Tomasky writes: "The Democrats should see an adverse decision as a chance to put the other guys - the Republicans in Congress, Romney, and the court's ideological majority - on the defensive."
The Supreme Court's decision regarding President Obama's healthcare law could have a profound impact on his campaign. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Democrats Should Come Out Swinging Against the Court
24 June 12
If the Supreme Court overturns the health-care law, Democrats will be tempted to sulk and feel sorry for themselves. But that's the last thing they should do.
et's say the court overturns the mandate by a typical 5-4 vote, but leaves the rest of the law intact. What must the Democrats do? The main thing is all about tone. I can just picture already what I fear I will see: Obama coming out to a press conference with his head down, speaking in a dour monotone, still trying to point out the silver linings but in a way that sends the message to anyone listening that he's really apologizing for them, and muttering that he is now "calling on the Congress to act" (this has become my least favorite Obama phrase) and get busy working on one of the alternative approaches that will still keep the law alive - which is nothing more than a punchline, really, because everybody knows Congress isn't lifting a finger.
No, a thousand times no! He needs to stand up there and get mad. The law may be unpopular, but he and the Democrats are stuck with it, and being stuck with it, they need to stick by it. Almost never before in American history has a Supreme Court taken a law duly passed by the people's representatives and in just two years' time invalidated it. If that isn't legislating from the bench, what is? Mr. Cool needs to get Hot. Against unanimous and ferocious opposition, and in the face of blatant lies about what this bill would and would not do, he and the Democrats came up with a way for people with cancer and diabetes and what have you to get the treatment they need and not be either turned away or gouged. He's proud of that, he ought to say, and by God, he's going to fight for it. That provision of the law is wildly popular - 85 percent supported that, in a late-March New York Times survey. If you can't play offense with 85 percent of the people behind you, I give up.
He should also go right at Mitt Romney, on two points. First, Romney flatly opposes coverage for all people with preexisting conditions. He backs care only for those who have had "continuous coverage," and not for people whose insurance had lapsed at any point during their illness. So Romney is against something 85 percent of Americans support. I am sadly confident that you did not know that. Good work, Democrats.
Second: when Romney was governor, he supported - insisted on - exactly the same provision that the court will have just struck down. The people of Massachusetts were forced to buy insurance. They live under that regime today, thanks to Governor Romney. And guess what? They like it - 62 percent approved of the law, in a poll from earlier this year. And now, to please far-right interests putting hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign, he would deny the people of the country the one good thing he did for the people of Massachusetts as their governor.
Now we come to the court itself. Far be it from me to second-guess Jeff Shesol, who wrote in Newsweek that Obama should not take on the court. But a brand-new poll by Hart Research for the Alliance for Justice suggests that with the right approach, the court can be made an issue. In the case that I suggested at the top of this column - a 5-4 decision along the usual lines - 69 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents agreed that "they would believe that the justices based their decisions more on their own political views than on their interpretation of the law and Constitution." Fifty-seven is not an overwhelming majority. But it's a majority nonetheless, and if Democrats aren't afraid to make this case strongly, they can turn it into an even bigger one.
And finally: blow that stupid broccoli analogy out of the water. Need to know how, Democrats? Here: read me on it.
In sum, the Democrats should see an adverse decision as a chance to put the other guys - the Republicans in Congress, Romney, and the court's ideological majority - on the defensive. It is what Republicans would do; they'd bay endlessly about an "out of control" court and all the rest. It's one of the key psychological differences between conservatives and liberals. When conservatives suffer a political setback, they prowl the terrain like lions, looking for a few necks to bite. When liberals suffer one, they ball up like kittens and ask themselves, "Oh, gee, what did we do wrong?"
That impulse, not any particular talking point, has been the whole problem on this health-care debate to begin with. As it is on so many matters. Maybe John Roberts and his little quartet of sea-green incorruptibles will finally get it through their heads.
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It creates the illusion of addressing a problem it doesn't touch, by forcing people to purchase coverage that will almost certainly be unhellful but lucrative for a certain class of massive campaign contributors.
