Thank god, at least some things are not bipartisan!!!

Fortunately for the corporations that give the money and the politicians in Congress who take it this kind of bribery, blatant as it may be, is legal. But don't give all the credit to the aforementioned. People who don't vote for campaign finance reform can share in the infamy.

Bill Moyers Journal, on OPB tonight at 9:00 pm, has Wendell Potter, former insurance corporation executive as his guest. It isn't clear if this is a repeat, but it is worth checking out Story here

Why are people wasting time on health care laws when Obama has never proven he's a natural born citizen? NO BIRTH CERTIFICATE = NO PRESIDENT. What could be more important than knowing if the PRESIDENT IS REALLY KENYAN? We need one of our OWN KIND in the White house - President Palin we need you now!

Why not take it a step further? The insurance industry differentiates between supporters and opposition--not just ruling party. I made a graph using opensecrets data comparing the contributions from the insurance industry between HR676 co-sponsors and "no"-sponsors. One group of representatives got double the contributions. And that's using general insurance industry data (did not sort out just the health insurance industry) so things would probably be even more lopsided if one were to zoom in closer.

"Why are people wasting time on health care laws when Obama has never proven he's a natural born citizen?"

John: To get a secret clearance for just a clerical position in the government people get checked out by the FBI. Did it ever occur to you that the FBI might be a little more thorough with some guy who has access to the big red button in the oval office? Do you ever think your thoughts through before you open your mouth or type some crap on a blog? Go back to listening to Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter, O'Lielly and the rest at Faux News. You'll feel more at home with those loudmouths.

Here is a great resource for what politicians said - Presidential Rhetoric. You can get, among other things, Obama's campaing speeches. Compare then and now.

At best John is just being sarcastic (I hope). But he may be just trolling, trying to get a response.

I've heard recently that something like $1.2 or $1.3 million dollars a day are being spent on health care lobbying. If 1.2 or 1.3 million people were directly lobbying their elected representatives with calls, mail and showing up at their town halls we might have a chance of overcoming that.

Black Agenda Report has a great guide -- Top Ten Ways to Tell that Obama and the Democrats are taking a dive in the "fight" for health care reform:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/top-ten-ways-tell-your-president-his-party-arent-fighting-health-care-everybody

