Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are.
from Jonathan Alter,Newsweek
By every objective measure, the United States has a second-rate health care system -- and the only way to fix it is to create a public option.
The United States has the most-expensive, least-efficient and, in many ways, most-ineffective health care system in the world
Quote from Guy Saperstein, Alternet
The Obama administration needs to mobilize all of those energetic supporters who helped get him elected to promote healthcare reform
Supporters of healthcare reform need to inundate the internet and the media with passionate appeals for healthcare reform to drown out the noise of the healthcare industry's hired hooligans and thugs
Rachel Maddow compares the Tea Bagging & Healthcare Faux Populist movement to the phony mob which was sent to Florida to shut down the vote counting in 2000 election - the count if it had taken place Bush might have lost the presidency to Al Gore.
The point Maddow makes is that using a mob to bring about the results the Republicans wanted worked and now they are using the same tactics to defeat Healthcare Reform in America. Once again the Republicans and the big lobbyists show their disdain for the Democratic process. In their view the loudest and the most well funded wins and they will shout down any who dare defend Healthcare reform And they will lie about what the Healthcare reform will do to America.
They will fear monger and scare Americans by calling such attempts to reform Healthcare a move towards "socialism" , Communism, Fascism and a totalitarian state . They will say whatever necessary in order to defeat the Obama administration on this issue or any other they disagree with . Unfortunately most Americans seem to believe whatever these lobbying groups tell them. This is especially true when the mainstream media acts as an echo chamber for these individuals and lobbyists who are all for maintaining the status quo because it is in their own interests even though at odds with the interests of the American Meanwhile Obama 's administration tries to play by the rules and attempt to be bipartisan which may end up being his undoing once again. Obama needs to speak more passionately about why Healthcare reform is absolutely necessary for America to move forward towards a more just society .In the current situation millions of Americans are at the mercy of the rapacious profiteering healthcare industry .The issue should be treated as seriously as past issues such as the civil rights movement
Rachel Maddow: History Of The Republican's "Thugs"
Fox News Propagandists for Healthcare Industry- out to defeat Obama
Haelthcare Industry only interested in increasing their profits and have no interest in the health of average Americans.
How To Fake A Protest: Right-Wing Media & Corporate Lobbyists Pretend To Be Grassroots
http://mediamatters.org
Jeffrey Feldman at Huffington Post argues that Healthcare Reform supporters in the Democratic Party and those who were mobilized to help put Barack Obama in the Presidency should present their arguments for Healthcare Reform with more passion and emotion so they can be heard over the noise of the Teabaggers & their phony grassroots uprising against Healthcare Reform. The recitation of statistics about healthcare will not cut but rather true life stories of those who are being neglected or who have gone bankrupt because of the present private healthcare system in America.
Anodyne Town Halls are the Problem, Not Teabaggers by Jeffrey Feldman at huffington Post, August 4, 2009
In other words, it is the Senate, Congressional, and White House Democratic Party communication teams that have created the ideal, quiet conditions for a half-dozen fever-pitched teabaggers to shout "tyranny!" and disrupt the hushed sessions.
...Because the Democrats treated the town halls as information sessions rather than symbolic stages, they left the emotional terrain wide open for a few voices to exploit, which is exactly what the teabaggers have done.
...Thus, while a vast majority of Americans, for example, want a new public option to replace their current health insurance, those same Americans do not see or hear that story being passionately argued in the media.
It is astounding that, even with control of the Congress and the Executive branch, Democrats still do not understand the symbolism implicit in these health care town halls, whereas a ragtag bunch of teabag protesters does get it.
... Democrats need to see the town halls as symbolic arenas to be dominated, not mere meeting locations to attend. To dominate a symbolic arena, Democrats need to literally fill the proceeding with the most compelling reasons for reform that exist: ending injustice, averting personal bankruptcy, eliminating the paralyzing fear of illness, preventing systemic financial collapse, ending the personal and economic humiliation of living with chronic illness in America. Never before in the history of political debate have there been more passionate arguments to be made and more people willing to step up and make them than for the health care debate.