Hypocrites all!!!
So....
Ditto!
This Bill, Is a crucial first step towards universal healthcare, and I'll be damned if this hope is taken away from the people!
Don't let the bastards win Mr. President WE are counting on you!
Insurance companies provided default insurance on every mortgage!!!!!an d have already paid the Banks Billions!
Obama's legislation first out the door, was a gift to the insurance lobby, a real president who cared about the nation would have addressed two real and existing problems first, the Foreclosure epedemic and the Unemployment! then the healthcare bill with the single payer option!
Obama sold us out there also! everything this clown has done has been for someone other then us!!!!!!!!!!
Obama pushed through what he could get...because the Repugs were making sure that thier friends in th einsurance world will continue to benefit.
Put the blame where is belongs...ON THE RIGHT
Speaking as an attorney who's represented insurance companies as well as positions in opposition, know that insurance companies fear the Court striking down the mandate provision while upholding other provisions of the so-called Obama health care bill. It's to their benefit to see the mandate preserved or the who bill defeated.
The most humane and cost effective health care reform would, indeed, be a Medicare For All universal single payer plan. Anyone who's not swallowed the poison pill of Right Wing deception could confirm such reality with even elementary research. Though we must support Obama this time around, in the future we must demand such intellectual and moral giants as Bernie Sanders for President and our for future leaders.
We must also demand Public Financing of elections to remove the assault on democracy via Citizens for All.
It merely hands out tax money to insurers without addressing the problem.
A few things to address:
* Decrease the cost of health care (e.g. allow Medicare, Medicaid and VA to get bargain prices on medications; shorten the duration of IP protection for drugs...)
* Provide a real single payer health care; there would still be room for private insurance companies to provide additional comfort services for the people who want complementary coverage.
I hope that the Democratic base (not the Democratic party which is hopeless in my mind) would use a rejection of the law as political aikido to spark a pushback for single payer healthcare which is demonstrably the only workable solution for the health coverage issue.
As a side note, if corporations really are people, how about they have to buy coverage as well?
Even if one were to exclude the DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) in the Senate, there were still enough Dem votes to pass a single-payer health care Bill in which the govt, rather than private for-profit insurance companies, would've managed the system as they do with Medicare & Medicaid. Am I correct or not in my assumption here?
In effect, the head honcho here, Barack Obama, on his own & to satisfy his corporate partners in crime, decided not to go with the govt-managed single-payer health care option. Again, could someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.
In effect, Barack Obama has passed a so-called health care reform Bill to be managed by private for-profit health care insurance corps without any cap on what they can charge their clients who, by law, are required to buy health insurance from them. Am I correct in this assumption?
This sounds so much like TARP where we gave the banking & investment institutions hundreds of Billions of dollars without any rules, regulations or restrictions & look at where we're at today.
If medicare was extended to all or single payer universal health care were not even disallowed at the bargaining table....there would have arose no supreme court viable challenge...how could they challenge medicare in existence for forty years....they could not and would have refused to hear a challenge..
I will vote for Obama but hold my nose while doing so....obamacare .....very close to a corporate hand out with some but not a bunch of reforms.
We voted for real change not the best change money could buy change.
If there was a real thing to fight for a real thing of change(which is what is needed) americans would probably fight for it and against the republicans.
A soso hum drum thing that like as not extends the status quo.....not so much.
Every red dog compromising democrat up for reelection lost in 2010....Obama just now seems to be seeing the message in that. To little to late for many independents I assume.
You cannot lead by following the time of the day political poll....LIke as not they vote for someone who though they may loose or be wrong...stands for something.
Letting single payer into this debate may have made that something.
He did not...he suffers and may or may not reelect.
I will vote for him..but firmly hold my nose.
I wanted single-payer or the public option but it was clear the votes were NEVER going to be there. The Congress didn't want to pass it no matter what President Obama did or didn't do.