by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon With the corporate media relentlessly distorting the public discussion around health care reform, it time for some clear, bright lines to help us tell who is doing what to whom, and whether any of it leads to health care for all of us. Here are ten of them. Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting For Health Care For Everybody by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon 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. 1. Their plan [1] doesn't cover the uninsured till at least 2013 [2]. 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. 2. Their “public option” isn't Medicare, won't bring costs down and will only cover about 10 million people. The “public option” was sold to the American people as Medicare-scale plan open to anybody who wants in that would compete with the private insurers and drive their costs downward. But in their haste not to bite the hands that feed them millions in campaign contributions each hear, the president and his party have scaled the public option back from a Medicare-sized 130 million to a maximum of 10 million, too small to put cost pressure in private insurers [3]. Worse still, the president and his party are playing bait-and-witch, not telling the public they have reduced the public option, to nearly nothing. This remnant of a public option is not Medicare, as Howard Dean insists, and it will not lead to the sort of everybody-in-nobody-out health care system that most Americans, whenever they are surveyed say they want. Some Senate and House Democrats want to ditch even the pretense [4] of a “public option” in favor of something they're calling a private insurance “co-op [5]”, which as near as anybody can tell has the same relationship to an actual cooperative that clean coal has to actual coal. 3. The president and his party have already caved in [6] to the drug companies on reimporting Canadian drugs, on negotiating drug prices downward and on generics. This explains why Big Pharma, the same people who ran the devastatin g series of anti-reform “Harry and Louise” ads to spike the Clinton-era drive to fix health care are spending $100 million [7] to run Obama ads using the president's language about “bipartisan” solutions to health care reform. 4. The president and his party have received more money from private insurers and the for-profit health care industry than even Republicans, with the president alone taking $19 million in the 2008 election cycle alone, [8] more than all his Repubican, Democratic and independent rivals combined. Democratic senator Max Bacaus got $1.1 million in 2008. Democratic senators Harkin, Landreau and Rockerfeller each got over half a million, and Senator Durbin got just under half a million. Other Democratic senators got a little less. Four Democrats in the House, Rangel, Dinglell, Udall and Hoyer got over half a million apiece in 2008, with other Democrats not far behind. Is there any wonder that the insurance companies, like the drug companies are also running “bipartisan health care reform” commercials using the president's exact language? 5. The president's plan, and those of Republicans and Democratic blue dogs too, will require families to purchase health insurance policies from private insurers. This is something the policy wonks call an 'individual mandate [9]”, under which Individuals will be “mandated” to purchase affordable insurance, though companies would not be required to offer it. In Massachusetts, the prototype state for the Obama plan, a family with an income of $33,000 can be required to spend $9,000 in deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses before the insurance company is obligated to pay a dime. As in Massachusetts, public money is used to purchase private insurance for the very poorest citizens. With the revenues of insurance companies on the decline, individual mandate programs are a welcome bailout for the private insurance industry. 6. The president's plan, and those of Republicans and Democratic blue dogs too, could force you to buy junk insurance [10]. Think about an insurance policy that costs a lot, but is full of loopholes, exceptions and steep deductibles and co-payments. That's junk insurance, and for many it's the only insurance companies offer. Even more pernicious is the widespread practice among insurance companies of “recission” in which claimants are routinely investigated and disqualified in the event that they finally make a claim. Insurance companies admit they do this to half of one percent of policies per year. That means if you hold a health insurance policy twenty years, you don;t have insurance – you have a ninety percent chance of having insurance. 7. The president's plan, as well as those of Democratic “blue dogs” and Republicans, are to be funded in part with cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Private insurance companies have always hated Medicare because it is far more efficient than they are. Medicare's administrative expenses are under five percent, as compared with the one third of every health care dollar taken by the for-profit insurance companies for their advertising, bad investments, billing and denial machinery, executive salaries and bonuses. Private insurers have, over the years, purchased enough influence in Congress and previous White Houses to restrict Medicare's payment rates and partially privatize it. But president Obama's plan, perhaps the most friendly to Medicare and Medicaid, calls for over $300 billion in cuts [11] to the programs that now provide medical care to those with the fewest options, while failing to guarantee that care will come from elsewhere. In Massachusetts right now, hospitals are turning away poor people they used to be able to provide care for because funding that used to go to those institutions is now plowed into the state's “individual mandate” system. 8. The president, with the cooperation of corporate media and the Republicans is trying to make the argument about himself instead of a discussion on the merits of his policy. The president and his critics are happy to talk about whether this will be “his Waterloo [12]”, or his Dien Bien Phu, as if that matters more than the 22,000 Americans who die each year from lack of medical care, or the three quarter million who will go bankrupt because of unpayable medical bills. The concentration on whether the president looks good or bad takes up air, ink, and coverage time that might otherwise be spent explaining what is and isn't in the various proposals, and why. If the president were not afraid of his own supporters publicly examining the merits and demerits of his proposals, he would mobilize those 13 million emails and phone numbers collected during the campaign. The reason he has not sone so already is that most of his own supporters favor a Medicare-For-All single payer health care system, HR 676. 9. The president and his party, and the corporate media [13] have spent more time and energy silencing [14] and excluded the advocates of single payer health care, mostly the president's own supporters, than they have fighting blue dogs and Republicans. But no matter how diligently the spokespeople for single payer are excluded from media coverage and invitations [15] to Obama's policy forums and round tables, no matter how many times the White House cuts their questions [16] from transcripts and video of public events, the calls, emails and letters keep pouring into Congress and the White House demanding the creation of a publicly funded, everybody-in-nobody-out system, a Medicare-for-All kind of single payer health care plan. 10. Despite the president's own admission that only a single payer health care system will deliver what Americans want, he and the leaders of his party insist that Medicare For All, HR 676, us utterly off the table. Before he became a presidential candidate, Barack Obama identified himself as a proponent of a single payer health care system. All we had to do, he told us, was elect a Democratic congress and senate, and a different president. Now that this has been done, he insists that “change” is just not possible, and we have to settle for less. The president continues to admit that only a single payer health care system will cover everybody, but insists that America just can't handle that much change. The truth is that Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of change, and a health care system that covers everybody from day one with no exceptions is what people imagined they voted for when they swept him and an overwhelming number of Democrats into office. A single payer Medicare-For-All system will eliminate 500,000 insurance company jobs and replace them with 3.2 million new jobs in health care for a net gain of 2.6 million new jobs [17] according to a study by the National Nurses Organization. That's as many jobs as the US economy lost in all of 2007. Single payer will create hundreds of billions in annual wages and local and state tax revenues for cash strapped cities and towns. It will lift the shadow of bankruptcy for medical reasons from two thirds of a million American families yearly. It's what we deserve. It's what we voted for, and we won't stop demanding it.

