."
Which is exactly the status quo.
Please explain how mandating participation at great cost and under penalty of imprisonment is better. Please explain how failure to put any sort of competition in place is better (in fact, mandating against it). Please explain how placing exactly zero controls on premium increases and pharmaceutical price increases is better.
And if you want to compare obama to a poker player, he's the guy who folds if he has anything less than a royal flush. He folded long ago.
But he's still getting paid under the table.
_______"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
Healthcare speech that we will never hear
Great writing. As I read it, I became sadder and sadder as I realized that in the US, such things are impossible. All we get is wars, tax breaks and other schemes that make the rich richer, and a deteriorating standard of living for the rest of us. What a joke and what a disappointment Obama is. But boy, can he talk good.
_______Miatadon
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_______"That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be"