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As ThinkProgress previously reported, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) made history earlier this year when he signed into law legislation that would make his state the first state to lay the groundwork for a single payer health care system. In order to enact this system, the state needs a waiver from the federal health care law, which it will be able to obtain in 2017. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced legislation to move the waiver date up to 2014, an idea President Obama has endorsed.
Now, another governor is looking to take advantage of flexibility in Obama’s health care law in order to establish a single payer system. Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) announced yesterday that he will be seeking a waiver to set up his own universal health care system in his state modeled after the single payer Canadian health care system that began in the province of Saskatchewan:
Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Wednesday he will ask the U.S. government to let Montana set up its own universal health care program, taking his rhetorical fight over health care to another level. [...] The popular second-term Democrat would like to create a state-run system that borrows from the program used in Saskatchewan. He said the Canadian province controls cost by negotiating drug prices and limiting non-emergency procedures such as MRIs.
Local news station KRTV covered Schweitzer’s bid for a new universal health care system for his state. Schweitzer said that under his ideal system patients can still buy private insurance if they want to, but that it’ll be a “lonely place over there at Blue Cross Blue Shield” due to the superior public health insurance he plans to provide. Watch it:
(VIDEO at link)
Schweitzer’s announcement to seek a waiver and design his own system was met with curiosity by GOP state Sen. Jason Priest, who responded, “I don’t want to reject it before I see the details. I am just glad he is thinking about it.”As ThinkProgress previously reported, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) made history... more
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Historically, progressives have made the most progress when we were an electoral threat to both parties.Historically, progressives have made the most progress when we were an electoral... more
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Vermont is a land of proud firsts. This small New England state was the first to join the 13 colonies. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery. It was the first to establish the right to free education for all – public education.
This week, Vermont will boast another first: the first state in the nation to offer single payer healthcare, which eliminates the costly insurance companies that many believe are the root cause of our spiralling healthcare costs. In a single payer system, both private and public healthcare providers are allowed to operate, as they always have. But instead of the patient or the patient's private health insurance company paying the bill, the state does. It's basically Medicare for all – just lower the age of eligibility to the day you're born. The state, buying these healthcare services for the entire population, can negotiate favourable rates, and can eliminate the massive overhead that the for-profit insurers impose.
Vermont hired Harvard economist William Hsiao to come up with three alternatives to the current system. The single payer system, Hsiao wrote, "will produce savings of 24.3% of total health expenditure between 2015 and 2024". An analysis by Don McCanne, MD, of Physicians for a National Health Programme pointed out that:
"[T]hese plans would cover everyone without any increase in spending since the single payer efficiencies would be enough to pay for those currently uninsured or underinsured. So this is the really good news – single payer works."
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin explained to me his intention to sign the bill into law:
"Here's our challenge. Our premiums go up 10, 15, 20% a year. This is true in the rest of the country as well. They are killing small business. They're killing middle-class Americans, who have been kicked in the teeth over the last several years. What our plan will do is create a single pool, get the insurance company profits, the pharmaceutical company profits, the other folks that are mining the system to make a lot of money on the backs of our illnesses, and ensure that we're using those dollars to make Vermonters healthy."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/25/healthcare-vermontVermont is a land of proud firsts. This small New England state was the first to join... more
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A pair of complementary bills, both titled "The American Health Care Security Act of 2011," have been introduced in both the House and the Senate. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) are the sponsors, and both aim with these bills to provide health care for every American by way of a Medicare-for-all single-payer system. They were joined at the press conference announcing the legislation by the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, the co-president of the National Nurses United, and the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers
"The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as right to its people," said Mr. Sanders after revealing the legislation. "Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on health care with worse results than others that spend far less. It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American health care system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all single-payer health coverage program."
"The new health care law made big progress towards covering many more people and finding ways to lower cost," said Rep. McDermott. "However, I think the best way to reduce costs and guarantee coverage for all is through a Single-payer system like Medicare. This bill does just that - it builds on the new health care law by giving states the flexibility they need to go to a single-payer system of their own. It will also reduce costs, and Americans will be healthier."
Read the entire article here:
http://www.truth-out.org/single-payer-health-care-rises-again/1305133698A pair of complementary bills, both titled "The American Health Care Security Act... more
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May 10, 2011
WASHINGTON, May 10 -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced today that he introduced legislation to provide health care for every American through a Medicare-for-all type single-payer system.
