Keiffer Sutherland To Promote Universal Health Care (in the US)
introduces a film of Keiffer's grandfather Tommy Douglas' analogy about Mouseland and the Fat Cats to promote Universal Health Care in Canada and eventually he was successful.
MESSAGE FOR OBAMA & AMERICANS
Health Insurance Industry & Republicans misrepresent Canada's Health Care
from RealNews Network
First some words from Canadians on Universal health Care as a RIGHT
Bureaucrats in Canada do not interfere between doctors & patients
Cost 10% GDP & US 15% GDP
Per person can 300$ per capita & Us spends $1,000 per capita
Canada spends less on Health Care but provides for all Canadians
Canada's outcomes on Health Care is better than outcomes in the United States
86% of Canadians approve of Canada's Health Care System
Canadian Doctors for Medicare hosted a celebration of Medicare in Canada. The speakers included Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan Premiere and Commissioner on Health Care in Canada. They tell Americans that Canadian universal health care works and encourage Americans to implement a single payer universal health care systems.
SORRY problem with Video at RealNews Network
Link:Real News Network
Let this stand as Ted Kennedy's farewell message of Hope to President Obama And America
Ted Kennedy On Universal Health Care-
Not a matter of privilege but a Right for All Americans
Ted Kennedy On Health Care 1978
Ted Kennedy: Health Care “Has Been the Passion of My Life” by Firedoglake via CommonDreams,Aug. 26,2009
by Christy Hardin Smith
Ted Kennedy, the lion of the Senate, has passed.
...Sen. Kennedy wrote a piece for Newsweek last year regarding his passionate work on health care, and the motivations for it. It is a fitting tribute to him that those words resonate just as strongly today:
. . .quality care shouldn't depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.
This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, "that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American…will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege." For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it's always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.
Whatever health care bill comes through the legislative process, if there is any care or concern for the public at large in the bill, it will have been due -- in large measure -- to the constant fight from Ted Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy On Health care
For thirty years Ted Kennedy fought for Universal Health Care not tinkering half hearted bipartisn piece of crap- Get With it Obama -or forget about it- if it is not Universal Health Care or close to it then all the efforts of millions who voted & worked tirelessly for Barack Obama was all just a waste of time & energy as President Obama takes the side of the Rich & Powerful of the Health Insurance Industry and the Pharmaceutical Companies & the Greedy Doctors who have forgotten their Hypocratic Oath & the owners of Hospital Chains who spend half their time trying to cut corners to increase their profits. It is either now Obama or Never.
And Sen. Byrd says to honor Ted Kennedy the New Health Care Bill should be named after Ted Kenndy
Sen. Byrd Wants Health Bill Renamed For Kennedy at Huffington Post, Aug. 26, 2009
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) called on Wednesday for health care reform legislation to be named after the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
"My heart and soul weeps at the loss of my best friend in the Senate," he said in a statement. "In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health-care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American," Byrd, 91, said in a statement.
And Robert Creamer argues that passing a substantive health care bill would be a true and lasting tribute to Sen. Ted Kennedy to show his fight over the last twenty years was not in vain.
Greatest Tribute to Kennedy: Pass Health Care for All by Robert Creamer at Huffington Post Aug 26, 20009
There has been much commentary that the Senate debate on health care would have benefited from the parliamentary and personal skills of Senator Ted Kennedy had he been present over the months of illness that took his life last night. But it would have benefited even more from his moral clarity.
He knew - better than anyone - that the debate over health care is not mainly about competing policies, programs and formulas. It is certainly not about the myths and lies propounded by the far right. He knew it is about right and wrong.
The decision facing America is whether - at long last - we will inscribe into our law the principle that health care is a human right - that everyone among us deserves health care simply because we are all human beings.
Ted Kennedy believed that to his core. It was his life's passion. It would be fitting if his passing itself served to refocus the health care debate on the moral principle that lies at its center. It would be his last great contribution to the struggle that more than any other defined his 47-year career in the Senate - the battle to make health care for all a reality in America.
... But there should no longer be any debating the fundamental principle that all of us deserve the same quality health care - no matter how much we earn, or who our parents are, or where we live, or the color of our skin, or how old or sick we may be.
That principle is accepted worldwide as a central element of what it means to live in a civilized society. It is a core tenant of what we understand to be universal human rights.
Yet the Republicans and far right have fought against the implementation of that principle in America ever since Roosevelt first called for universal health care in the 1930s. They fought it under Truman. They fought Medicare when it was passed as a first step to fulfilling that principle in the 1960s. They fought the State Children's Health Care Program that expanded that principle to children.
