by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
Black Agenda Report
July 29, 2009
Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate were swept into office on a promise they would deliver affordable and accessible health care for all Americans. But the corporate media journalism limits the national health care conversation to what insurance companies, drug companies, for-profit health care professionals, their executives, lobbyists and politicians of both parties and other hirelings have to say. So it isn’t as easy as it ought to be to tell what the politicians are doing about accomplishing health care for everybody. Hence we offer these ten points. This is how you can tell whether your president and his party are fighting for the health care you deserve.
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Their plan doesn’t cover the uninsured till at least 2013.
2013 isn’t “day one.” It’s not even after the midterm election. It’s clear after the president’s second term, if he gets one. Congress passed Medicare in 1965 and president Lyndon Johnson rolled out coverage for millions of seniors in eleven months, back in the days before they even had computers.
22,000 Americans now perish each year because they can’t get or can’t afford medical care, and this year three quarter million personal bankruptcies will be triggered by unpayable medical bills. Why this president and these Democrats are in such a hurry to pass health care now that doesn’t take effect till two elections down the road doesn’t make sense in any kind of good way.
[…]
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“Public Option” Makes It Through One More Round Of Negotiations
by Dolores M Bernal
NEWS JUNKIE POST
Jul 29, 2009
EDITOR’S NOTE (1): An earlier headline for the article implied that the public option may have been removed from the House’s bill. That is not the case, even though the amendment may have been weakened (according to the Huff Post).
A deal was reached on Wednesday in the House Energy and Commerce Committee between Blue Dog democrats and Democrats supportive of the Henry Waxman healthcare bill, but very progressive members of Congress didn’t seem very happy with the deal.
[…]
Progressive organizations are urging people to call their representatives in the House to tell them to support a strong public option amendment, which was added by Dennis Kucinich this month. The amendment is the closest that Americans will get to a single payer health care system. This legislation could be voted on by the full U.S. House of Representatives before the end of the week even though Democratic leaders promised the full House would not vote on the measure until September.
[…]
via “Public Option” Makes It Through One More Round Of Negotiations | NEWS JUNKIE POST.
see also
Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing? | Black Agenda Report
see
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All this rhetoric boils down to two things: 1. We The People are not represented in Congress. The only remedy for that is the people claiming a right to initiative and using it. 2. corporations have acquired the rights of individuals. They need to be stripped of those rights, and put on the grounds that our founding fathers intended.