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) filed a companion bill in the House to provide better care for more patients at less cost by eliminating the middle-man role played by private insurance companies that rake off billions of dollars in profits.
The twin measures, both called the American Health Security Act of 2011, would provide federal guidelines and strong minimum standards for states to administer single-payer health care programs.
"The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as right to its people," Sanders said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on health care with worse results than others that spend far less. It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American health care system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all single-payer health coverage program."
McDermott said, "The new health care law made big progress towards covering many more people and finding ways to lower cost. However, I think the best way to reduce costs and guarantee coverage for all is through a Single-payer system like Medicare. This bill does just that - it builds on the new health care law by giving states the flexibility they need to go to a single-payer system of their own. It will also reduce costs, and Americans will be healthier."
Sanders and McDermott were joined at the press conference by leaders of organizations supporting the measure, including Arlene Baker-Holt, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO; Jean Ross, co-president of the National Nurses United; and Greg Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
While making the case for a single-payer system nationwide, Sanders applauded the Vermont Legislature which earlier this month voted to put the state on the path toward a single-payer system. Vermont, Sanders said, could become a model for the nation.
Last year's health reform law is projected to cover 32 million more Americans. Despite that important step forward, however, 23 million people living in the United States will remain uninsured by the end of this decade while health care costs continue to skyrocket. Some 60 million Americans, both insured and uninsured, have inadequate access to primary care due to a shortage of physicians and other like providers in their community.
Under the current health care system, 45,000 Americans a year die because they delay seeking care they cannot afford. Health care eats up one-fifth of the U.S. economy, but we rank 26th among major, developed nations on life expectancy and 31st on infant mortality.
Drug companies charge Americans twice as much or more for the exact same drugs manufactured by the exact same companies than citizens of Canada or Europe. Some insurers that gouge policy holders spend 40 cents of every premium dollar on administration and profits while lavishing multimillion dollar payouts on their CEOs.
"This is unacceptable," Sanders said. "Until we put patients over profits, our system will not work for ordinary Americans."May 10, 2011
WASHINGTON, May 10 -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced today that... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The Vermont state Senate passed legislation to create a single-payer health insurance system, Paul Waldman reports for TAPPED. Since the state House has already passed a similar bill, all that’s left to do is reconcile the two pieces of legislation before the governor signs it into law.
Waldman stresses that there are still many details to work out, including how the system will be funded. Vermont might end up with a system like France’s where everyone has basic public insurance, which most people supplement with additional private coverage. The most important thing, Waldman argues, is that Vermont is moving to sever the link between employment and health insurance.
Roe showdown
Anti-choicers are gunning for a Roe v. Wade showdown in the Supreme Court before Obama can appoint any more justices. At the behest of an unnamed conservative group, Republican state Rep. John LaBruzzo of Louisiana has introduced a bill that would ban all abortions, even to save the woman’s life. The original bill upped the anti-choice ante by criminalizing not only doctors who perform abortions, but also women who procure them. LaBruzzo has since promised to scale the bill back to just criminalizing doctors. This is all blatantly unconstitutional, of course,. but as Kate Sheppard explains in Mother Jones, that’s precisely the point:
The Constitution, of course, is exactly what LaBruzzo is targeting. He admits his proposal is intended as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional right to privacy included the right to abortions in some circumstances. LaBruzzo says he’d like his bill to become law and “immediately go to court,” and he told a local paper that an unnamed conservative religious group asked him to propose the law for exactly that purpose.
Drug pushers in your living room
Martha Rosenberg poses a provocative question at AlterNet: Does anyone remember a time before “Ask Your Doctor” ads overran the airwaves, Internet, buses, billboards, and seemingly every other medium? Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising has become so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget that it was illegal until the late ’90s. In the days before DTC, drug advertising was limited to medical journals, prescription pads, golf towels, and pill-shaped stress balls distributed in doctors’ offices–which makes sense. The whole point of making a drug prescription-only is to put the decision-making power in the hands of doctors. Now, drug companies advertise to consumers for the same reason that food companies advertise to children. It’s called “pester power.”