Their rhetoric is always the same. Ronald Reagan's speeches against Medicare in the 1960s - his charges that Medicare would lead to socialism and tyranny - could just as easily be transcriptions of the talk show tirades of Limbaugh and many Republican members of the Senate today.
Senator Edward Kennedy: Courage to Believe by Michael Roth at Huffinton Post, Aug. 26,2009
Late last night the nation lost one of its great public servants. It is difficult to think of another elected official since WWII who supported programs to help the most vulnerable members of our society with the energy and intelligence consistently displayed by Senator Edward Kennedy. His vision of justice was tied to a commitment to mitigate the cruel effects of economic inequality and entrenched power without unduly compromising economic growth and individual freedom. His support of education as a vehicle for the creation of opportunity has inspired countless students and teachers. He had the courage to maintain his beliefs and to find ways, even in dark times, to make progress.
and he concludes in reference to achieving Universal Health Care:
We have already missed Senator Kennedy. In this season of lies and distortions aimed to preserve profits and privilege, we have already missed him. In this season of posturing and bloviating without apparent thought of legislating, we have already missed him. We have already missed his uncanny ability to combine forceful advocacy with thoughtful, pragmatic compromise.
May the memory of his passionate and reasoned voice for health care as a right and not a privilege be the basis for extending and improving our health care system. May we continue to have the courage to believe in the possibilities for positive change. This would be the greatest tribute to a remarkable man.
Thomas Frank argues that the health care issue has become a symbol of the Democratic Party and if as a party has any real meaning then it will insist on passing a meaningful and substantive health Care Bil. This should be the Democrats and President Obama's Passion.
Health Care and the Democratic Soul by Thomas Frank at Huffington Post ,Aug. 26, 2009
At this point, it's fair to ask whether Democrats remember why health care is their issue in the first place. As health-care debates always have done, this one has pushed to the fore all the big questions about the rightful role of government, and too many Democrats have sought to avoid them with mushy appeals to consensus and bipartisanship. The war is on and if Democrats want to win they need to start fighting.
In the early years of the campaign for national health insurance, the battle lines were more clearly drawn. Back in the '40s, the issue was part of an "economic bill of rights," a grand Rooseveltian idea pushed by President Harry S. Truman.
Truman had a knack for populist phrasing. "In 1932 we were attacking the citadel of special privilege and greed," he declared in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in 1948. "We were fighting to drive the money changers from the temple. Today, in 1948, we are now the defenders of the stronghold of democracy and of equal opportunity, the haven of the ordinary people of this land and not of the favored classes or the powerful few."
...So we have come full circle: The reformers shake hands with the special interests, while conservatives denounce the whole thing in the name of the common man and the Founding Fathers.
After I listened to a few angry town-hall meetings on the radio, the situation was clear to me. Democrats had to meet this pseudo-populist challenge by rolling out the real thing, the New Deal vision that is their party's raison d'être.
So far, however, many in the party's leadership haven't been able to awaken from their bipartisan reverie. When Mr. Obama found his plans under attack, for example, he promptly began to downplay the "public option," an obvious predicate to cutting a deal and placating the insurance industry. In other words, the prospect of a populist outburst from the right apparently moved him toward abandoning the most populist element of his party's plans and toward an even more Beltwayist position--to move that much closer to the caricature of Democrats traditionally drawn by the right.
and Thomas Frank concludes :
Maybe Democrats are afraid it will hurt their standing with those generous fellows on K Street if they channel Harry Truman and say what needs to be said: That government can be made to work for average people. But it will hurt even worse if they refuse to say it.
Healthcare Reform Named After Ted Kennedy Must Not Suck by Bob Cesca at huffington Post, Aug. 26, 2009
If they're going to name the final healthcare reform bill after Senator Kennedy, we ought to be demanding with voices as powerful and booming as the late senator's...
The bill must not suck.
But if it does, perhaps they should name it after Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley. The Blame Baucus and Grassley for This Sucky Act. Or maybe borrow the name of the House bill, the America's Affordable Health Choices Act, which, by the way, reminds me more of a frozen diet meal than a robust healthcare reform bill (the final House bill is actually pretty robust -- it's just a ridiculous name).
On this day of national mourning, we're reminded that Senator Kennedy's political legacy has been inextricably bound to the cause of universal healthcare. Affordable, portable, reliable healthcare.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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