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Author Topic: Attention both libertarians and progressives: Obamacare is NOT single-payer!  (Read 1449 times)
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Geolibertarian
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« on: August 06, 2009, 09:42:53 AM »

I consistently hear both sides of the current health care debate parrot the lie that Obamacare is "single-payer."

It's not!

If that's news to anyone, please see the following:

       http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/6/as_obama_hosts_summit_on_health
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wsPZsEYuok

------------------------------------------

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#socialized

Is national health insurance ‘socialized medicine’?

No. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. The health systems in Great Britain and Spain are other examples. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage medical practices or hospitals.

[Continued...]


http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/march/obama_to_single_paye.php

Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead

Corporate Crime Reporter
March 3, 2009

President Obama’s White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table.

Obama doesn’t even want to discuss it.

Take the case of Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan).

Conyers is the leading advocate for single payer health insurance in Congress.

Last week, Conyers attended a Congressional Black Caucus meeting with President Obama at the White House.

During the meeting, Congressman Conyers, sponsor of the single payer bill in the House (HR 676), asked President Obama for an invite to the President’s Marchy 5 health care summit at the White House.

Conyers said he would bring along with him two doctors — Dr. Marcia Angell and Dr. Quentin Young — to represent the majority of physicians in the United States who favor single payer.

Obama would have none of it.

This week, by e-mail, Conyers heard back from the White House — no invite.

Why not?

Well, believe it or not, the Obama White House is under the thumb of the health insurance industry.

Obama has become the industry’s chief enforcer of its key demand: single payer health insurance is off the table.

[Continued...]


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14444

Obamacare: A Health Care Rationing Scheme to Enrich Insurers, Drug Companies and Large Hospital Chains

by Stephen Lendman



Global Research
July 20, 2009


On February 24, Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that "we must....address the crushing cost of health care....caus(ing) a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In (each of) the last eight years....one million....Americans have lost their health insurance....Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold....health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

Behind the facade of reform, Obama and leading Democrats ruled universal, single-payer coverage off the table before debate even began. Instead they've focused on taxing more, rationing care, placing profits above human need, disdaining vital change, shifting the cost burden to individuals and requiring everyone to be insured; imposing fines up to $1000 for non-compliance, and making a broken system even worse.

On June 10, Physicians for a National Health Program advisor Walter Tsou told the House Education and Labor Committee:

    "Attempting to reconcile the dual imperatives of universal coverage and cost control through alternative methods besides single payer is an exercise in futility. When some congressional leaders declare that single payer is off the table, they are in effect saying that insurers will be protected, leaving the pain to patients, taxpayers and health care providers."

At the same hearing, the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee co-president Geri Jenkins said:

    "The current system rations care based on an ability to pay. Right now we are the only nation on earth that barters human life for money."

The administration and lawmakers have been unresponsive in moving ahead with House and Senate legislation to enrich health insurers, Big Pharma, and large hospital chains. It will ration care, curb expensive treatments and surgeries for those who can't afford them, leave millions in the country uncovered, deny it altogether to undocumented immigrants even though they pay income, payroll and other taxes, and claim it's real reform like they always do.

[Continued...]


http://www.infowars.com/whats-really-in-obamas-health-care-reform-bill-a-plain-english-translation/

What’s Really in Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill – A Plain English Translation

Mike Adams
Natural News
July 31, 2009

Mrs. Bouchard seemed upset.
“I can’t afford health care as yet.”
The new health reform bill
Made her sickly and ill
“But I’d rather have cancer than debt!”


What’s really in Obama’s health care reform bill? Almost no one knows, and here’s why: It’s 1,017 pages long and written in an alien form of bureaucratic English that can barely be decoded by earthlings.

And yet, astonishingly, a U.S. Army translator has been found who speaks “Washington Doublespeak” and he was kind enough to decode the bill and post his plain-language findings over at FreeRepublic.com (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2300451/posts).

Below, we reprint what he found in the health care reform bill. As you read this, keep in mind that some of these translations are a bit loose with the interpretations, but I’ve personally spot-checked these points, and they are indeed all contained in the bill in one form or another (shrouded in Doublespeak language, of course).

