You wouldn't know it listening to the corporate media or U.S. politicians, but according to a Washington Post/ABC News Poll, a growing majority of Americans support the "public option" (57%) and over half (51%) support the public option over "bipartisan" support, even if the Democrats have to do it without any GOP support!
What's really amazing is that the public is supporting the "public option" even after months of anti-reform "Tea Party" rallies and a massive misinformation campaign by the insurance lobby.
Why isn't Obama pushing what the American people want, and he campaigned for??
Once again, the U.S. Insurance Inc. Cartel is fighting REAL "healthcare reform" especially universal public healthcare or even a choice of a public health insurance plan. The Obama administration started out trying to get big PHARMA and the Insurance Companies on board by making promises to them to protect their profits and minimize any public option, but now that they are not getting their way they are balking at their deal with the White House.
The problem? The insurance companies want Congress to mandate (require) everyone to buy their private plans, and want heavy fines on those who do not buy their plans. They thought they would be getting 40 million new customers out of this "reform." Now that the Senate has reduced the fines so that young healthy people would still save money by paying the fine rather than paying expensive premiums to the insurance companies, the insurance companies are waging a campaign to STOP the healthcare reform train in its tracks. They are already threatening to raise premiums on everyone!
By doing so, the insurance companies have handed Congress and the Obama administration an excellent weapon to use against them and push for a public health care plan! If the insurance companies are going to jack up healthcare premiums, then how can any healthcare reform NOT offer people the choice of a less expensive public insurance plan?
While opponents want people to FEAR a public insurance plan, they should be fearing the private insurance cartel which is denying healthcare to millions of Americans! Sick for Profit
The insurance companies are ratcheting up their propaganda campaign against a single-payer universal public insurance program, or even a public option in the healthcare "reform" being debated in Congress.
Everyone should read and watch what former insurance company insider Wendell Porter says about the lies of the insurance companies:
The Big Med lobby is fighting hard against a single-payer universal health insurance program, and they are even trying to kill Obama's proposed public health insurance option in the "healthcare reform" being debated in Congress. The Big Med industry has successfully killed any discussion of the single-payer option in the current debates in Congress. Sen. Max Bacchus, Chair of the Sen. Finance Committee, is chairing a committee to discuss healthcare "reform" that does not include ONE advocate for single-payer health insurance!
If we are going to have REAL healthcare "reform" we need to organize and get active NOW! Once again, the healthcare industry is KILLING serious healthcare reform, and is killing the ONLY option that will provide universal healthcare for every American, without all the cost and waste of the private insurance industry.
Get Active, Get Involved, Contact your Representatives and ask them to support the National Universal Healthcare Bill HR 676!
These groups are working for you, and need your support:
You may have seen the ad by the "Conservatives for Patients' Rights" (CPR). The ad is filled with lies. Rick Scott, the sponsor of the CPR ads, is the discredited owner of Columbia/HCA, of the the largest private health care companies in the world. In 1997, his board of directors removed him during the largest health care fraud scandal in the U.S. The company was forced to pay $1.7 billion in fines for overbilling state and federal government health plans.
The ad features the former president of the Canadian Medical Association (the Canadian version of the AMA) who is another opponent of public health care and an advocate of private for profit health insurance. Dr. Day, whose private surgical clinic in Canada is under investigation by the B.C. govenment for illegal billing, does NOT represent the values of Canadians or the views of most doctors in Canada.
(One of the leading crusaders for private insurance and against public single-payer insurance in Canada, Dr. Jacques Chaoulli had a patient DIE in the waiting room of one of his clinics because Dr. Chaoulli withheld cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a basic procedure than any public health facility would have administered to save a patient's life!)
Don't belive the LIES of the for profit private health insurance industry!
Here's a great video from the Democratic Socialists of America demonstrating the need for a SINGLE-PAYER health insurance program in the United States:
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Media Black-Out of Single-Payer Health Insurance Despite the popular support of a "single-payer" healthcare program, the U.S. media, as well as the Obama Administration and Congress, are ignoring the best plan to "reform" healthcare and insure every American. --- Not only do private insurance companies oppose a single-payer national public health insurance program, they do not want to compete against any government/public health insurance plan! While Obama is not going to propose a single-payer plan, his plan would offer the option of "Medicare" for anyone who wants it. The Companies are trying to kill that part of his plan. Dean Baker explains why on Common Dreams: If Private Insurers Compete With Govenment, They'll Lose
Here's what Democrats SHOULD argue--we want people to have the option to CHOOSE if they want to pay out the ass for a private insurance plan, which will give them less for their money, or a PUBLIC healthcare plan (Medicare) which will cost less and give them more for their money. If Republicans are really for letting people CHOOSE their healthcare plan, they cannot refuse!
This is BAD news folks! The Obama administration has taken the best, most popular universal health insurance plan (single-payer) OFF the table! Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s nomineee for HHS Sec., has strong ties to the “healthcare” industry, including the insurance companies. They do not want the single-payer ("Medicare for All") alternative to even be considered! It looks like Obama (along with Sen. Edward Kennedy) is going to push the FAILED Massachusetts plan.