DTC drug ads encourage consumers to self-diagnose based on vague and sometimes nearly universal symptoms like poor sleep, daytime drowsiness, anxiety, and depression. Once consumers are convinced they’re suffering from industry-hyped constructs like “erectile dysfunction” and “premenstrual dysphoric disorder,” they’re going to badger their doctors for prescriptions.
That’s not to say that these terms don’t encompass legitimate health problems, but rather that DTC markets products in such vague terms that a lot of healthy people are sure to be clamoring for drugs they don’t need. Typically, neither the patient nor the doctor is paying the full cost of the drug, so patients are more likely to ask and doctors have little incentive to say no.
Greenwashing air fresheners
A reader seeks the counsel of Grist’s earthy advice columnist Umbra on the issue of air fresheners. Some of these odor-concealing aerosols are touting themselves as green for adopting all-natural propellants. Does that make them healthier, or greener? Only marginally, says Umbra. Air fresheners still contain formaldehyde, petroleum distillates, and other questionable chemicals.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The Vermont state Senate passed... more
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As we previously reported, the Vermont legislature, led by Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), has been considering a proposal to establish some sort of single payer health care system, where a single public insurer provides health insurance to all state residents, similar to the Medicare system for American seniors.
Last night, the Vermont House of Representatives debated and approved by a 92-49 a bill that would create a single payer system in the state. Shumlin praised the move as making Vermont the first state where “health care will be a right and not a privilege“:
After hours of debate, the Vermont House of Representatives approved a bill that would create a single-payer health care system in Vermont. It passed 92-49. In a meeting right after the vote, the house speaker, the governor and others who worked on the bill called it a historic moment for Vermont.
“Become the first state in the country to make the first substantive step to deliver a health care system where health care will be a right and not a privilege,” said Gov. Peter Shumlin.
The “bill outlines a four-year timeline leading to establishment of the statewide, publicly funded system. It begins by setting up the Green Mountain Care Board on July 1 with a budget of $1.2 million to begin planning the new system. It then creates a health insurance marketplace — or ‘exchange,’ of the sort required by last year’s federal health care legislation. And it then calls for converting the exchange to the Green Mountain Care system.”
Now that it has passed the House of Representatives, it will move on to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. A bigger hurdle Vermont faces is obtaining a waiver from the federal health care reform act and finding a way around federal ERISA laws — which “pre-empt states from enacting legislation if it is ‘related to’ employee benefit plans –that insurers could use to sue the state. The health reform law currently offers a waiver to states who meet certain standards by 2017; Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced an amendment that would move the waiver date up to 2014 — an idea that President Obama has endorsed.
This week, 200 doctors from 39 states including the District of Columbia signed an open letter saying they would seriously consider moving to the state to practice medicine if it enacted a single payer system. “The idea of having one set of rules, one form for billing, and knowing that all patients are covered – that would be wonderful,” said Scott Graham, a Kentucky family physician who signed the letter.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/25/vermont-single-payer-health/As we previously reported, the Vermont legislature, led by Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), has... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Vermont is poised to abolish most forms of private health insurance, Lauren Else reports for In These Times. The state’s newly inaugurated Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, unveiled his health insurance plan in early February. If the state legislature passes the bill, Vermont will become the first state to ban most forms of private health insurance.
The bill is getting support from some unlikely quarters:
On February 24, the Republican Mayor Christopher Louras, of Rutland, urged the state to adopt the single-payer legislation, noting that more than a third of the city’s $7 million annual payroll is consumed by healthcare costs. “The only way to fix the problem is to blow it up and start over,” Louras said.
A very bad doctor
In the Texas Observer, Saul Elbein tells the bizarre story of small-town huckster Dr. Rolando Arafiles and the nurses who exposed him as a quack and paid with their jobs.
Arafiles came to work at Winkler County Memorial Hospital in 2008. Nurses Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle noticed that patients were walking out of his office with mysterious liquids. Arafiles was selling untested dietary supplements.
Sometimes, he even took patients off their real medicine and directed them to buy his cure-alls, which he sold online, and promoted in seminars at the local Pizza Hut. He prescribed powerful thyroid-stimulating drugs to patients with normal thyroid levels, a potentially lethal practice. He was also performing “unconventional” surgeries, even though he wasn’t a surgeon.