... Every elected Democrat in Washington, DC, has an office full of talented staffers with experience mobilizing the media to cover their bosses. These staffers need to be enlisted to put the town halls on the front pages and in the lead position of every broadcast from now until September.
... Democrats need to enlist and energize the grassroots of their party. After the election, the Obama campaign left one of the greatest legacies in political history: hundreds of thousands of Americans centrally organized via the internet and willing to turn out to push for real change. These people need to be mobilized with the same passionate arguments that got them to turn out to walk door-to-door in cold weather to elect a President...
... a real public option (not some phony baloney "co-op") must be put front and center of the debate by leading Democrats including the President. Without the public option at the center of the debate, the very people who would be the most passionate voices in the health care discussion are hamstrung. They cannot argue passionately for what they believe if the moral core of the debate has been stripped away...
Lastly, the President needs to cut his vacation down to size so he can climb back on the bully pulpit as only he can....He needs to tell everyone -- each and every day -- that this is the fight of his life...
If the Democrats put aside their anodyne approach and restart the health care debate with a level of passion worthy of the issue, neither the teabaggers nor any other protest group will have much peace and quiet to disrupt...
and some critics conclude that Obama's healthcare reform has already been watered down to such an extent that it is not worthy of being called reform
: The Incredible Shrinking Healthcare Reform by Norman Solomon at CommonDreams,Aug. 5,2009
Like soap in a rainstorm, "healthcare reform" is wasting away.
As this week began, a leading follower of conventional wisdom, journalist Cokie Roberts, told NPR listeners: "This is evolving legislation. And the administration is now talking about a glide path towards universal coverage, rather than immediate universal coverage."
Notions of universal healthcare are fading in the power centers of politics -- while more and more attention focuses on the care and feeding of the insurance industry.
Consider a new message that just went out from Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, which inherited the Obama campaign's 13-million email list. The short letter includes the same phrase seven times: "health insurance reform."
The difference between the promise of healthcare for everyone and the new mantra of health insurance reform is akin to what Mark Twain once described as "the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
And yet America's healthcare is not no. 1 or eve tenth in the world but is ranked as 37th by the World Health Organization compared to the rest of the world. But still there are those who ignore the reality and so repeat the mantra that it is the best in the world. This attitude is a direct consequence of the erroneous myth of American Exceptionalism.It is difficult if not impossible for President Obama to cut through this sort of delusional thinking which is ingrained in the American psyche.
The Only Option for Health Reform Is the Public Option By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet. August 5, 2009.
By every objective measure, the United States has a second-rate health care system -- and the only way to fix it is to create a public option.
The United States has the most-expensive, least-efficient and, in many ways, most-ineffective health care system in the world.
But you wouldn't know it if you listened to Republicans talk about the private health care insurance system or Democratic Blue Dogs whine about the costs of reform and complain about how unfair it would be to have private health insurance companies compete with a public health care option.
The World Health Organization ranks health care systems based on objective measures of medical outcomes, and the United States' health care system ranks 37th in the world, behind Colombia and Portugal (which both spend far less on health care than the U.S.).
The United States ranks 44th in the world in infant mortality, behind many impoverished Latin American countries. Although infant mortality in the United States is skewed toward poor people, who have rates double the wealthy, the top quintile of the U.S. population has infant mortality rates higher than Canadians in the lowest quintile of wealth.
and here's a somewhat funny bit from Jonathan Alter at Newsweek:
"What’s Not to Like? Reform? Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is just fine the way it is."by Jonathan Alter,Jul 31, 2009
Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are.
I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!
Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I'm just a regular guy and definitely deserve less.
I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners' insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I'd face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That's what you call a "post-existing condition."
and so it goes,
GORD.
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