Editor’s note: I don’t personally agree with every interpretation listed here, and some of the bill’s provisions are actually good ideas (like banning doctors from owning stock in health care companies). But overall, this interpretation points out many alarming provisions in the proposed health care reform bill…

From CMS at FreeRepublic.com:

• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the government option!

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

• Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

• Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

------------------------------------------
« Last Edit: November 17, 2009, 08:16:22 AM by Geolibertarian » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2009, 10:45:05 AM »

America already spends about 16.5% of GDP on Health

That is almost double the going rate in Developed Countries

In order for every american to get healthcare, no increases in cost are required.
In fact dramatic costs reduction for Joe Average and his Employer are possible.

Compare that with Obama's Health Bill and its clear that he is not doing anyone any favours





« Last Edit: August 06, 2009, 10:57:03 AM by EvadingGrid » Logged

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« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2009, 11:06:07 AM »

Sticky ?
 Grin
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« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2009, 11:25:00 AM »

In order for every american to get healthcare, no increases in cost are required.
In fact dramatic costs reduction for Joe Average and his Employer are possible.

Compare that with Obama's Health Bill and its clear that he is not doing anyone any favours.

This is actually far worse than a mere case of Obama not doing anyone any favors.

It's a case of Obama's eugenics-obsessed string-pullers attempting to implement their population reduction agenda under the false guise of health care "reform":

-----------------------------------

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3629obama_impeachable.html

LaRouche: `Obama Is Now Impeachable' For His T4 Plan

by Nancy Spannaus
Executive Intelligence Review
July 24, 2009


When President Barack Obama delivered his nationally televised press conference on July 22, in which he pressed for legislation that called for an "independent board of doctors and health-care experts" to be established as a means of cutting health-care costs, he crossed the line. Lyndon LaRouche, America's leading economist and statesman, who has been warning of the dangers of the President's Nero complex with ever-greater urgency since his April 11 webcast, responded immediately, with the following statement:

    President Obama is now impeachable, because he has, in effect, proposed legislation which is an exact copy of the legislation for which the Hitler regime was condemned in the post-World War II trials. It is an impeachable offense to propose such a thing in this time. With this statement from him, the President now deserves impeachment.

What the President, and his cost-accounting henchmen, like budget chief Peter Orszag, are now insisting on, as the centerpiece of their health-care "reform," is precisely what LaRouche had identified weeks before. Having adopted the view of the British financier oligarchy, that society cannot afford to put its resources into maintaining what Nuremberg Trial veteran Dr. Leo Alexander called the "non-rehabilitatable sick," the Obama Administration has concluded that there are some (i.e., many) lives "not worthy to be lived." They have thus fixed on a mechanism to make the decisions as to who will get the scarce resources. Not surprisingly, they came up with the same approach that Hitler did in 1939—setting up a board of experts to determine who shall live, and who shall die. The program, which killed hundreds of thousands of Germans even before the mass killing of Jews began, was called T4.

Starting on July 16, when they saw their bill was in trouble, the White House has made such an "independent" board the centerpiece of their demands for action. But don't believe for a second, that this proposal is the result of pressure from Congress to cut costs. Such a dictatorial agency is what Obama's closest advisors, including Ezekiel Emanuel and Tom Daschell, have wanted all along.

But, the all-out attempt to ram the reform through has run into a huge roadblock. Many Congressional offices who previously told LaRouche PAC organizers that they thought the Nazi comparison was "over the top," are now stunned to find that the President is openly pushing such a Hitlerite program. Others in Congress, and in the health-care profession, are reacting instinctively against what they smell as a fascist cost-cutting regime against the poor and the sick, a regime totally antithetical to the principles upon which the American system of government is based.

Their instincts are right. As LaRouche has emphasized, the President's proposal spits on the General Welfare clause of the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention the Declaration of Independence's commitment to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the President were to be successful in ramming through his dictatorial board, it would be the equivalent of a Reichstag Fire coup against the Constitution, and lead to crimes against humanity in the form of avoidable deaths of millions of Americans.

