Corporate chokehold
Once again, the corporate interests that have a chokehold on our elected representative bodies have succeeded in derailing any real change for the better.
The health care bill is now a bloated corpse – a rotted, stinking shell of what was once originally envisioned. All this thing will succeed in doing is reward the soulless insurance corporations for their intransigence by making them even richer.
The Democrats promised that if we would just give them a 60 seat majority in the Senate, a majority in the House and a Democratic president, they would be able to finally deliver. Instead, the spineless bunch has caved, again, even on abortion rights.
What could have been their greatest moment, when they finally stood up for the people against the big-moneyed interests, has instead disintegrated into the predictable mind-numbing process we helplessly witnessed this summer and fall: Just another giveaway to the mega-corps running the country.
The big mistake, of course, was compromising right off the bat, then compromising some more, then some more, ad nauseam... all in a futile attempt to come up with some kind of “bipartisan” bill, so that the Dems could say they are “mainstream.”
Rather than take Single Payer off the table at the start, they should have used it as their bargaining position. Then, perhaps, we might have been able to at least get a real, robust public option.
Personally, I think Single Payer is the way to go. The rest of the democratic industrialized world runs its variations of it quite successfully, and we even run one already ourselves – in the form of Medicare for seniors. It’s true that when this process started, it didn’t seem could pass such a bill, being that our legislature is what it is. Still, as any negotiator knows, you don’t start out giving away the store.
But there is still a Single Payer bill alive, HR 676; and a California bill, SB 810. Now that the public option plan has become a Frankensteinian monstrosity, it’s what we ought to fight for. Thousands of doctors and nurses nationwide back it. Let’s dump the bloated giveaway bill, and go for the gold.
P.S. It’s that time again! This holiday season, give a unique, thoughtful gift, one that keeps giving all year long – the Humor Times!
The health care bill is now a bloated corpse – a rotted, stinking shell of what was once originally envisioned. All this thing will succeed in doing is reward the soulless insurance corporations for their intransigence by making them even richer.
The Democrats promised that if we would just give them a 60 seat majority in the Senate, a majority in the House and a Democratic president, they would be able to finally deliver. Instead, the spineless bunch has caved, again, even on abortion rights.
What could have been their greatest moment, when they finally stood up for the people against the big-moneyed interests, has instead disintegrated into the predictable mind-numbing process we helplessly witnessed this summer and fall: Just another giveaway to the mega-corps running the country.
The big mistake, of course, was compromising right off the bat, then compromising some more, then some more, ad nauseam... all in a futile attempt to come up with some kind of “bipartisan” bill, so that the Dems could say they are “mainstream.”
Rather than take Single Payer off the table at the start, they should have used it as their bargaining position. Then, perhaps, we might have been able to at least get a real, robust public option.
Personally, I think Single Payer is the way to go. The rest of the democratic industrialized world runs its variations of it quite successfully, and we even run one already ourselves – in the form of Medicare for seniors. It’s true that when this process started, it didn’t seem could pass such a bill, being that our legislature is what it is. Still, as any negotiator knows, you don’t start out giving away the store.
But there is still a Single Payer bill alive, HR 676; and a California bill, SB 810. Now that the public option plan has become a Frankensteinian monstrosity, it’s what we ought to fight for. Thousands of doctors and nurses nationwide back it. Let’s dump the bloated giveaway bill, and go for the gold.
P.S. It’s that time again! This holiday season, give a unique, thoughtful gift, one that keeps giving all year long – the Humor Times!
Labels: health care, health care reform, health insurance, public health care option, single-payer health care
posted by James Israel @ 10:35 AM
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