Yeah, Congress would NEVER do anything to drive lots of people out of work -- except in all the industrial states, when Congress fell all over itself to pass NAFTA and sign on to the WTO, and in timber states, where logging has been slashed hugely, and in the automaking states where Congress just forced lots of job closures on the industry (while the makers OPEN factories overseas).

I think the more accurate statement is that Congress identifies deeply with business owners and with white collar people who make a lot of money and give campaign contributions . . . The so-called "symbolic workers" who spend their days in air-conditioned comfort pushing pixels around a screen and figuring out how to massage the messages. Congress has no problem hanging you out to dry by the millions if you are unlucky enough not to belong to the campaign contributing classes.

Increased health care budget may possibly fall to bankruptcy.There is a case for walking away from enormous debts, as there is always the option of filing for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy isn't something to be taken lightly, as it isn't like buying postage stamps and you will have be consulting with bankruptcy attorneys and determine whether or not filing would be good for you. Unemployment is one of the biggest causes for filing, and foreclosure is one of the usual precursors. If you file for chapter 7, the most common filing, you will have to undergo a means test, to determine whether a person can pay all or a portion of their debts. If considering bankruptcy, make sure you have some quick cash for emergencies and talk to bankruptcy attorneys.

The value of (not having) the public plan. For CIGNA, United Healthcare Group and Aetna, that is. Thanks to Baseline Scenario, a great resource on the economy.

Like Your Private Health Care? Here's Why You Can Actually Thank the Government for That by Paul Krugman

The people behind the Canadian lady with the brain tumor.

Last night, Bill Moyers had a good session with Wendel POtter, who walked away from his executive position in the insurance industry.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html

If you did not see it last night, you will want to. He was key in constructing campaigns to torpedo Clinton's first try at health care reform; and in ensuring that Michael Moore is not taken seriously.

He explicitly states the millions spent now to torpedo THIS effort at health care reform - and assures us it has succeeded.

We lost it this round again, folks. If Americans had more than the attention span of a fruit gnat, there would now be a shift, however - the vision of white Americans sleeping in their cars in a misty fairgrounds waiting to get healthcare... could do more than anything else to radicalize and realitize the electorate. Showing more miserable brown faces damaged by IHS lack of access to timely and adequate care or the ruined smiles of the adults subjected to southern poverty dentistry... well, we are used to the suffering people of colour. But the striking image of whites laid out on tables surrounded by open air and tarpaulins might do more for the crumbling of the health industrial complex than anything.

I have three words for ya: CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM.

Potter explicitly detailed exactly how the insurance industry intimidated Democraps into abandoning the reform efforts - they were told plainly they would not be funded.

Whoops, Bodden, I did not notice you posted this story with Potter - sorry. And Dan - GREAT!

"Whoops, Bodden, I did not notice you posted this story with Potter - sorry. And Dan - GREAT!"

The Bill Moyers Journal-Wendell Potter event can use all the exposure it can get. Check pbs.org and "Bill Moyers Journal" for more information on this and its topic - health care.

"I was shocked to learn that special interests tend to give money to (1) the people in control who can actually do something and(2) those who already support their position."

The problem is not that some people give others money to do their bidding. The problem comes when the consequences are immoral or unethical. In the early 1930s industrialists supplied Hitler and his Nazi party with funds. In the 1960s John F. Kennedy began a process of funding the Peace Corps.

The #1 issue in the 2008 campaign was accessible, affordable health care for all. The big boys can give money, but in the end the Dems have to produce a bill that is acceptable to their supporters. If they don't, the party will lose majorities and go into extinction with the mass defections that will result. I assume that the fence sitters like Schrader, Wyden and others are taking note.

"The big boys can give money, but in the end the Dems have to produce a bill that is acceptable to their supporters. If they don't, the party will lose majorities and go into extinction with the mass defections that will result."

I agree with you, Bill R., but the problem is if the insurance corporations get the "health" plans they want they couldn't care less which party is in control, and the people will be stuck with the obvious scam they are laying on us.

Bush, Cheney, Halliburton and the military-industrial complex screwed the American people with the war on Iraq.

Wall Street with the connivance of the White House (Bush and Obama) and both houses in Congress, screwed the people with their bailout of Wall Street.