For this reason, LaRouche PAC has escalated its battle to crush Obama's health-care "reform," and replace it with the program of FDR-style public-health measures, which LaRouche outlined in his LPAC video reply to Obama on July 17 (transcript of Larouche's reply).

A Nazi Mentality

Before looking at the battle, as it has emerged over the past week, let us focus, once again, on the glaring Nazi mentality which characterizes the Obama Administration's approach to health care.

It begins with the rejection of the sacredness of every human life, substituting for that, an idea of how "useful" a life is, generally measured in how much money should be spent to save it. The Nazis were relentless in pressing this point, beginning early in their reign, when they complained vigorously about spending money to save "cripples," when it should be spent on vigorous young workers instead. Money spent on the chronically ill—and obviously on the elderly, as well—was considered "wasteful," because the individual could not be expected to contribute to the economy, in the way they wanted.

Contrast this anti-human approach with that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, a "cripple" himself. Roosevelt waged a vigorous campaign in favor of research to cure diseases (e.g., the March of Dimes), and to help those who were limited by physical incapacities to overcome them, and play a role in society. Rather than seeing the expenditure as a drain on society's resources, he saw it in terms of what the individual who was helped could contribute to society, which perhaps could be measured financially, but not necessarily.

The Nazi mentality, however, takes the Social Darwinist approach, and deplores spending money on the weak. It's not "cost-effective," they say today.

This outlook was on exhibit at the Obama press conference July 22, when the President lied that the major cause of the fiscal problems of the United States was spending on Medicare and Medicaid (the old and the poor). Even the President's perverted economists have to know that this is a lie: The rampant speculation and looting of the casino economy of the past 40 years makes a mockery of the statement. Yet, Obama chose to scapegoat the old and the poor, and target them for massive cuts, in his alleged attempt to solve the health-care crisis.

Another hallmark of the Nazi mentality, of course, which maps onto the President's own Neronic egomania, is the propensity to use force, not reason, to work one's will. This approach shows up in the Obama health-care "reform," in its drive to set up a council to circumvent Congress, imposing the cuts in health-care spending, in combination with the financier sponsors of the Administration's program. Like Hitler, Obama seeks to set up an executive agency which will wield power without being subjected to challenge—the Constitutional provisions for Congressional responsibility be damned.

One major difference, of course, between the Obama approach and that of Hitler, is that Obama is pursuing his fascist assault on the elderly and the sick in public. Hitler, when he issued his infamous 1939 order setting up Dr. Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to decide who should live, and who should die, felt compelled to act in secret, because he feared opposition from the German people.

The Death Bill

As we reported last week, the President launched his public campaign, on July 16, for an independent commission to exercise life-or-death power over medical care. Taking a leading role was Peter Orszag, the "behavioral economist" and soulless accountant who heads Obama's Office of Management and Budget. Orzag sent a letter to Congressional leaders, to which he appended a piece of draft legislation called the "Independent Medicare Advisory Council Act of 2009," a law which he repeatedly has characterized as "the most significant aspect" of the pending legislation. Its transparent intent is to cut care for those on Medicare.

Orszag's bill would set up a council (IPAC) of five physicians, who, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPac) established in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, would issue two rulings a year on reimbursement rates for various medical procedures. But that's not all.

First, the bill specifies, under the title "No Increase in Aggregate Medicare Expenditures," that the rulings could only freeze or lower total Medicare/Medicaid spending, not increase it.

Second, once the rates are sent to the President and approved, they could only be voted up or down in toto within 30 days by the Congress. Should this not happen, they would go directly into effect.

But there's another telltale aspect. The proposed legislation says that "the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)" would get the final review of each of the commission's detailed regulations, after the President and Congress signed off. This appointed bean-counter, if deciding that any of the regulations would overpay for medical treatments, could simply "declare them null and void," and tell the "commission of doctors" to start over, and cut deeper.

In fact, the CMS is, right now, about to issue a ruling that Medicare and Medicaid will issue "bundled payments for kidney dialysis" from January 2011 onward. Reuters notes correctly, in reporting the ruling: "Under the bundled system, dialysis providers will receive a fixed payment [per patient] for all services and drugs. The dialysis center would effectively profit by spending less money on each patient."