The hospital ignored the nurses’ complaints, so they reported Arafiles to the Texas Medical Board. After the board informed Arafiles that he was under investigation, Arafiles got his golf buddy, the local sheriff, to issue a warrant to search the nurses’ computers. The hospital fired the nurses. The local prosecutor indicted them for “misuse of official information” but these charges fizzled out. In 2010, the two women were awarded $750,000 in compensation from the county, but they still haven’t found new nursing jobs.
What are they doing out there?
Lon Newman is the executive director of Family Planning Health Services, a Wisconsin health clinic that offers birth control and other reproductive health care, but doesn’t provide abortions, or even abortion referrals. Anti-choice protesters picket the clinic anyway, Newman reports at RH Reality Check. They carry signs with misleading slogans like “The Pill Kills” and “Stop Chemical Abortion.”
Newman wonders why, given all the pressing problems in Wisconsin, the nation, and the world, some people make it a priority to hang out at Family Planning Health Services and badmouth birth control:
There are so many struggles for freedom, social justice, and disaster relief right now, that I do not think it is justifiable to be blocking access to health care for our uninsured neighbors who want to delay childbearing so they can finish school or take a new job or even wait to have children until they can afford them.
South Dakota institutes 72-hour abortion waiting period
The governor of South Dakota signed legislation this week that will force women seeking abortions in the state to observe a 72-hour waiting period. As Scott Lemieux argues in TAPPED, mandatory waiting period legislation is based on inherently sexist assumptions. By instituting a waiting period, the state is institutionalizing the stereotype that women seeking abortions are acting irrationally and must be coerced into waiting.
Body positive
Body hatred hasn’t been this popular since the days of the hair shirt. Hundreds of millions of women, and no shortage of men, spend billions of hours and billions of dollars despising their bodies. A new movement is afoot to find the political in this very personal issue, Sarah Seltzer reports in AlterNet. This year, the Women’s Therapy Center Institute will hold a series of summits in New York, London, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Melbourne. In keeping with the theme of “Loved Bodies, Big Ideas” participants are discussing a range of ideas for helping to improve body image, including a so-called “reality stamp,” a seal of approval that would indicate that a photograph hasn’t been digitally altered beyond the bounds of reason. Come to think of it, a “reality stamp” could be useful for all kinds of politics.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Vermont is poised to abolish most... more
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The one year anniversary of the Obama health law is March 23rd. While the law is not fully implemented, the indications from its first year are that it is falling far short of its goals and may not result in any increase in health insurance coverage, control of the costs or improvement in health in the U.S. Further, health insurance coverage is becoming less adequate while getting more expensive -- unaffordable insurance will be the norm in America. The insurance industry needs to be removed from its role in health care if the United States is ever going to cover everyone in America. Improved Medicare for all in a single payer system is the only solution to the health care crisis.
At its one year anniversary the Obama health care law is shrinking while the health care crisis grows. Americans who lack any health coverage still exceeds 50 million, over 45,000 deaths occur annually due to lack of health insurance, and 40 million Americans, including over 10 million children, are underinsured.
Premiums are rising and coverage is shrinking a new norm is taking hold in America: ‘Unaffordable underinsurance.’ This month, the number of waivers granted to the Obama health law broke 1,000 protecting inadequate insurance plans. The expansion of health insurance to the uninsured is becoming a mirage. The Obama administration has told states they could reduce the number of people covered by Medicaid as well as reduce the services provided. And, the centerpiece of the law is under court challenge – the mandate is the first time ever the federal government has forced Americans to buy a corporate product, private health insurance – is heading to a close Supreme Court decision.
The New Norm: ‘Unaffordable underinsurance’
To make insurance premiums affordable, the quality of insurance will need to be reduced so there is less coverage and more out-of-pocket costs, as Don McCanne, MD, Senior Health Policy Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program writes: “’Unaffordable underinsurance’ is rapidly becoming the new standard in the United States.” The trend in health insurance is rising premiums and shrinking coverage for many Americans who get their coverage at work as well as on the individual insurance market.......
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23836The one year anniversary of the Obama health law is March 23rd. While the law is not... more
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Now, I never aim to inspire defeatism, but today I aim to inspire disillusionment, which is a very different thing. I think we can all agree it’s a good thing to be without illusion, and right now there are far too many of us who believe in this illusion that the folks at the top got their through legitimate means, and maintain their position through legitimate means, that The Man’s game is a fair one.
