No, you can't have your chiropractor remove your appendix, but a chiropractor wouldn't want to do it; surgery isn't within chiropractic protocol. But there are all kinds of medical conditions that can be, and are being, treated legally by different medical specialties. You don't need a physician to treat your flu.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What you got is insurance, not affordable quality medical treatment, which is what Obama and Democrats were put into office to achieve.
Obama's healthcare legislation is Republican healthcare legislation. It is the Heritage foundation's plan.
There is no mechanism for lowering the costs of treatment. Obama put a fox in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler) to write and enforce the regulations. Her most notable actions to date have been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.
Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the very thing that was the top issue in the 2008 election: The government being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.
Obama's healthcare legislation is Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (which was a $700 billion + giveaway to Big Insurance & PhRma), Part 2.
Not only doesn't Obama's healthcare legislation accomplish what Obama and Democrats were put into power to get (affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, lower drug prices), it is, in fact, a giant leap toward ending all public healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).
Obama's healthcare legislation puts more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets. So while people may find themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that should all else fail you've got Medicaid as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.
Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care. All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).
There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.
Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in the bill. The con game in the legislation -- Medical loss ratio. The amount of money insurers must spend on healthcare, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama's broken promises on transparency. His war on whistleblowers.
Obama in his own words:
"Transparency Will Be Touchstone"
"On transparency", "About inviting the people back into their government again", and "Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests and it's working for corporations"
"We need a president who sees the government not as a tool to enrich well connected friends and high-priced lobbyists, but as a defender of fairness and opportunity for every single American. That's what this country's been about and that's the kind of president I intend to be"
"Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public, no more secrecy.....No more secrecy....."
"Clintons did health care the wrong way, behind closed doors":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0m6Rxm9vU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtIKgGHYPQ
"The American people are the answer"
Obama's Transparency Problem
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to populist issues, because like the Republican Party, the DLC works for the benefit of transnational corporations.
Each party uses high-priced public relations firms, with spinmeisters crafting sophisticated propaganda campaigns to con voters into believing what isn't true. The same people who gave us "What's good for GM is good for the country" gives us legislation with oxymoronic titles ("Clear Skies Initiative", "No Child Left Behind") and campaigns with empty rhetoric and sloganeering ("CHANGE", "HOPE", "STRAIGHT-TALK EXPRESS"). All calculated to convince the left and the right within each party that their party's candidate shares their positions.
If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, and listen with your now 'experienced ears' (experienced in lawyer-speak, aka Bush-speak, although Bush needed a team of speech writers to do what Obama is able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear to get their vote.
Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. The truth is now out -- He's not even a 'centrist': "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat."
The truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America." He did a snow job on everybody.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
In 2008, 10 million more voters went to the polls to vote in a black man, in good old rac!st America, instead of a war hero, because they had so had it with conservatives.
In 2010, when Obama and Democrats had refused to use the political capital given by them when 10 million more voters voted for them, voters used their votes to dump incumbents -- On both sides of the aisle. Democratic voters dumped BlueDog incumbents big time; liberals only lost 3 seats. That's happening again in 2012 (see last week's election).
The real problem is that Big Money/Big Business controls the political process, which includes high-priced propaganda campaigns that spin policy and candidates as things they're not. Corporations have been able to control politicians, candidates, the primary process, so that populist candidates can't get a seat at the table.
Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:
BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.
Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.
Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).
Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.
Obama supports voting third parties, even when it risks Democratic turnout.
Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.
Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).
The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Given the way that congressional districts are gamed (redistricting) and Citizens' United, it's unlikely that the make-up of Congress is going to change in favor of Democrats. So what you're supporting is putting the same people (Obama/Democrats) into power who have failed to achieve on behalf of the 99%.
I think your mistake is in believing that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party wants populist change. The evidence is overwhelming they don't; their rhetoric is meaningless.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
How Obama has handled the massive problems is EXACTLY how Republicans would've handled them (and how BushCheney was handling them). Obama's not governing as he had promised or as a real Democrat would have.
The real shame, the real tragedy for all of us is that Obama could have been a transcendent president, good for both business AND the People. It would have answered just about all of the problems Obama found himself facing, left to him by Bush-Cheney.
On the domestic front, the job creation possibilities were lost when the real reform proposed by single payer universal healthcare advocates was eliminated from even getting a seat at the table, and Obama chose to preserve an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care, which is government-sanctioned racketeering.
The 'job creation' reform that survived was billions spent on the Patriot Act-like invasion of citizens' privacy and the outsourcing of jobs that's involved with putting medical records on the internet -- All for a system that doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).
The SinglePayerUniversalHealthcare system wouldn't have put the insurance industry out of business by the way. It would've been a two-tiered system: Basic coverage for everyone and boutique coverage for those willing to pay for it. So nobody had to worry about poor Big Insurance and Pharma -- There would have been work for all. Big Insurance and Pharma would just had to have made smarter gambles, with no taxpayer bailouts.
With single payer universal health care, there would be more treatment shifted to non-physician practitioners (nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants, and other allied health professionals). Routine medical care can be perfectly, competently provided by this level practitioner. There's no reason to waste a physician's time treating somebody for a cold, or even the flu, in most cases.
It's true that if universal health coverage were to become an official reality, we'd need to expand training programs for both MDs and non-MD providers to insure there were enough to go around, but in the long run it would mean cheaper and more effective service, along with job creation. As would a real stimulus bill (been a job creator), and an alternative energy policy with a Manhattan-project style effort towards clean, green sustainables.
These are all good things, but Obama and Democrats have chosen the dark side. The corporate side.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
© Blogger templates Newspaper by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008
Back to TOP