And to be blunt the ACA is probably the best healthcare reform bill that we are going to see for years, if not decades. The problem is that the public option, Medicare for all, or single-payer are nonstarters with maybe perhaps 30-40% of the public.
The problem here is that you have a large enough segment of society who resents the idea of "people getting something for nothing" or that "only those people" would benefit from single-payer or Medicare for all that it will never pass in the short to medium term. Those people are the biggest obstacles and enough of them vote to ensure that nothing is ever done with healthcare reform.
The bottom line is that Americans' attitude toward government and government programs, especially social programs, are going to have to change significantly.
I believe that there was more than enough votes in the House to pass a govt managed single-payer health care Bill, but that the main problem was the vote in the Senate where the Republicans always held a filibuster threat over the Democratic-cont rolled Senate.
The Democrats succeeded in establishing what was called reconciliation as the basis for voting on their health care reform Bill which only required a simple majority of 51 votes to pass it. It is my strong belief that with only a 51 vote majority to pass a health care reform Bill and with the Democrats having, at the time, 59 votes in the Senate, even if you were to discount those DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) who were against a govt-managed single-payer health care system, there was at least 51 Democratic votes that would have passed a govt-managed single-payer health care Bill if Obama would have backed it up. But Obama, like the Public Option, had refused to consider the single-payer health care option.
So, please someone, tell me that I'm not wrong in my assumptions here, that if Obama was willing to back up a govt-managed single-payer health care Bill, that the Senate would have passed it with a simple 51-vote majority.
Monday, June 25, 2012
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney attracting 48% of the vote, while President Obama earns 43%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided.
Romney’s support includes 41% who are certain they will vote for him and seven percent (7%) who are likely to vote for him but could still change their minds. For Obama, those numbers are 35% certain and eight percent (8%) likely.
Every day Obama is dropping in the real polls!
I'm not sure 4 years under Romney won't actually turn a good number of Republicans! But point is, Obama lied to America and the world and he should not be rewarded with another term in office for that. When are politicians ever going to be held accountable to the electorate?
That being said, however, I wonder how many you forget Congress and its role. I wonder how many of you forget the powerful lobbies out there opposed to any significant change. You act like President Obama can magically make them disappear.
Why, Rain-man (Rain-lady?) it's simple. The votes we needed in House and Senate gain a single payer plan were all safe in the pockets of Corporate America.
the USG
As for the argument so often stated that the USG is not competent enough to manage a single payer system, I say Baldersash! I am retired military w/Medicare, and it's as nearly a perfectly run system as one could wish or imagine---all run by the USG at a fraction of the cost of commercial insurance!
For those who think you don't want single payer Obamacare, you're crazy as hell! Think again. Vote Obama in and vote out al of the blue dog democrats and GOP congressmen and we'll have it!
Claiming that the government cannot manage something is pure propaganda.
How is the military managed? It is not corporate yet.
And I'll add if Mitty is elected, I sure hope Kochs do not become Kings Hitler
the King of 0 HAS order US citizens killed.
the King of 0 continues 100%+ of bushco war on terruh.
sigh...sorry, he IS a king.
He doesn't need to be declared King a Fascist dictatorship is sufficient. We have that now as Paulrevere rightly points out below!
But one of the biggest fools is Hatch (R) from Utah! this fool doesn't even know he is a fool!
If Romney wins we get war, and even more R SCOTUS,more of the same transfer of wealth to the rich. It will be far worse--get your vote for the D even if only the better of the not my fav.
From Drone attacks to Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen to providing arms to Egypt and Syrian Rebels to a planned invasion of Iran through Israel!
Think, both Romney and Obama will do the same thing, The Industrial War Complex needs an excuse for their budget, and the best way is through using the weapons and Bombs we have…
The reason why we won't get any significant healthcare reform is that you have a large enough minority that resents the idea of "people getting something for nothing". This minority believes that "only those people" would benefit at their expense.
