Prescribing Cake to Cure the Health Care Crisis by Walter Brasch

Updated: July 21, 2009 revised by the author

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
July 20, 2009

Marie Antoinette, contrary to popular opinion, never said a solution for the starving masses of revolutionary France in the late 18th century was, “Let them eat cake.” But, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) apparently said something close to it.

At a public meeting, one of Grassley’s constituents asked him, “Why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so much better than my insurance?” He then asked, “How come I can’t have the same thing you have?” Grassley’s response was a flip, “You can. Just go work for the federal government.” Grassley, who opposes universal health care, is happy with health care programs paid for with tax dollars and available for every member of Congress, all Congressional staffers, everyone in the executive and judicial branches, and the military and their families. He doesn’t even oppose Social Security and Medicare. He just doesn’t want the masses to have the same quality of medical care that Senators have.

Health care or disease care?

Dandelion Salad

Updated: July 20, 2009 added Pt 2

TheRealNews

Len Saputo: We need publicly funded health care, but we need more – a system based on prevention

Kucinich Secures Congressional Victory for States’ Single Payer Drive

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by Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Washington, July 17 , 2009

Kucinich Amendment Allows States to Seek a Federal Waiver

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today created an opening for the single payer health care movement by winning adoption of an amendment which eliminates a federal barrier to states choosing to enact single payer health plans. The amendment won on a bipartisan basis during lengthy committee action on HR 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act.

“Although the amendment does not create a single payer health care system, it removes a major obstacle for any state that wishes to pursue the single payer option. This amendment builds on the momentum of the national movement for single payer health care,” said Kucinich.

Bernie Sanders: Public Healthcare Plan

Dandelion Salad

SenatorSanders
July 14, 2009

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Bernie Sanders: Public Healthcare Plan “, posted with vodpod

h/t: Jack Smith

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Healthcare: Change the Debate Support a Real Public Option + Urgent by Dennis Kucinich

Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

Wendell Potter: They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors

Kucinich Opening Statement to Committee on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act

Healthcare: Change the Debate Support a Real Public Option + Urgent by Dennis Kucinich

Dandelion Salad

by Dennis Kucinich
kucinich.us
Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Dear Friends,

In mid-May, in an effort to reach consensus, President Obama secured a deal with the health insurance companies to trim 1.5% of their costs each year for ten years saving a total of $2 trillion dollars, which would be reprogrammed into healthcare. Just two days after the announcement at the White House the insurance companies reneged on the deal which was designed to protect and increase their revenue at least 35% The insurance companies reneged on the deal because they refuse any restraint on increasing premiums, copays and deductibles – core to their profits. No wonder a recent USA Today poll found that only four percent of Americans trust insurance companies. This is within the margin of error, which means it is possible that NO ONE TRUSTS insurance companies.

Then why does Congress trust the insurance companies? Yesterday HR 3200 “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” a 1000 page bill was delivered to members. The title of the bill raises a question: “Affordable” for whom?.

Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

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http://www.fair.org

Add your name below to FAIR’s petition

Reforming the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system is a major issue in the news these days. The goal of the reform efforts, we’re told, is to expand coverage to the uninsured and to reduce costs. But what many experts and citizens see as the most sensible solution to these problems is kept out of the discussion by the corporate media.

Single-payer national health insurance is a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors). Single-payer is favored by a majority of Americans and physicians, according to recent polls (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09, Annals of Internal Medicine, 4/1/08).

Yet a recent study by FAIR found that of hundreds of stories about healthcare in major outlets earlier this year, only five stories included the views of advocates of single-payer–none of which appeared on the TV networks. In May, news coverage of the arrests of single-payer advocates showed that practically the only way to get single-payer mentioned in the corporate media is to get thrown out of Senate hearings.

Let’s send a message to the networks: The insurance lobbies and many politicians don’t want to talk about single-payer. But that makes it all the more important that the media do. Sign our petition to ABC, CBS and NBC, demanding that single-payer be a part of their coverage of the healthcare debate. Add your name below to lend your voice to this effort to broaden the debate over the broken U.S. healthcare system.

Take Action: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

***

ABC Censors Obama’s Longtime Doctor

fairnessandaccuracy
July 16, 2009

Dr. David Scheiner speaks out about how he was mysteriously uninvited from ABC’s recent healthcare forum. Sign the petition at fair.org to demand that TV networks to stop censoring the debate on healthcare!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “ABC Censors Obama’s Longtime Doctor“, posted with vodpod

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Wendell Potter: They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors

Kucinich Opening Statement to Committee on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act

Wendell Potter: They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
July 16, 2009

“They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Insurance Exec Turned Whistleblower Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry

As the debate over healthcare reform intensifies on Capitol Hill, we spend the hour with a former top insurance executive who’s now exposing the industry’s dirty secrets. Wendell Potter once served as the head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies. We speak to Potter about his own transformation from industry mouthpiece to whistleblower, the healthcare industry’s extensive PR and lobbying machine, the campaign to discredit Michael Moore’s film Sicko, and the insurance industry’s most pressing task: the fight against a public option, let alone a single-payer system. [includes rush transcript]

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video and transcript: “They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Insurance Exec Turned Whistleblower Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry

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Kucinich Opening Statement to Committee on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act

Bill Moyers Journal: Health Care Reform + Wendell Potter (must-see)

Kucinich Opening Statement to Committee on America’s Affordable Health Choices Act

Dandelion Salad

Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Washington, Jul 15, 2009

Congressman Dennis Kucinich D-OH today made the following statement after the Education and Labor Committee began its markup process of HR 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Education and Labor Committee is one of three House committees involved in examining the bill.

