Spintested: 04/20/11

Obama Mixing Politics And Policy On West Coast

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Does anyone have any doubt that in the end, Obama will be making another secret deal with Republicans to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?
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Obama Mixing Politics And Policy On West Coast

America's roots are liberal.
About Deficit
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Why Does (Almost) Everyone Hate the IPAB?

You've tried free medical care?

Free ice cream and candy, yes, I can see excessive demand.

Free colonoscopies, free injections. People generally have to be sick and even then they have to be feeling miserable before they'll drag themselves to the doctor. If the fear of what you might have doesn't keep you away, sitting in the waiting room for an hour or two with old magazines and other patients coughing/sneezing on you will.
About Health Care
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Obama Mixing Politics And Policy On West Coast

It was Obama who cut the deal to extend Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and it was Obama who cut the deal with the Insurance & Pharmaceutical industries and blocked single payer proponents from the table, and nixxed the public option.

Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters. Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.

Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, and continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what We, the People thought they were.

Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.

Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".

Obama's 'job', as he sees it, is to deliver to the top 2%. No amount of begging, imploring, wishing, pleading with Obama is going to move him off of that, as we've already seen with his job approval numbers: His numbers require a Tea Party for comparison in order to remain up.
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Why Does (Almost) Everyone Hate the IPAB?

“The Democrats & Republicans give the illusion that there are differences between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significantly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePayer. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger & broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcare providers, particularly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independent practice. We're seeing greater corporatization of our healthcare. Practices are being taken over by these large corporations. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceCompany. They tell you what your reimbursements will be. They make it incredibly difficult & complex to get reimbursed. The rules are arbitrary & change frequently.”

“This new legislation doesn't change any of that. It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administrative complexity. We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporations like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna & Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexisting conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdministration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.

The CenterForMedicare & MedicaidServices estimated that after the legislation passed, our healthcare costs would rise more steeply than if we'd done nothing. The CensusBureau reports that the number of uninsured in the US jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The NationalHealthInsuranceSurvey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsurance. These faulty insurance products leave people financially vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays & deductibles cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/power_and_the_tiny_acts_of_rebellion_20101122/
About Health Care
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Why Does (Almost) Everyone Hate the IPAB?

“You can’t effect change from the inside,” Flowers has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequalities, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independent of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation], for example, funds many public health departments. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-payer. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/private partnership. And we know this is totally ineffective. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-payer health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-payer, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-payer they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organization was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”

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About Health Care
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Why Does (Almost) Everyone Hate the IPAB?

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it is like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blacklisted by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on health care reform by the Democratic Party and liberal organizations such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room.

“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-payer advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politically feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.”

“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-payer bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substituted S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-payer bill, give up pushing for single-payer very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-payer. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”

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When Matt Taibbi investigates the economic meltdown and aftermath and writes "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them", is that something you don't agree with?

How is it "extreme" to be asking questions like Taibbi's latest:

"The Real Housewives of Wall StreetWhy is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?"

Jeremy Scahill's work exposing the abuses and war crimes of Blackwater under Bush you find "extreme"?

And how are any of these issues being discussed with experts and elected officials onThom Hartmann's show this week "extreme"?:

Are the U.S. taxpayers going to again bail out the banksters to the tune of $5 trillion?

Is the right to privacy at risk...police extracting personal info from cell phones now

ACLU won't fight for civil rights of elected officials

Is the Gulf of Mexico still dying?

Will the world's last wild salmon fishery be destroyed by corporate greed?

When Glen Greenwald, a Constitutional lawyer, questions the Constitutionality of a president asserting 'unitary executive' claims and presidents' authority to indefinitely detain and even kiII American citizens on no other authority but his own, that's "extreme"to you?

Is it also "extreme" when he does it during Bush-Cheney years (which he did) or just when it's a president who you (irrationally) support?

And Jane Hamsher, who probably did more than anyone to bring a spotlight to the conditions and inhumane treatment, the t0rture, of Bradley Manning, is "extreme"? By holding Obama's and Democrats' feet to the fire about their promises to deliver on affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone, that is "extreme"?

How exactly is it that you're a Democrat?
About Most Popular
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