The bottom line is that, if the US is ever to adopt national healthcare, single-payer, Medicare for All, or the public option, American attitudes toward the government, especially toward social programs, are going to have to have to significantly change. As it is now a significant minority, if not an outright majority, resents any and all social programs and think they all enable, promote, and reward irresponsible and pathological behavior. Until these opinions change any form of national healthcare is likely to be a nonstarter politically.
You are absolutely correct! Americans have little or no sense of the Common Good and until that changes, it will be an uphill battle to achieve single payer.
1) It's not my fault that other people make irresponsible choices with their money.
2) Were it not for their spending money on cable TV and cell phones, the uninsured would be able to afford coverage.
3) Government-run healthcare would result in me being taxed at very high rates to support a program that would benefit only the poor and lazy.
4) The Government would make sure I never saw my doctor, while letting the woman on welfare with five kids go ahead of me.
5) Life isn't fair.
6) I planned responsibly, so why can't other people?
7) The uninsured can go to the emergency room and not have to pay.
8) People shouldn't expect the government to take care of them.
9) I don't think people should be getting something for nothing, while I have to pay.
The bottom line is that you have a significant minority, if not an outright majority, of people who honestly resents the idea of someone "getting something for nothing". This group of people opposes any form of national healthcare because "they don't want to support anyone who doesn't want to work" and so forth. They view it as a giveaway program that rewards/enables irresponsible choices.
It's obvious that they don't understand the role of government in their lives, with the most blatant declaration being the signs that read, "GET YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE"!
It always amazes me that people who comprise the Tea Party are willing to get out to demonstrate, work for the vote, etc. - yet they refuse to actually EDUCATE THEMSELVES as to the reality of the political world in which they are, basically, useful tools for the Republican'ts. The only fun thing about it is watching the Republican't party being amazed at what they have wrought, and how they are unable to resist being pulled far to the right by 'their' Tea Partiers!
The bottom line is that a majority of people in our society, including many liberals, thinks that anyone receiving government help is a bum. And there is a significant minority, if not a narrow majority, of Americans who honestly believes that the "uninsured" could get insurance if they only didn't "waste their money on cell phones and cable TV."
Inherent in many Americans is the deep resentment of anyone "getting something for nothing". And many Americans honestly think that, were it not for poor spending choices, the poor could get insurance.
FOX led the distraction from things like T.R. Reid's "The Healing of America: The Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care", while people like Dr. Margaret Flowers were prevented from speaking in the congressional hearings. See Moyers interviews with her or Wendell Potter (a health insurance executive sickened by what he saw his industry doing to make obscene profits). The rest of the M$M dummied up and played back the later, distorted, polls. Why wouldn’t those polls show lower support, it was not what people originally wanted, like basic Medicare for all. Many of us would prefer basic Medicare for All (more like what the original polls were asking about) than the already compromised Medicare Advantage add ons that were supposed to save 5% the first year, but ended up costing 20% more because of the private insurance middlemen that weaseled in, and haven't left long after that experiment failed. Remember the Medicare Part-D snafus where druggists threw the rules out to save people?
"That", BobbyLip is the problem with the entire Democratic Party of the United States of America!. We Democrats have never seen a contentious issue that we can't rollover and play dead over! o
I will not vote for Obama out of choice ... I will vote for him out of necessity! The thought of Romney's Judicial Advisor, Robert Bork, having a say in who gets nominated for Federal Judgeships over the next four years is the sort of stuff that causes nightmares ... However, if he has his way, these nightmares will be real and they will persist for thirty years or more!
If the mandate is overturned at the federal level, it leaves the states needing to set up exchanges, which will fail to function unless there are adequate subsidies (Medicare Part B is voluntary and has 95% coverage, but is 3/4 subsidized) or each state will pass it's own mandate, like Massachusetts to not have it's individual market fail.
For all the concern about free riders, the real issue is lowering average cost by forcing low cost folks into the system-- tax subsidies work just as well, or rate setting and limiting profit margins of insurers.
There's alot of good in the ACA, and removing the mandate would keep all of that, while removing the pay-off to the industry for not opposing health care reform initially.