The Man? Yeah. Normally, I don’t like abstractions like this, but for the sake of understanding our economic situation, I find it’s easier to understand if we lump the so called “captains of industry” together into one entity. If we lump the Wall Street Banks, the Globalist Chemical Companies, the Globalist Factory Farms, the Military Industrial Complex, everything that isn’t Labor, into one entity. Because it really is, us versus them.
Right now we’ve got a Republican President who is pretending to be a Democrat, and we’ve got a Republican Party who is trying to send our nation back to the time of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” We had a regressive corporate shill in Clinton who totally fucked working people of America over with NAFTA and the WTO. We had regressive corporate shills in GW Bush and Reagan who busted unions and rolled back labor protections, environmental protections, consumer safety protections, all in the name of the fuckers at the top making shit loads of money while you die of cancer because of their pollution in your air, water and soil.
An illusion we need to dispense with is that we all share equally in our nation's prosperity, that a rising tide lifts all boats, as it were.
Truth is, as the rich get richer, we get poorer, which is clearly demonstrated by this chart you can view over at StateOfWorkingAmerica.org
The lower 90% of Americans, by income bracket, have actually seen their mean wages decline since 1977, while the top 1% by income bracket, have seen their income balloon wildly, seeing their already absurdly high income triple, while our income has declined. We’re working more today, for less money.
Another illusion is that most people you know are middle class. This is bullshit, pure and simple.
Most people who think that they are middle class are actually working poor, and hover just above the poverty line.
And to the Union Labor in WI, who is saying publicly that they’re willing to negotiate all their benefits away... This isn’t a time to be negotiating. This is a time to get aggressive. Shit is getting serious, people are losing their homes, the whole fucking economic system is collapsing, and people are suffering. This is the time to go for the whole goddamn cake.
Why? Well, there’s something you should know:
It was never in the plans for you to make any money, to make anything of yourself.
It was never in the plans for anybody but the rich, the REALLY rich, to get ahead in life.
That is an illusion started with the Horatio Algers stories of rags to riches. We love these stories here in America. They show real life examples once and a while as fluff peices on the nightly news. But these cases are extreme statistical outliers, you’re more likely to get rich playing the lotto than by working hard and keeping your head down. It doesn’t matter that it’s never going to fucking happen to you. The Rags to Riches story still a cornerstone of the American Dream. But Horatio Algers wrote fiction, and dreams are fantasies experienced while asleep.
You are poor. How do I know? I don’t. But by pure statistics alone, I’m certain you are. You might be in denial about this, but the truth remains, you’re poor.
You’re just one severe illness away from being homeless, and losing everything, but maybe you don’t know it. There are middle class people, people with insurance, who get cancer, cap out on their claims, lose everything, and die homeless. And with cancer rates rising every passing year, this is lottery game you’re far more likely to win.
Unless things begin to change, and I mean REALLY CHANGE, you're going to be poor FOREVER, too. And your kids are going to be poor. My generation is the first generation that will do worse than their parents. Not because we’re lazy, but because the free-market economic system is collapsing in on us, and we’re being forced to take shittier jobs, without union protection, without benefits, with lower wages. Thanks to NAFTA and the WTO, my generation has to compete with children in China who are literally working for rice. We have to compete with workers in Mexico who get paid 7 cents and hour. Unless we change things, we’re going to keep getting poorer and poorer.
When you get poorer, the rich get even richer.
How? That’s just the rules of the game. The game called “Free Market Capitalism.”
The Super Rich, the parasites down on Wall Street, they own the whole goddamn Monopoly game. They own the playing board, they own the shoe and the thimble and the scottish terrier, they own the dice, and they own the money. They are The Man. We all play by their rules. Don’t beleive me? Have you checked your credit score lately? Oh, it doesn’t look so good does it. Maybe that’s because you have too much credit card debt. Or not enough credit card debt. Or maybe you don’t pay your statements off fast enough. Or maybe you pay your balance off too fast. Or maybe it’s just all just fucking bullshit set up by the bankers on Wall Street to control your spending habits so they can steal even more of your goddamn money by making interest off of your debt.
So, What are the rules?