Now the insurance-pharmaceutical-medical complex is greasing the shaft for another rape of the American people and, as in the past, the American people are bending over and taking it without so much as a whimper.

Not so surprising when you consider that most of the American people enable their parties (Democratic and Republican) who are vital accomplices in all of these rackets by letting them know "my party right or wrong."

@ Bill Bodden

I know you hate the Dem party, but it's what we have right now in power. I think it's preferable to enact an entitlement for universal health care rather than none at all and let people's lives and health go down the toilet entirely for a generation. I have a sister in law who's got life threatening cancer and her COBRA is going to run our in a few months. And she will have nothing. There are some things we can do now, including getting rid of the exclusions, and move toward something approaching universal access.

And I think if we had something like Wyden's individual choice feature combined with a public option feature it would be the beginning of a movement toward single payer. And if the Dems fail this time, the Rs will be in power for another decade or two and you can be sure nothing good will happen then.

Here's the clip the Dems should running in their Ads to contrast with the GOP. One of their House leadership now running for the Senate, Roy Blount, a most excellent GOP spokesperson. Says it all:

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002000/

These politicians voted Against the Nathan Deal Amendment, that would Prevent Health Care Benefits to Illegal Aliens. Simply put--it's not their BLOODY MONEY! So what! Do they care if taxpayers have to foot the behemoth bill, for anybody who snubs our laws and enters a sovereign country called America? The nationwide parasites are --CHEAP LABOR--businesses who could care less, because they pile up enormous profits. The corporate hierarchy have been having a field day--FOR DECADES. A foreign national gets hurt, their service manager or whoever the underling is, drives the maimed person and relinquishes any responsibility by dumping them on the emergency hospital entranceway. BINGO! nothing to pay!

Perhaps Americans should find some old shoddy clothes, no shave, no haircut and enter every emergency room in our country in the millions? Speak a lot of gibberish and carry no identification with a small splinter in their finger, a touch of a fever or any minor condition. By federal law the hospital will have an emergency on a--EMERGENCY. I am afraid Americans have been Lemmings going over a proverbial cliff, since who knows when? We just keep paying and paying even more to the IRS, to support--ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Try getting free health care in any other country, other than societies in the European Union? A FAT CHANCE! We are literary being taxed to death, to give welfare to the business overlords. These legislators have already tried to weaken E-Verify, local police action 287(g) and now unwinding the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli enforcement law--which worked, but again was never enforced.

Even our Democrats who are trying to engineer health care for every American---INCLUDED 20 PLUS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR LARGE FAMILIES. Here are 29 Judas Iscariot's, who sold the American people out--for a lot more than 13 pieces of silver? HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR. Capps (D-CA), Eshoo (D-CA), Harman (D-CA), Matsui (D-CA), McNerney (D-CA), Waxman (D-CA), DeGette (D-CO), Murphy (D-CT), Castor (D-FL), Rush (D-IL), Schakowsky (D-IL), Braley (D-IA), Sarbanes (D-MD), Markey (D-MA), Dingell (D-MI), Stupak (D-MI), Pallone (D-NJ), Weiner (D-NY), Butterfield (D-NC), Space (D-OH), Sutton (D-OH), Doyle (D-PA), Gordon (D-TN), Gonzalez (D-TX), Green (D-TX),Welch (D-VT), Christensen (D-VI), Inslee (D-WA) and Baldwin (D-WI). I'm afraid I would be banned if I used the right epithet, when leaving a comment for these so called lawmakers?

These are the betrayers of--ALL--taxpayers. These 29 traitors gave illegal immigrants the right to pilfer your billfold and purse, while they sit in their Washington office collecting their 6 figure salaries. REMEMBER THEM AND THROW THEM OUT! DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? Learn uncorrupted facts at NUMBERSUSA. For myself and family! I am for any health care re-organization, as long as it doesn't smell of copious profiteering and corruption, like the majority of private insurers do?

Copy, Paste and Distribute freely

"I know you hate the Dem party, ..."

Bill R: I don't hate the Dem or the Repug parties. Hatred is a wasteful and debilitating emotion. I am, however, offended by any politicians (both major parties) who lie, deceive and screw the people. Just as I find Limbaugh, O'Lielly and their ilk to be an odious bunch of wretches. I have a lot of respect for DeFazio, Kucinich, McDermott, Blumenauer, Russ Feingold (except on the Israeli issue), Sheldon Whitehouse (even though I didn't like his FISA vote in the last Congress) among others and, so far, Jeff Merkley is looking good. Perhaps, when people perceive me as hating the Dem party what they really find problematic is my blunt candor that they can't refute.