The President Goes Ape

Following the release of Orszag's proposed bill, Obama went into a non-stop campaign on its behalf. His Saturday radio address July 18, his press appearances in New Jersey and in the Rose Garden, and his public meetings, all featured the call for the "independent" commission to cut costs.

In an interview with the Washington Post published on July 23, the President elaborated on the policy under the heading of "delivery system reforms." He wrote:

    "At this point, I am confident that both the House and the Senate bills will contain what we've been calling 'MedPAC on steriods,' the idea that you continually present new ideas to change incentives, change the delivery system, understanding that, because this is such a complex system, we're not always going to get it exactly right the first time, and that there have to be a series of modifications over the course of a series of years, and we have to take that out of politics and make sure than an independent board of medical experts and health economists are providing packages that are continually improving the system. So I think there's general consensus that that is one of two very powerful levers to bend the cost curve...."

Obama repeated this concept July 23 at his town hall meeting in Shaker Heights, Ohio, saying that an empowered MedPAC would "eliminate waste and save money."

The point of the President's remarks was crystal clear: Health-care decisions should be made by technocrats who are not responsible to the political process—just as they were under Hitler's T4 Program. Orszag was even more explicit at a Nw York Council on Foreign Relations event July 23 when he said: "But moving more decisions into the hands of medical professionals and out of the political process will enable us to continually update the system to reflect new information and changed circumstances...."

Among those "changed circumstances," of course, is the reduction of monies being allocated to health care for those whom the "professionals" believe are not "helped" by the care—the old and the chronically ill.

[Continued...]

-----------------------------------
« Last Edit: November 17, 2009, 08:17:39 AM by Geolibertarian » Logged

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« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2009, 02:01:32 PM »

I agree that the long term goal is eugenics.

My concern is that people will talk about anything regarding "Health Care" in America to avoid comparison with other developed countries, and indeed some 3rd world countries have better "Health Care".

Lets talk about the Money.

Because what Obama is actually trying to engineer is to increase the percentage of GDP paid for Health Care. It is currently at about 16.5% of GDP with about 15% of the people without any medical cover. At those kind of prices, what percentage of GDP will really be spent on Health Care ?

At a guess the golden goal is probably 21% of GDP, or THREE TIMES THE TRUE COST. When the population is being absolutely Bankrupted by paying these absurd prices, then they will be really vulnerable to agreeing to eugenics.

The real weak spot is the absurd prices paid by America, whom are kept totally in the dark as to how the rest of the developed world manages Health Care. To see how to really fix Health Care, all they need to do is to visit Europe. If I have to go to the chemist or pharmacy for meds and I actually decided to pay I would only pay about $10 and NOT $250 . . .

Still all you have to do is mention "Socialism" and even 'the awake brain' ceases to function.

The brutal truth is America is the only non 3rd world country with such an awful system. Sick Americans would be better off in Former Soviet States, if that does not send alarm bells ringing in peoples heads I totally despair.

They are robbing the people blind, your paying TWICE as much money, and your NOT getting the same level of service. Next Obama is going to expand the system.

As to the Eugenics aspect, it is already in place  . . .
Wait till you get the letter from the insurance company denying you treatment and pointing to the small print in the contract.

My wife ( A DOCTOR) spent a good chunk of time trying to explain to people that they were not covered for the treatment they needed. They would whine about how they paid for years into the insurance scheme, as if that would make any difference, bottom line they had been scammed by con artists in suits.

Health Care in America is a Soft Kill BY Bill Weapon




« Last Edit: August 06, 2009, 02:09:36 PM by EvadingGrid » Logged

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« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2009, 03:45:31 PM »

Still all you have to do is mention "Socialism" and even 'the awake brain' ceases to function.

That's because "left-vs.-right" is not the only false paradigm in which countless millions of people have sheepishly allowed their minds and intellects to be enslaved by elite-funded propaganda campaigns.

Among the many other false paradigms are:

The non-racist Obama supporter-vs.-racist Obama hater paradigm.

