Progressive Media Advocates
Big Pharma and Big Insurance hate the public insurance option even more than they hate big Medicare discounts. And although the President has sounded as if he would welcome it, political operatives in the White House have quietly reassured the industries that it won’t be included in the final bill.
So it’s not just the senators’ credibility on the line if they fail to provide to all Americans a similar level of health care benefits that they themselves enjoy as senators. It’s the very democratic legitimacy of the body in which they serve.
Despite a brutal August recess where right-wing Teabaggers disrupted Town Hall meetings, the American people generally trust Obama on health care and want to see meaningful reform.
There was always one person in the mob who ignited the spark. “You lie” equates to “the Ni**ers lyin’” in another period, or “get em, boys” in yet another. Congressman Joe Wilson was the one holdin’ the rope in a previous period.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus finally produced his own health care bill earlier this week – and it’s an absolute gift to the insurance industry.
Any investment in preventive care services will ultimately help control health care costs by successfully preventing and managing expensive chronic conditions. This is especially true for uninsured immigrants
Now we have proof that the crazies grabbed control of the asylum and bullies are shaking down and thumping – not entirely figuratively – Republicans in the halls of the US Senate.
Health-care reform proponents claim that few undocumented immigrants enrolled in Medicaid even before proof of citizenship was required. If that’s true, Republicans are essentially belly-aching over a non-issue.
Let’s be clear: Wall Street today is up to the same tricks it was playing before its near-death experience: Derivatives, derivatives of derivatives, fancy-dance trading schemes, high-risk bets. “Our model really never changed, we’ve said very consistently that our business model remained the same,” says Goldman Sach’s chief financial officer.
For those of who believe, as we do, that the tepid healthcare reforms rising to the top right now will either be too weak to benefit Americans who need help the most or will benefit most the insurance companies and others who already profit handsomely by withholding life-giving care, this is the time to press forward universal healthcare options that will actually solve the country’s healthcare crisis.
Someone asked what black people thought of Joe Wilson‘s “you lie” outburst. Of course, there isn’t a monolithic black answer to that question. I am a black person but I can’t speak for black people and I didn’t get together with other black people to form a consensus. But I did read a blog post [...]
the Obama Administration knows that the final health care bill won’t get a single Republican vote – and is preparing to make it possible to pass a public option. But it will only become a reality if progressives focus like a laser beam in order to make that happen.
Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst was certainly out of line, but his indefensible fit of temper was illustrative of a larger discussion taking place amongst HIRC members and anti-immigrant groups who see the health care debate as yet another opportunity to promote their nativist agenda by advancing illogical fears, misplaced anger, and calculated misinformation.
Leave it to President Obama to wrap up his speech about health care reform in a brief examination of the American character. True. For the love of God, somebody has to say something. Obama, however, did not see America the Mean.
Obama’s desire to find a common ground was part of his attraction. This is not what most progressives find troubling. Rather, it is Obama’s reluctance to use the vast powers of the presidency to drive the enactment of his top domestic priority that many of his longtime supporters simply cannot understand.
It occurred to me that calling somebody you dislike a “Nazi,” especially when they (or their programs) clearly are not, is a pretty Nazi thing to do.
The ideal of universal care has revolved around two poles. In the 1930s, liberals imagined a universal right to health care tied to compulsory insurance, like Social Security. Johnson based Medicare on this idea, and it survives today as the “single-payer model” of universal health care, or “Medicare for all.” The alternative proposal, starting with Eisenhower, was to create a market for health care based on private insurers and employers.
So, let’s just formalize what we already have and give those states that collectively want to spend money on health care, education, and general quality of life the opportunity to utilize their chosen federal government to enact such provisions legislatively.
At a town hall meeting in Louisiana, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) promoted the myth that undocumented immigrants will reap the benefits of health care reform by reasoning that “they always do.” He also proclaimed that what the nation is really facing is an immigration enforcement problem (as opposed to a health care problem) because “a quarter” of the “45 or 48 million” who are uninsured in the US are undocumented immigrants
Many citizens of immigrant-sending countries have better access to health care at home than they would in the US, but that also doesn’t mean that they will flood the borders if the US health care system significantly improves.
But where an active citizenry avails itself of its democratic rights to provide for the general welfare, public options work just fine. Let’s use and cherish them.
Conservatives are entitled to their political heroes, and if they have core principles should celebrate their leaders’ deaths the way he or she would have wanted them to do. Just don’t attack us for remembering our heroes – depriving us of our chance to grieve.
‘Socialized Medicine’ and Hamas: Big Lies Thrive. The conflict between The Big Lie and The Big Truth is really about which side can repeat its points most often. It’s an endurance contest. With so much at stake when it comes to issues like health insurance reform and Middle East peace, now is no time for [...]
Meanwhile, to my knowledge, only one elected Republican official has called for this to stop. I guess crazy is a pre-existing condition, as Paul Krugman notes in his blog.
Although health care nightmare stories abound across the United States, we don’t have to focus simply on the negative. Why not cultivate a positive vision for the kind of health care we deserve as a nation?
The White House showed a white flag last weekend, discarding its commitment to a “public option” that would compete with private health insurance. Since then, despite efforts to backtrack, the signal keeps flashing: Obama won’t go to the mat for a public option after all.
Activists either insist that the President accept nothing less than a public option, or pave the way for Obama’s further “compromises” on the many other issues once widely thought to represent the ushering in of a new progressive era.
As the GOP and their allies have concluded that all is fair in their attempts to either destroy health care reform (of any kind) and/or gain political leverage against a popular President, I am feeling the need to don a bullet-proof vest.
CIS Event Exploits ‘Mind Boggling’ Health Care Reform To Promote Reduced Immigration. CIS and Rector aren’t likely to admit it, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, had the US legalized undocumented immigrants under the 2007 immigration bill, it would have generated $48 billion in new revenue from administrative fees and income and payroll taxes [...]
CIS and Rector aren’t likely to admit it, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, had the US legalized undocumented immigrants under the 2007 immigration bill, it would have generated $48 billion in new revenue from administrative fees and income and payroll taxes alone.
Eric Garcetti Wins Los Angeles Mayoral Race! See outcome of the Los Angeles city election here.
Randy Shaw: Now that cities offer walkable, bicycle-friendly, public transit-available neighborhoods with desirable restaurants and a high quality of life, the poor are being shunted to car-dependent suburban areas in economic decline.
Julie Driscoll: Call me crazy, but I believe firmly that the statutory laws are in place for a reason – to prevent the exploitation of young men and women who don’t have the ability to make informed decisions, who don’t have the ability to “consent.”
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