A Response to David Brooks’ NT Times Column “Death and Budgets” by Michael Lyon

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

by Michael Lyon
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
July 17, 2011

A Response to David Brooks’ NT Times Column “Death and Budgets”

It’s clear now that business and government want healthcare “reform” to control costs, not provide everyone with comprehensive, affordable healthcare.

Yet business and government are unwilling to do the real things that could control costs:  (1)  eliminate private insurance with its profit, administrative and marketing costs,

Talking About Democrats Abandoning the Middle Class Misses the Point by Michael Lyon

by Michael Lyon
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 7, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

I’m sorry to be the negative voice but I don’t consider Kevin Drum’s May 27 Mother Jones article “Why the Democratic Party Has Abandoned the Middle Class in Favor of the Rich” to be a profound analysis of why or how the working class became impoverished and disempowered over the past thirty years.  Drum documents the extent of this attack in a hard-hitting way, but focusing on the Democratic Party is a distraction from the role of the ruling class and the nature of capitalism in its decline.  Also, focusing on the “middle-class” distracts attention away from the existence of real classes, and rapidly expanding poverty in the US.

The Obama Health Plan Has Serious Threats to Medicare by Michael Lyon

by Michael Lyon
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at SF Gray Panthers Blog
Sept. 29, 2010

Obama’s Health Plan is fatally flawed because it uses insurance companies to deliver healthcare, but the Health Plan also directly threatens Medicare.

People talk about “the healthcare crisis,” but actually there are two healthcare crises.

For us, the healthcare crisis is 51 million uninsured, stripping workers’ health plans, unaffordable health insurance that denies claims and charges high co-pays and deductibles, medical bankruptcies, a tattered safety net, dangerous mistakes in hospitals, and some of the worst health indicators in the industrialized word.