The Austrian School "capitalism"-vs.-Marxist "socialism" paradigm.

And in the case of health care: the patient-funded/oligopoly-controlled health care-vs.-taxpayer-funded/government bureaucrat-controlled health care paradigm.

The conservatives who've bought into this paradigm blindly assume that, if you support allowing government to finance the cost of health care via universal health insurance, then by definition you support allowing government to run health care itself via top-down, Nazi-style control measures (even though single-payer advocates who support the former oppose the latter).

The liberals who've bought into the same paradigm make two corollary (yet equally false) assumptions: (a) anyone who advocates governmental control of health care itself (such as Obama does) automatically supports universal health insurance (Obama doesn't); and (b) anyone who opposes governmental control of health care itself automatically opposes universal health insurance (even though single-payer advocates who oppose the former support the latter).

Who benefits from this false paradigm? The eugenicists do, because either way they win. Under Obamacare, you have population reduction through such things as tainted vaccines and denial of treatment. Under the phony "free market" alternative that lets overprivileged insurance and pharmaceutical oligopolies price-gouge everyone into bankruptcy, you have a more indirect form of population reduction -- with millions of people dying prematurely due to health care costs having been artificially driven out of their reach.

Good luck explaining all this to either side of the health care shouting match, though.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2009, 08:19:18 AM by Geolibertarian » Logged

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« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2009, 02:51:23 AM »

I get the feeling that either way,
 the same people,
 from the same lodge,
 wearing the same old school tie,
 from the same country club
 will sit around the same table, and stamp our claim "Treatment Denied".

It disturbs me on a very deep level.

I am so glad that you seem to understand my concerns. It alarms me that people are jumping up and down screaming its Eugenics, when as you quiet rightly point out its a Win Win situation on that front.

So if it is not about Eugenics, because that is a guaranteed outcome, what about the money ?

Kill by Bill
or
Kill by Tax

Some choice . . . .
Given that they already collect nearly double what other developed countries collect, who have universal healthcare and higher life expectancy stats.

« Last Edit: August 08, 2009, 02:52:59 AM by EvadingGrid » Logged

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« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2009, 10:43:17 AM »

the patient-funded/oligopoly-controlled health care-vs.-taxpayer-funded/government bureaucrat-controlled health care paradigm....

Who benefits from this false paradigm? The eugenicists do, because either way they win. Under Obamacare, you have population reduction through such things as tainted vaccines and denial of treatment. Under the phony "free market" alternative that lets overprivileged insurance and pharmaceutical oligopolies price-gouge everyone into bankruptcy, you have a more indirect form of population reduction -- with millions of people dying prematurely due to health care costs having been artificially driven out of their reach.

In his latest World Crisis Radio broadcast, Webster Tarpley makes essentially the same point that I made about the above paradigm:

       http://www.gcnlive.com/mediaPlayers/odPlayer.php?program=worldCrisis
« Last Edit: November 17, 2009, 08:19:54 AM by Geolibertarian » Logged

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« Reply #8 on: August 11, 2009, 01:48:24 PM »

Loads of great points by Webster Tarpley on todays show

Like this paraphrased "promising not to use the new monopoly he wishes to create to drive down prices".

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« Reply #9 on: August 18, 2009, 04:56:22 PM »

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader08182009.html

Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

By Ralph Nader
CounterPunch
August 18, 2009

Never much of a fighter against abusive corporate power, Barack Obama is making it increasingly clear that right from his start as President, he wanted health insurance reform that received the approval of the giant drug and health insurance industries.

Earlier this year he started inviting top bosses of these companies for intimate confabs in the White House. Business Week magazine, which proclaimed recently that “The Health Insurers Have Already Won” reported that the CEO of UnitedHealth, Stephen J. Hemsley, met with the President half a dozen times.

These are the vendors. They and their campaign slush funds cannot be ignored in the power struggle over the legislation percolating in the Congress. One public result of these meetings was that the drug industry promised $80 billion in savings over ten years and the health insurance moguls promised $150 billion over the same decade. Mr. Obama trumpeted these declarations without indicating how these savings would be guaranteed, how the drug companies could navigate the antitrust laws and what was given to the health care industry by the White House in return.