“Medicine in the U.S. is a profit driven market commodity distributed according to the ability to pay rather than a basic human right distributed as a public service according medical need. No wonder that the United States ranks 47th in life expectancy and 23rd in infant mortality. In this profit driven, private insurance based system there are over 1400 manage care organizations and 5000 health insurance plans. We have the most expensive health care system in the world – over 16% of our GDP. Two point four trillion dollars a year goes to health spending and 1 out of every 3 dollars go to the activities of the for-profit system- for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork. Yet 47 million people remain uninsured and another 50 million are underinsured. I submit that there is a direct relationship between the for-profit health care system and the uninsured and the underinsured.

Dennis Kucinich: People Love Insurance Companies! Right???

Dandelion Salad

Kucinich4prez
July 20, 2009

Bill Moyers Journal: Health Care Reform + Wendell Potter (must-see)

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Replaced videos May 13, 2013

Bill Moyers Journal
July 10, 2009

Health Care Reform

Bill Moyers looks at the influence of money and lobbying on health care reform efforts in Washington, D.C.

Practically On the Table by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
July 10, 2009

A few days ago, a citizen asked the progressive legislator from California, Congressman Henry Waxman why he took his name off the list of about Eighty House sponsors of single-payer health insurance? Mr. Waxman replied: “it [H.R. 676] isn’t going to happen.”

In early January and last year, Americans who believe in Presidential accountability for constitutional, statutory and treaty violations asked Democrats in Congress—“If not impeachment, why not at least a resolution of censure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?” The uniform reply was “It’s not practical.”

These lawmakers—Democrats all, who are the majority in Congress and who agree with these questioners—keep saying “It’s not going to happen” or “It’s not practical.”

“It’s just not practical” to provide a federal minimum wage equal to that in 1968, inflation adjusted, which would be $10 an hour.

Punk Patriot: Health Care + Bernie Sanders Talks About Healthcare Reform + Media Are Sicko

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Updated: added a petition and videos

trichenosis
July 09, 2009

The Insurance and Pharmaceutical industry are joining with the Democrats and Republicans, to fuck us all over.

http://punkpatriot.blogspot.com
http://sanders.senate.gov
http://www.singlepayeraction.org
http://www.congress.org

John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure + Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
7/2/09

John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure, Blasts US Lawmakers for Being “in Bed with Powerful Interests” and Neglecting “Their Own People’s Basic Human Rights”

We play an excerpt of an extended interview with Australian investigative journalist, John Pilger. Speaking about the US healthcare system, Pilger says, “What is it about US legislators that they appear to be so in bed with such powerful interests, such as the insurance companies, that they can’t represent their own people’s needs, their own people’s basic human rights.” [includes rush transcript]

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Guest:

John Pilger, investigative journalist. He is speaking Saturday, July 4th, at the Socialism 2009 conference being held at the Women’s Building in San Francisco.

via John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure, Blasts US Lawmakers for Being “in Bed with Powerful Interests” and Neglecting “Their Own People’s Basic Human Rights”

Deadly Reasons to Oust Incumbents in 2010 By Ed Ciaccio

Buzz it up on Buzzflash

by Ed Ciaccio
Dandelion Salad
Featured Writer
June 26, 2009

There may be many reasons to vote against an incumbent, but surely, failing to prevent thousands of avoidable, unnecessary deaths must be the strongest reason.

As a result of two recent Congressional votes, more Americans, Iraqis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis will continue to die or suffer unnecessarily, most of which could have been avoided if our members of Congress did their sworn duty instead of betraying us as well as the civilians in those three victimized countries.

Just this past week, members of Congress again had the opportunity to stop the Bush/Obama wars of aggression/occupation for resources and hegemony in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and, as in so many instances since 2002, they failed miserably.

Obama’s Emerging Legacy: Wars, Bankers and For-Profit Healthcare by Glen Ford

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by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
June 24, 2009

“The ‘Obama Effect’ has led to the near-total collapse of the Left.”

As of this writing, the Progressives for Obama website still exists, a relic of Left delusion that should have died of embarrassment months ago. Barack Obama has, indeed, grown in the presidency – but not into the FDR-like figure of his leftish supporters’ imaginations. Nor has his presence in the Oval Office served to spur Blacks and progressives to dramatic action, creating the “push” that Left Obamites had predicted would allow their champion to act on his more “liberal” instincts. Quite the contrary. The “Obama Effect” has led to the near-total collapse of the Left– both its white and Black wings – and made the nation safe for rule by finance capital and militarists.

The military, finance capital and healthcare corporations (insurers are a branch of finance capital) are winning every important battle because, on fundamental issues, President Obama is on their side. It is he who crushed the anti-war bloc in the US. House; who silenced and marginalized single payer advocates, while fawning over health profiteers; who engineered the greatest transfer of wealth in human history to bankers, leaving them free to once again ruin themselves and the rest of us.

So let us give President Obama his due. He not only smashed the Left opposition, he humiliated them.

[…]

via Obama’s Emerging Legacy: Wars, Bankers and For-Profit Healthcare | Black Agenda Report

h/t: Bruce Gagnon

see

Interview with Ralph Nader on GM and Single Payer Healthcare

This Is What The Democrats Wrought by Bruce Gagnon

US reneges on Iraq withdrawal promises

Dr. Michael Hudson: Is this the end financially of the American empire?

Barack Obama on Dandelion Salad

Meet the new boss the same as the old boss