The rules go like this: you work for them your whole life, give up every waking moment to earn that money that you so desperately need to stay alive, and then when you get it, you pay rent back to your capitalist master for permission to keep living. So that you can keep living to do what? To keep working, until you get too old to work and become either social securities problem, or if social security is gone by then, you become your kids problem. And if your kids can’t support you because they’re competing against workers in Mexico who get 7 cents an hour, then you end up on the street curb with the rest of the trash that nobody wants.
You’re a fool to think that the money you earn is ever really yours. That money is owned by The Man, and he’s only lending it to you temporarily, so that you THINK you’re making progress. They’ll take it back from you soon enough. And no I’m not talking about taxes. The Man gives you just enough of their money so that you stay just happy enough, or just confused enough, that you don’t fully realize you’re being totally fucked every moment of your life.
Every breath you take, they are snatching their money back from you. You want to buy food so you don’t starve to death, you pay The Man. You pay Kraft Foods, Inc and you pay Con Agra and you pay Monsanto. You can’t get to your job by public transport so you have to buy a car. You get your loan to buy your from The Man.
The Man charges you interest on this new debt you just created, and The Man immediately begins to trade your debt with his buddies, as if it were money.
If time is money, it stands to reason that money is time, and when you are in debt, you owe your time on this earth to the Man. When the man is trading your debt like money, what he’s really doing is trading your life away. He is selling derivatives on his ownership of your every breath. He’s trading in futures of YOU, with the implicit guarantee that you’ll keep slaving your sorry ass to the bone so that The Man can turn more profits, because you promised to give The Man back all the money he just gave you and then some.
So now you’re working for The Man for free. How does it feel to be a slave? Shut up, go watch TV. Don’t talk politics. How dare you question America, the greatest best country on earth that god ever gave to man? Gave to man? Or gave to The Man?Now, I never aim to inspire defeatism, but today I aim to inspire disillusionment,... more
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Rev. Jim Burklo of the California Council of Churches sees California OneCare as the solution to the moral bankruptcy of our current, broken health care system, because it would minimize suffering and save lives.Rev. Jim Burklo of the California Council of Churches sees California OneCare as the... more
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Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Joan Claybrook from Public Citizen point to California as the best hope to lead the nation toward single payer, universal health care.Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Joan Claybrook from Public Citizen point to California as the... more
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Elliott Gould warns us not to believe the myths about single payer health care. “Single payer is no more socialized medicine than the police department is socialized crime fighting,” he says. California OneCare is publicly financed, privately delivered health care, and poll after poll has shown that not only do doctors and nurses want it, but so do two-thirds of the people.Elliott Gould warns us not to believe the myths about single payer health care.... more
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California State Senator Mark Leno--the author of SB 810, the California Universal Health Care Act--shares his view on how California OneCare can make California great again. California OneCare is an historic grassroots movement to educate millions of Californians and build overwhelming public support for single payer universal health care in California.California State Senator Mark Leno--the author of SB 810, the California Universal... more
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One of the most trusted progressive voices in the senate said Monday evening the effort to improve health care in America will not be over once the Democratic bill passes. In fact, he declared, it's just the beginning.
"I believe that at the end of the day, what we need is a Medicare-for-all, single payer system," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said on MSNBC's The Ed Show. "This is far from that. But that fight continues. So, this is a step forward. And let us not underestimate the good in this bill, let's continue to fight."
After a year of extensive debates, the resulting legislation has drawn the ire of many progressives, who are upset that it does not expand public alternatives for consumers. But according to Sanders, that isn't enough of a reason to strike it down.
"The answer is pass this bill and make it better the day after," Sanders said, citing the Congressional Budget Office's conclusion that it will cover millions who are uninsured and ban insurers from denying care to sick people and individuals with pre-existing illnesses.
"Let's not ignore the reality that 31 million more Americans are going to get health insurance," he said.
more at link...One of the most trusted progressive voices in the senate said Monday evening the... more
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David Swanson Sunday March 14, 2010 1:28 pm
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Let me get this straight. The Senate will pass a public option if the House will. And the House will, because it already did. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t allow it. So the mortal enemy of public-option backers is . . . Dennis Kucinich.
Why? Because when Congressman Kucinich said he’d stand for a public option he stupidly thought he was supposed to mean it.
