Fridays the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by Dr. Stephen R. Keister commenting on The Day the Democrats Died, by Paul Hogarth. Here’s Dr. Keister’s comment: As an 88-year-old, retired physician, and a member of Physician’s For a National Health Program, I am, of [...]
Senators, Thanks For Reminding Us Why We Don’t Like You
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If Washington is the place where “good ideas go to die,” as candidate Obama liked to say, then the Senate is the slaughterhouse. This white millionaires’ club where the biggest egos on Earth tell us how goddamn important they are has just screwed the middle class in this country — a middle class that is reeling after years of being beaten down by these Senators’ masters in private industry.
Top 5 Reasons Joe Lieberman Sticks It to Us
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Senator Joe Lieberman continues to threaten filibuster of the Senate health reform bill even in the face of the recent Harvard study showing that 45 thousand Americans die each year because of lack of sufficient health care.
House Health Care Bill a Mixed Bag for Immigrants
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House members, particularly Rep. Nydia Velazquez and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, were able to successfully block an immigration-related motion to recommit by House Republicans—a motion with the intention of forcing a tough vote on immigration that, if passed, may have resulted in the bill’s defeat.Health care reform now moves to the Senate, where battles over the 5-year bar, verification systems, and unauthorized immigrants’ ability to purchase health insurance are likely to continue.
The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid
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The official position of the California Democratic Party is unequivocally in favor of single-payer healthcare. And yet Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, did what she could to sabotage the single-payer position of her own party in her own state.
GOP Health Care Bill Excludes All Immigrants From ‘High Risk Pool’ H.R. 3962
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Republicans aren’t just opposed to expanding access to health care for undocumented immigrants, they’re against providing any assistance to all “high risk” seriously ill immigrants, regardless of their immigration status.
Friday Feedback: Divestment Is the Answer
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Single Payer is by far the best path, actually the only path. The pitch and claim for the Public Option is “Keeping the insurance companies honest.” Really? If I break the law I get prosecuted, fined, and jailed, that simple – do the crime – pay the time or the fine. That should keep them honest. Congress passes laws, and if they violate those or cheat they are out of the game.
States Permitted to Worsen But Not Improve Healthcare?
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The very best possible bills now under consideration in Congress are largely bailouts for health insurance companies at public expense. The “public option,” which was originally sold to us as a path toward a single-payer solution or Medicare for all, has been reduced to — at best — a token mitigating factor in a catastrophically bad law.
Fear of Illness
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The virus, though, only appears to be as deadly as other yearly viruses as the deaths associated with the new virus are at a minimum. But the fear is now established and people want the vaccine.
The Audacity of Greed: How Private Health Insurers Just Blew Their Cover
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So, insurance companies, we’ve got news for you. We’re going to make sure Americans have the freedom to choose a public insurance option that’s cheaper and better, and you’re going to have to work hard to keep them your customers.
Not the Belly of the Beast
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Thanks Max Baucus and the ObstructaDems and the GOP and Fox and the medico-insurance complex. You’ve really done a number on America. The question for the rest of us is: Why are we sitting at home reading this instead of storming Washington demanding the change we voted for?
The Truth About Jobs That No One Wants to Tell You
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In other words, ten percent unemployment really means twenty percent underemployment or anxious employment. All of which translates directly into late payments on mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans, and loss of health insurance.
Sen. John Barrasso Compares Undocumented Emergency Care Patients To Shoplifters
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Despite the fact that immigrants are healthier than US citizens, use less medical care, use less expensive care, and do not impose a disproportionate financial burden on the US health care system; Barrasso stubbornly holds that those undocumented immigrants who can afford health insurance shouldn’t even be allowed to purchase it because it would somehow “certify” their presence in the country.
The Practical Case For Extending Benefits To ‘Really, Really Poor’ Immigrants
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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
Louisiana Senator Says Health Care Reform Will Benefit Undocumented Immigrants Because ‘It Always Does’
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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
The Real News About Jobs and Wages: An Ode to Labor Day
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If we’ve learned anything from the Great Recession-Mini Depression of the last 18 months, it’s that the skewing of income and wealth to the top has made our economy far less stable.
What Obama Must Demand from Congress on Health Care
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In order to get anything meaningful through this session of Congress, then, the President will have to give Congressional Democrats far more leadership and more cover. Doing so is harder now than before the recess, when he was still basking in the afterglow of a honeymoon and 60% favorabilities.
‘Socialized Medicine’ and Hamas: Big Lies Thrive
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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 the side of truth to quit.
How Bad Is America’s Healthcare Crisis?
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Drawn from a presentation Dr. Matt Hendrickson gave at a Single-Payer Healthcare forum given in Santa Monica last month, our LA Progressive survey was designed to underscore just how dire America’s healthcare system has become—and to give you a chance to test your knowledge and intuitions.
Truckfuls of Bodies
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The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law.
How Bad Is America’s Healthcare Crisis?
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The questions for this survey were drawn from a presentation by Dr. Matt Hendrickson, founder of the Southern California Chapter of Physicians for National Healthcare Program, which we reported on in “A Long and Winding Road to Universal Healthcare.” Our recent “Healthcare Myths and Realities” is another good source of myth-busting facts. Correct answers are [...]
How the White House’s Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy
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The White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That’s basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit.
Healthcare in America
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This video was provided by Bill Moyer’s PBS Television show. It is available on YouTube. Here, Bill Moyer’s interviews Wendell Potter a former healthcare insurance executive. The interview is approximately 37 mins long. The following message was sent to the LA Progressive by a reader who calls himself jacksmith: We have the 37th worst quality [...]
The Incredible Shrinking Healthcare Reform
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Under pressure from industry and their lobbyists, the public plan has been watered down to a small and ineffectual option at best, if it ever survives to being enacted
Rep. Michele Bachmann Distorts Immigration To Block Health Care Bill
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Bachmann doesn’t point out that 9.5 million of uninsured noncitizens that she cites includes both legal and undocumented immigrants.
Long and Winding Road to Universal Healthcare
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Even as Obama takes his case for comprehensive health care reform to the country, only a cockeyed optimist could believe Congress will soon produce anything remotely resembling the universal healthcare.
Spinning Health Care: A Bad Case of Vertigo
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Today, the kind of arguments heard during the early ’60s against guaranteed health care for the elderly can now be heard against establishing a comprehensive single-payer system
Rep. Steve King’s Fudged Math Sets Off Alarm: ‘5,600,000 Illegal Aliens’ Covered By ‘Obamacare’
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None of the figures that King cites — including the 5.6 million number that he uses to strike fear in xenophobic hearts — are included in the CBO’s infamous health care bill projections.
Obamacare Warring with Itself Over Future Costs
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Now is the time for the President to begin twisting arms and knocking heads. To control long-term costs, he’ll also have to take away some of the goodies that have been promised to the health-industrial complex, and maybe even cross Big Labor.
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