We have now learned that one Obama promise was to continue the prohibition on Uncle Sam from bargaining for volume discounts on drugs that you the taxpayer have been paying for in the drug benefit program enacted in 2003.

Unknown is whether the health insurance companies were also promised continuation of Medicare Advantage with its 14 per cent added taxpayer subsidy to induce the elderly to make the move out of public Medicare. We now know that the Medicare public option that Mr. Obama formerly espoused but since has wavered on is almost certainly doomed.

The whole secret process is seedy and demonstrates cruel disregard for the millions of American who, whether in dire need of medical services or not, voted in “change we can believe in.”

By stark contrast, President Obama has never invited to the White House the leading consumer-patient champions in this country who favor full Medicare and free choice of physician and hospital—often called “a single payer” system. Open to the corporate barons who have failed decade after decade to deliver what patients need, the White House door is closed to the likes of Dr. Quentin Young—a founder of the Physicians for a National Health Program and an old Chicago friend of Obama’s, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, who heads Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Drs. Marcia Angell, Stephanie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein, who are nationally known and accomplished single payer advocates or Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the fast-growing California Nurses Association.

Mr. Obama even tried to exclude any advocate of a single payer system—previously favored by Obama and still favored by a majority of the American people, doctors and nurses—from his roundtable meetings convened to receive the views of different constituencies.

“Make me do it” was the advice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to reformers when faced with legislation he desired but did not have the votes for in Congress. Mr. Obama is not exerting that plea for people power. Were he to do that, he would be encouraging daily public hearings in the Senate and the House on the bureaucratic waste, greed, overbilling, collusion, and fraud that many in the corporate world have inflicted with their costly, pay or die health care industry.

Such publicized hearings would keep him on the offensive. It would arouse the public and focus energies on the main problem—the corporatization of medicine. This commercialism has left tens of millions of people without health insurance, caused 20,000 fatalities a year, and cost Americans twice or more per capita than have full Medicare systems in western countries, which have better health outcomes than the U.S.

Further indication of Obama’s corporate dealings is that he never identified himself with a specific bill with a House and Senate number that he could rally the people around. No wonder people are confused, frustrated and angry. President Obama did not stand for an unambiguous proposal.

He thereby emboldened both the cash-and -carry Blue dog Democrats to rebel and the Republican yahoos to launch their lies and distortions via Rush Limbaugh and similar trash media.

Obama is about to make his biggest mistake to date by favoring the bipartisan deal his assistants are working out with Blue Dog Senator Max Baucus and his Republican counterparts on the Senate Finance Committee. This proposal has no public option, no consumer protections or restraints on the mayhem and skyrocketing charges of the so-called health care industry.

[Continued...]
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« Reply #10 on: November 17, 2009, 08:31:24 AM »

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/kucinich-health-reform-legislation-a-bailout-insurance-companies/

Kucinich: Health reform legislation ‘a bailout for insurance companies’

By Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
Saturday, October 31st, 2009

According to Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the Democrats' health reform legislation is basically a sham.

Appearing on MSNBC's The Ed Show on Friday night, the House's most unabashed progressive condemned Democratic leadership for removing his amendment that would allow states to create their own single-payer systems. Then he called the entire legislative package "a bailout for insurance companies."

Under a single-payer system, like those in Canada and the United Kingdom, the government pools taxpayer funds to pay for citizens' health care and fees are not collected by health care providers. The Kucinich amendment would allow individual states an opt-in to such a system.

The amendment is missing from health reform legislation unveiled Thursday by Democratic leadership.

[Continued...]


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15982

Why I voted NO
The strengthening of the for-profit health insurance industry

by Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Global Research
November 9, 2009

We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care.

We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross.

By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress' blog, Think Progress, states, 'since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.' Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that 'money will start flowing in again' to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks' hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care.

[Continued...]
« Last Edit: November 17, 2009, 08:45:07 AM by Geolibertarian » Logged

"For the first years of [Ludwig von] Mises’s life in the United States...he was almost totally dependent on annual research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation.” -- Richard M. Ebeling

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