It would be the bill Candidate Obama had campaigned on (less the public option, but that is the trade in the Wyden plan-- allow the private exchanges into Medicare in exchange for allowing a single payer public plan to the under 65 group).
The appropriate response for striking the mandate while leaving the ACA intact would be to thank the conservatives for scuttling their only serious health policy option, removing the payoff to the insurance industry, and then moving on.
.
Omigawd! The private insurers running Medicare Advantage plans are already costing taxpayers an estimated 13 percent more than traditional fee-for0service Medicare.
As to the public option--It won't solve our raging costs problem and it will perpetuate our inequitable multi-tiered system, See Q&A with David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program:
http://www.pnhp.org/campaign/materials/Refuting%20the%20Public%20Option.pdf
What we have cost far too much and provides very uneven coverage.
For some general background, Check out the Unnatural Causes series at http://fora.tv/series/Unnatural_Causes?gclid=CJfEh9aK7LACFSUbQgodaFXpJg. I've just finished watching the first episode "In Sickness and Wealth." It seems a good way to reset the Etch-A-Sketch the M$M cluttered up.
Obama? You must be joking, son.
If a guarantee of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is to mean anything, then universal health care for all has to be law of the land. It's so logical from a economic, military and social cohesion point of view. Ike didn't build the Interstate highway system for economic/indust rial reasons only. He lived through WWII. He knew that good solid roads allow for Sherman tanks to operate efficiently. So too, an unhealthy nation is easily defeated in a battle.
The current 'enemy' of the people in the form of the plutocracy run GOP is a paper tiger. What are a mere 3.2 million people going to do when 316,800,000 hungry, angry, desperate, feed up people come after them?
Everyone has skin in this game, but it's not a game, is it? It's real and it's now.
PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS TO GO FULL OUT ATTACKING THESE EVIL, ANTI-AMERICAN FORCES. HE HAS TO GET ANGRY AND CUT THEM OFF AT THE KNEES; GROW SOME, LET THEM HANG FREE AND PROUD, AND LET HISTORY TAKE CARE OF TAKING NAMES.
The Government will not pay the premiums!
In short it will be business as usual and they will still deny coverage for claims which they are notorious for... they have a million pat excuses to deny claims!And there will be no exception under this law!
You have medicare, it is one of the best systems currently, but that is also set to be changed!
It's time to stop bellowing my country right or wrong and to get what we as a nation are entitled too!!!! Health Care is a natural right of birth! It should carry NO Charge or premium!
DID YOU READ THE ENTIRE BILL?
DID YOU TAKE NOTES?
I DID .. and within the mechanisms to make Obama-care work .. it takes over the entire health-care industry.
Considering the increase of National Debt, and the INCREASE in everyone's Health care costs with just the passing of the bill ... THIS OBAMA-CARE BILL HAS TO DIE!~
Let it be rewritten, funded, and broken up into a dozen bills... but right now .. it stinks to high heaven!
Ery putting yourself in the shoes of someone sick, out of work, and even homeless, should we allow you to die because you have no means to pay a premium!
Eveb for You I would not allow that to happen!
but his friends in the Insurance business lobbied him to drop that requirement, and like the good puppet, he did what they wanted!
What does the Democratic Party Stand For?
What is their Vision for America?
Democrats are the 'React to the Whacked Out Republicans' Party. The 'We're Not Them, So Vote For Us' Party.
The Democrats are the Reactionary Party dancing to the Republican's Tune for 30 years.
And so, we are now being Non-Governed by two Very Dysfunctional Parties operating on behalf of Corporate Lobbies.
This IS the outcome of the Republican's long-made, sophistic umbrella talking-point demand for evermore 'Smaller Government' as their carrot-on-the-s tick road to national prosperity and eternal bliss for 'All'...
Less and Less Government through endless deregulation and tax loophole schemes, and the for-profit Corporate contracting of almost all Government Functions on behalf of Corporation Want and Greed IS the underlying causation of the current economic catastrophe. Yet, millions of voters still go for it even in the face of heaps and piles of data and a mountain of in your face, stark raving reality to the contrary.