Let’s review a brief history of the disease known as "health insurance reform."
When the president and the speaker of the House thought it would be strategic to censor any talk of single-payer healthcare, almost every member of Congress and almost every astroturfing party-before-country activist group and labor union, and almost every follower of those groups, fell obediently into lineDavid Swanson Sunday March 14, 2010 1:28 pm
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Let me get... more
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The public option is dead. How many times have we heard this over the past few months? The Republican party doesn't want it, the bought off Democrats don't want it the double talking white house doesn't want it and most importantly the insurance companies and wall street don't want it and the media keeps saying it's dead. The only people who support the public option are the people and who cares what they think right. So it's dead forget about it.
But something strange is going on a few weeks ago Senator Mike Bennett of Colorado wrote a letter calling on an up or down vote on the Public Option. Almost right away twenty five other Senators signed on. So in response the white house came out with it's strongest anti public option statement saying it was politically not possible. Since that time another sixteen Senators have signed on bringing the total to forty one. With some prominent supporters not yet having signed.
Is the voice of the people being heard? Make your voice heard. You can really make a difference because you can bet if people weren't calling, writing and putting the pressure on this deal would be over with by now. Here is a link to a list of the Senators and where they stand and more information on how to make your voice heard.
http://whipcongress.com/
Here's a link to a Rachel Maddow interview with Senator Bennett
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCHuUzb3zBAThe public option is dead. How many times have we heard this over the past few months?... more
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Do You Want To Change The Future? Carpe Diem
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/05/89910/the-nations-capital-is-one-sorry.html
This started out as a quick link to an article and has turned into a full on plea. Because I started thinking about the things I've recently seen going on in Washington and one issue really got me going and this is the result.
It sure is and spectacle is just the word to describe what I've witnessed for the last year as I've watched the debate over health care reform. The Republicans want to destroy social programs so compromising with them only serves to lessen the chance of these programs succeeding. Last year the Republicans said they were going to destroy Obama over health care. It was going to be his Waterloo. And instead of fighting for what was really right time and time again he caved in and compromised.
The far and away best solution to the health care crisis a single payer/Medicade For All plan was not even part of the opening discussion. It's supporters were not even allowed to participate in the discussion they were hauled off by the police. That's when you got the idea that things weren't going to go well. And then the second moment occurred when president Obama laughed at the idea of putting the health insurance industry out of business.
Here is an industry that makes money by denying people care. They deliver no care themselves they only serve to make a profit. We are alone in the developed world that supports such a wasteful inefficient system. Other countries may have insurance companies by they are non profit in nature. In this county they make 10-20% profit by doing paperwork and then spend enormous sums of money to defeat any attempt at reform.
So that's one mans view of this ugly spectacle and as a side bar this is not a new spectacle but one that has been going on for a good many years. It is because the government has been so self serving and dysfunctional for so long that our problems have become so huge.
There is one way that we as Americans can turn this situation around and serve notice to our leaders. Senator Mike Bennett has a letter signed by 35 other Senators calling for a vote on a public option. We need fifteen more names to make this happen. What we need is a virus and I am asking no begging to to help. All the polls say that a large majority of Americans support a public option. Seize The Day you can add your name to the letter and contact those Senators that haven't signed on. Here is a link
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/activities/284
MindsiMedia has several channels on YouTube and other video sharing outlets you can access all of them from our web portal at http://www.mindsimedia.info/ . You can also link up to our Pandora radio stations there and our Facebook and Cafe Press presences. We also have a Facebook page which serves as our blog. Here is a couple of links to videos I put together at the beginning of this health care debate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mCC2DN_1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U6chUTEIY&feature=relatedDo You Want To Change The Future? Carpe Diem... more
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From the moment when the Senate began it's hearings into health care reform one proposal has been consistently ignored. Single payer in study after study over almost 20 years it has been shown that such a system would lower costs and provide care for everybody. Here is a link to some of those studies
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_system_cost.php
Last year when the hearings began in the senate and supporters of single payer where removed by force after being denied a seat at the table I crafted this little video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5U6chUTEIY
And now a year later at the big health care summit once again the one proposal that would save money is not on the agenda
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/26-1
Why because it would spell the end of the health insurance industry that exists only to make a profit for itself.From the moment when the Senate began it's hearings into health care reform one... more
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