I sympathize with your sister-in-law. Her case makes a persuasive argument for getting anything done now that works. However, there may be another problem besides being stuck with a second-rate plan. Will any of the plans now on the table take care of your sister-in-law and people like her? There are many people who already have supposedly good plans, including the federal employees plan, but find them inadequate in the case of serious illnesses. As has often been said, a large percentage of bankruptcies are the result of medical problems, even for people who thought they had good health plans. And, don't forget as Bill Moyers Journal reminded us last night, the insurance corporations are always looking for ways to deny claims. It would be naive in the extreme to think they will change their agenda.

Obama's Doctor: President's Vision For Health Care Bound To Fail

Single Payer Advocates to Congress: Defeat Obamacare

"The danger is when advocates advocate for something that is already dead, they abandon the ability to affect the outcome."

How many events or people in history were theoretically dead, at least in the minds of some people, but went on to survive and prevail? If I recall correctly George Washington and his army were on the ropes and within a hair's breadth of defeat (theoretically dead in the minds of some people) but went on to win. How many people told Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies that they would never see an end to segregation or achieve their civil rights in their lifetime? Who ever thought Nelson Mandela would some day become the president of the Republic of South Africa after he was sentenced to death and sent to Robbins Island? Who ever thought he would be alive to see his next birthday?

Some people still cling to the belief that legitimate campaign finance reform can become a reality. Who knows? Maybe some day this nation will abandon its present corrupt and corrupting tradition of corporate finance of politicians.

Back to health care and those who think any plan will be better than nothing. Have you noticed that Harry and Louise are supporting Obama's health care plan? Have you noticed who is paying to bring that good news to you? Big Pharma. Now why would Big Pharma do such a thing? Could it be that they got an agreement out of Obama that the government wouldn't negotiate lower prices for drugs? In other words, Big Pharma could still charge exorbitant amounts from American patients.

Now let's move to the health plans that the insurance corporations will offer. Has anyone read as much as a draft of what those plans will be? How much for the premiums? How much for co-pays? How much for deductibles? How much for caps? How much will they pay towards those high-priced drugs? If the patient has a long-term illness after how many months can the insurance corporation drop him or her? Or how many weeks? Or days?

Why Obama's Health Plan Falters

Look folks...I know i've brought this up before and most of you still seem to have your heads in the sand or up your rear ends on this issue...but I'll give this one final shot. Gov't run/single payer healthcare would be the single greatest self-imposed disaster this country has ever seen..anyone who is actually paying attention and still supports this idea must in some way be joking..it is absolutely indefensible. I won't spend any more time going through the details and pointing out the obvious to to you all..that hasn't seemed to work in the past...but thought I'd draw your attention to this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdx_2cuPgQQ

for those who missed it....watch it, pay attention..and if you still don't get it...may god have mercy on your ignorant soul.

The Big Question: Why is US health care in such a mess, and what can Obama do about it?

JJ, Are you an insurance industry shill? Posting a youtube video of an ABC 20/20 show with corporate toady John Stossel isn't going to convince anyone with a basic knowledge of our country's desperate situation vis á vis the predations of the health insurance industry. ABC/Disney is not a credible source of information on this topic: they have a conflict of interest: one of their main sources of income is health insurance / big pharma ad revenue. For the REAL story, check out Bill Moyers' interview with ex-CIGNA PR chief Wendell Potter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QwX_soZ1GI

Jack Roberts wrote:

was shocked to learn that special interests tend to give money to (1) the people in control who can actually do something and(2) those who already support their position.

This is a fine example of the blasé attitude toward campaign money prevalent among the US political class - regardless of party. Our political system is corrupt and decrepit, and our leaders are so co-opted they cannot even perceive the problem, let alone solve it.

JJ,

Why does single payer work so well elsewhere? Is there something unique to Americans that requires spending 1/3 of all healthcare dollars on insurance administration?

"Is there something unique to Americans that requires spending 1/3 of all healthcare dollars on insurance administration?"

<h2>The American people, like people in most other societies, can be compartmentalized into various segments from the best of people to the worst with most somewhere in between. That is where the problem appears to lie. Somewhere in the middle there is a sufficiently large group that is not too bright and easily influenced by whatever media they tend to be exposed to. Unfortunately, they often tend to listen to the corporate media and tilt the balance of public opinion in favor of corporate and right-wing interests.</h2>