Its LONG been time for Democrats to put forth a unifying, hearts and minds capturing NEW VISION to counter the Republican's nonsensical 'Less and Less Government' (of the People) as the Road to greater 'Freedom' and 'Liberty' bullcrap.
Time for Democrats to build the NEW ROAD for Republicans to dance on and react to.
But they won't. What we have now IS the game they play with the Republicans and that's that it seems.
The hopes of Americans are not being realized because Republicans are indeed very actively Regressive AND clever as servants of the Super Wealthy Global Corporate Class. They figured out how to help their wealthy benefactors gain control of most Media Enterprises in America, thus giving them control over most of the pipelines for Speech and most of the so-called Free Press. They figured out how to open the floodgates of Corporate money into their coffers and how to divide Americans along narrow, often straw man fault lines and pit us against each other over them well enough to peel off more than enough voter 'allies' to hand them vast political power on all levels of Government while focusing that power on their mostly single minded drive to shrink Government as much as possible from the Corporate Business Equation.
That IS what has happened over the last 30 years.
While Democrats at the same time, seem to have devolved into the Go Along to Get Along Party that hangs its political fortunes on reacting-throug h-opportunistic -soundbite-comp laints to what Republicans do with very limited followup in the way of formulating and presenting, through any obvious Party Unity and Ideology, an alternative 'Vision' for Americans to believe in, nor any actual sense of 'Leadership' to rally to and support.
They are so afraid to alienate the republicans and their own base, that they even with a majority in congress are ineffective as a party....bowing to republican demands and the demands of their financial supporters…they have reduced themselves to a subordinate party and follow the Republicans because the Republicans can dictate direction and make a case for it, which the Democrats in congress truly lack.
Pelosi and Reid are the worst offenders and as the leaders of their chambers are too weak! Obama as the Leader is much more offensive, because he stands for nothing! Obama stands for what his financial supporters want!
I expect to see Obama lose, and the thumbs down I will get for saying that does nor dissuade me in my opinion. Obama has alienated the majority of his base; all but his deeply devout unconscious supporters.
The reason is a lack of real leadership ability coming from this party and especially from Obama the man in charge!
This country has been begging for a leader and that was what the people felt Obama would be; what a disappointment! !!
In debates, etc., Democrats can't land a punch. Instead, they look like schoolyard sissies, wildly throwing roundhouse punches that never land and if they did they would be ineffective.
Learn to jab. Feign. Duck. Hook. And wrestle. Learn to precisely, and powerfully, initiate the fight.
And remember that fighting is chess--anticipa te your opponent's moves and responses. In short, think beyond their moves, motives, and actions.
Or continue getting your ass handed to you. And watching our nation disintegrate.
The Democrats are the left branch of the corptocracy that has taken over our government and they are there to insure its health and prosperity, not ours.
No government official will undermind this profit-off-heal th-care system. WE THE PEOPLE will have to force them!
$41 Trillion dollars today...
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/5conameu.html
I think the Republicans see unemployment and a poor economy as their key to the White House. I don’t think things are as bad as they, and the press, are portraying them to be.
The national unemployment in April 2012, seasonally adjusted was 8.1% The unemployment rate varies in states and the states I looked at were those that most political reporters say are up for grabs, or states that are considered necessary to win.
I looked up the unemployment rates for 1990 to 2000 inclusive and found that the average of unemployment for those years was 5.59.
Taking today’s national rate of 8.1 and subtract out the unemployable… that irreducible number, you get 2.51. OK there will be some objections to my 10 year average… in that case let’s look at the lowest unemployment rate in history: 4.0% and let’s use that. That would mean our present, seasonally adjusted REAL unemployment today is 4.1
In the last 12 years, many jobs have either been eliminated or outsourced to foreign countries. Those will not be coming back. 28% of the high tech jobs have gone overseas in search of lower costs. 15% of manufacturing has been moved overseas for the same reason. I was unable to find out the impact of these percentages on our unemployment rate, but that would further reduce the 4.1 REAL rate significantly.