But not paying taxes may be the least of the problems with Daschel. He also earned more than $200,000 from the health care industry in the past two years, and is part of a K-Street Law firm that lobbies for the health care industry! Why would Obama pick someone who is tied to the health/insurance industry to regulate and reform that industry?
Some progressives saw the writing on the wall back when Obama nominated Daschel: Matt Tabbai: The Whore Factor: "When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate.
But in picking Daschle — who as an adviser to the K Street law firm Alston and Bird has spent the last four years burning up the sheets with the nation's fattest insurance and pharmaceutical interests — Obama is essentially announcing that he has no intention of seriously reforming the health care industry. . ."
"Obama supporters argue that Obama needs someone like Daschle, with credibility within the health care industry, in order to achieve real reform. That's the standard explanation for most of what Obama does (he's only courting the establishment in order to change it), and though highly skeptical, I'm personally willing to withhold judgment until the actual evidence is available regarding what Obama actually does.
But there's no need to withhold judgment on Daschle himself. He embodies everything that is sleazy, sickly, and soul-less about Washington. It's probably impossible for Obama to fill his cabinet with individuals entirely free of Beltway filth -- it's extremely rare to get anywhere near that system without being infected by it -- but Daschle oozes Beltway slime from every pore."
The Obama administration is not getting off to a great start when it comes to "CHANGING" Washington... (See Laura Flanders, Its Not the Lobbying--It's the Agreeing)
If we want REAL health care reform, and Universal Health Insurance, we are going to have to mobilize from the grassroots and demand it!
Nataline Sarkisyan Dies After CIGNA Refused Transplant The 17 year Old from Glendale, CA, died because her insurer, Cigna Health Care, refused to pay for her liver transplant, which the company called "too experimental," even though Doctors at the UCLA Medial Center sent a letter urging CIGNA to review its decision. A few hours after CIGNA reversed its decision, Nataline died. In the U.S., even if you have "health insurance," you may not get health care that could save your life!
I just saw Michael Moore's new movie SiCKO and highly recommend, no I insist, that everyone sees this important movie (is it showing at Studio on the Squre in Memphis). The film, one of Moore's best, does a good job of showing the human tragedies caused by the American for profit health care system and the need for a single-payer universal health insurance system like Canada, Great Britain, France, even Cuba have. None of these systems are perfect, but it clearly all of these countries do a better job of providing healthcare for ALL of their citizens and keeping them heathier than the U.S. does. Moore actually visits these countries and shows real examples to disprove the right-wing propaganda about the "horrors" of "socialized medicine." Even in Canada and Europe, "conservatives" even embrace the "socialist" view that health care is a HUMAN RIGHT for all, not a commodity to be rationed based on ability to pay. The culprits in the U.S. are the profit hungry insurance campanies, drug companies, and the American Medical Association. My partner, who has no health insurnace since he is unemployed, and I came away from the movie wanting more than ever to leave the U.S. and move to Canada, or a European country, or even Cuba. But Moore's main message is that we, the people, in a Democracy must rise up and demand health care for all before profits, as people have done in these other countries. People, all of us, must get politically active and organize to change the system. We have to stand up to the healthcare-indusrial complex. To get involved and take action, go to SickCure.org or check out the Physicians for a National Health Program. Also, read this article on Health Care For All by the Democratic Socialists of America
Finally, universal health care is gaining support, according to this article in the Washington Post. Unlike most advanced democratic societies, the United States lacks a single-payer universal health insurance program, instead it forces individuals and employers to pay increasingly higher premiums to private insurance companies. As a result, the U.S. spends more money and provides less health insurance for its citizens, thanks to the greed and lies of the insurance companies. But it is no longer communist hippies in the U.S. calling for a universal, single-payer, health insurance system. Doctors (see Physicians for a National Health Care Program, family advocates (see Families USA and even more and more businesses are organizing to get REAL health care reform in the United States--a single-payer public universal health insurance program. For more information see the Democratic Socialists of America pamphlet debunking conservative lies and scare tactics, and makeing the case for Health Care for All
Former Head of Joint Cheifs says the military is ready to accept homosexuals" John Shalikashvili, a "respected" former chair of the Joint Chiefs has come out publicly to support allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military. Citing the change in public opinion, which now supports allowing gays to serve in the military, and a recent Zogby Poll of soldiers in the military, he says the military should be able to move toward allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. Military. The Zogby poll of 545 U.S. soliders found that 3/4 of the soldiers felt comfortable around gays. While 37 percent were still opposed to allowing gays to serve openly, 26 percent support allowing them to serve openly and 37 percent were neutral or had no opinion. Of those who knew gays were in their unit, 2/3 said it did not hurt morale. So much for the main anti-gay wing nut argument for discriminating against gays in the military. While Clinton should have kept his campaign promise and signed an executive order lifting the ban, the public and the military were not ready back in 1993 for the dramatic change. Now they are. Clinton was ahead of the times, as he was on universal health insurance. It looks like we may get both in the next decade, and catch up to the majority of "advanced democratic" countries that have universal health insurance and the growing number (Britain, Israel, etc.) who allow gays to serve in their military. Not that I would encourage gays to join the military and promote U.S. imperialism, but I support equal rights and oppose discrimination in any government institution.
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