You need to do your own research and stop relying on either the controlled media or a government agency! or learn to read between the lines!
By eliminating the profit-driven private insurers who add over 30 percent to our national health care costs, we will garner the monies needed for care (not for CEO salaries and Wall St). The insurers--insid e or outside ACA-designed exchanges--will dodge and weave in order to avoid paying for our friends' cancer, kidney transplant, or mental illness. The private insurers and Big Pharma will continue to use their lobbying money to guarantee no cut to their own profit stream.
Only votes can counter corporate dollars. Let's elect people who will bring some ethics and common sense to Congress.
I agree with your sentiments completely except "elect people who will bring some ethics...". We already saw how they folded when pressure was applied to Dennis Kucinich, et al.
Better to start a movement and DEMAND it, much like the Occupy movement. The Occupy people will inherit the bad elements of our current lack of a heath care system and they will be the force to bring change. Last time I checked there were no affinity groups on health care. We need to ally with them and start the drum beats for Medicare for All!
Improved Medicare for All is the only answer!!
Improve it making it 100% and not the current 80-20%.
Improve it by eliminating all govt capitated subsidies to insurance and drug companies and put them money directly into the hands of care givers and care facilities.
Improve it by including dental, vision, mental health and long term care.
Dissolve the employment-bene fits trap that keeps many an indentured labor force. Think how free we would be as a society if we did not have to work to have health care.
Then change the age, not 65+... birth to death!
* 30 some % for the DoD plus the nuclear weapons under DoE plus supplementals for the wars plus the servicing of the debt incurred for earlier military interventions.
When you realize that these interests are paid on a pricipal willed into existence from thin air in private bankers' pockets through the Fed scam you should be furious.
And how on G_d's green earth can Thomas be allowed to vote on this case?!? Has there EVER been more blatant conflict of interest! What a (unfit, misguided, ideologue) scumbag!
I know that for-profit insurance companies ARE the problem with our current system and that Single-Payer is by far the best, most efficient, cost effective and fair system (ie. Medicare), but the ACA does move us in the right direction and change this big realistically would have to be incremental. A mandate is THE critical component for ANY healthcare system. The bigger the pool, the lower the cost of insurance.
I've often posited that D's vs R's is akin to a boxer vs a UFC fighter. One has rules - the other bites, scratches, eye gouges and uses low blows as standard practice. One side respects their office(s) & the solemn duty they're entrusted with and operates with decorum - the other side is a combination of wild-eyed, misguided ideological zealots + thoroughly money & power hungry devils unbound by truth, scruples, or the best interest of The People.
R's openly throw our citizenry, economy, military, environment, moral fabric and our kids' future 'under the bus' for the benefit of Corporations (and to get into that great revolving door between higher office, lobbying jobs, corporate jobs for their personal benefit) despite the dire consequences for the Country.
The key is to learn to fight in any setting or when facing any challenge. To overcome your opponent. In boxing, we learned anatomy first, then street fighting, then judo, then karate, then ju-jitsu, then how to block any punch (we practiced blocking for six months), then the art of the punch and footwork. All while aspiring to peak condition--1,00 0 situps and 1,000 pushups every day, plus a five mile run and the rope. The heavy bag. The speed bag. Then sparring with partners of all sizes and weights. Makes me embarrassed when I see Dems unable to counter a blatantly false statement or GOP tantrum.
Let's back up a few years. Where was all the outrage when the bill was being written? Members of PNHP were arrested in a meeting of the Serante Finance Committee while pie cards like Andy Stern sat on his butt when the cops were dragging them away. Why were they arrested? For advocating health care justice!
How many of you gripers ever marched for singler payer? Damn few. I know. I've been in several such marches and the turnouts were dismal.
You want health care justice? You'll have to fight for it. It will not come any other way! Turn off your damned machines, go into the streets and fight for it. Either that or dummy up. Keyboard activism gets us what? If we stop commerce we'll get results. Such is the way of the working class.
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