What "Reform" Really Means - Windfall 4 Insurance Companies
Yes, you loved the speech. But do you know what public option really is? Do you understand what was proposed last night and how it will impact healthcare?
Hint: It is a bailout/corporate welfare for the Insurance industry and big Pharma. These are the bad actors who have created the crisis. Do you really want them to be rewarded with even more profit?
Congressman Kucinich lays it out clearly and plainly:
Remember:
Single Payer (Medicare for all) HR 676 which has 93 sponsors is the solution, not massive profits for insurance companies due to mandatory buy ins as proposed by the so called "public option."
We need heathcare access, not access to insurance.
Health insurance should go the way of the buggy whip.
Heath insurance is the problem. More of it is not the solution.
Health insurance adds 15 to 30 percent to the cost of healthcare, but what value does it add?
Read the text of HR 676 which is more than what most Congressional Reps do before voting on bills. You will ask yourself, why is this not the bill being championed by the president and passed by those big majorities in both houses?
Call the switchboards and demand true reform. Demand HR 676.
Call the White House: 202-456-1111
Call Your Representative in Congress: 202-224-3121
Call Your Senators: 202-224-3121
Update - email from Kucinich:
Health Care or Insurance Care - Take Your Pick
Dear Friends,
A National Health Care for All Conference Call from Washington, DC, at 10 pm EDT, today, Thursday, September 10th at 1-800-230-1096. Join us, so that we can discuss a new beginning for "Health Care For All" and ways in which we can all help. Pre-registration is necessary in order to reserve sufficient phone lines. Please RSVP here. When you call in and the operator asks, "what conference call?" tell the operator, "Health Care for All."
The President's health care policy speech was brilliant but when you get into the details another picture emerges. Unfortunately, at this point, the proposal outlined last night is the ultimate corporate giveaway. It's not health care, it’s insurance care. As many as thirty million new customers for an insurance industry which makes money not providing health care. The only way this country will see true health is by investing in real health care. That is the essence of HR676, the single payer bill.
The President opened his speech speaking of how we have solved the economic crisis - how? By rewarding those who caused the crash! Is this the way we solve the health care crisis? Rewarding the insurance companies? Helping insurance and pharmaceutical stock to soar, propping up markets while skimping on health care? The very same system which caused the health care crisis is being rewarded with the guarantee of tens of millions of new customers mandated - by law - to have health care. The latest plan rewards the very companies that have denied treatment, denied care, denied drug coverage while their profits grow daily.
The only way this country will see true sustainable economic recovery is through investment in the real economy, priming the pump through job creation. The only way this country will see true health is by investing in real health care.
The "public option" has been relegated to insignificance. What we will now get is yet another "private option", not a public option, because single-payer is "off the table." We the people deserve better. We have been faced with general warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan - multi-trillion dollar ballouts for arms merchants, $12 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, bailouts to coal and nuclear industries, and now proposed huge subsidies for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. What's wrong with this picture? Everything!
Please join our national conference call tonight at 1-800-230-1096. Contribute to the start up. Join the movement. Sign the online petition. We must organize for the long term success of a state and national single payer movement. I need your help to initiate this action. If you believe, as I do, that we can and must begin a new long-term state-by-state grassroots effort to create a single-payer, not-for-profit health care system, please contribute now at Kucinich.us
Let us act now and initiate a Health Care for All action plan.
- A National Health Care for All Conference Call from Washington, DC, at 10 pm EDT, Thursday, September 10th at 1-800-230-1096. Join us, so that we can discuss our new beginning and ways in which we can all help. Pre-registration is necessary in order to reserve sufficient phone lines. Please RSVP here. When you call in and the operator asks, "what conference call?" tell the operator, "Health Care for All."
- Health Care Meet-Ups. A resource to organize people around the single payer option.
- On-line petition. Please contact your lists, your family and friends. Please sign the petition for a single payer system. I will deliver the petitions directly to your Congressperson.
- Petition to download, print and circulate among friends and neighbors - including an instruction sheet.
- Tell A Friend. Every email forwarded will make a difference? Please use the "Forward Email" link below to circulate up to 5 emails at a time to your friends.
Thank you.
Sincerely.
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Chauncey DeVega
Winterene
def
the traveler
James and Lois Cowan
Redpossum
Salon.com
Comments
Heath insurance is the problem. More of it is not the solution.
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Health insurance adds 15 to 30 percent to the cost of healthcare, but what value does it add?" this sounds like 'commonsense'
I want it all gone. The whole thing. I want "socialized" medicine. I don't want to pay to keep United Healthcare's lights on anymore.
I'm paying $4000 a year before I ever see a doctor or fill a prescription. Put that into taxes! Cover everyone!
Universal single payer health care - NOW.
Rip off the band-aid!
Man the torpedos!
Hoist the black flag!
LET'S DO THIS THING!
And I would have voted for Kucinich for president if I had gotten the opportunity.
Extending coverage to everyone, subsidizing those who can't afford coverage, holding the insurance companies accountable by not letting them drop people or exclude them because of pre-existing conditions, removing caps on benefits and capping out of pocket expenses IS REAL, MEANINGFUL REFORM.
Those things address the core issues that most need addressed. I'm getting real tired of the negativity from the left. Now is not the time to fracture.
Yep, there are some details to be ironed out, all right.
Pres Obama had a chance to be a real statesman - perhaps even do an FDR and say "I welcome their hatred!" But no, even after he talked about how his mother died fighting insurance companies, he still gave them props.
We do not have a health care industry in this country. We have a sickness industry, where insurers and hospital corporations make ridiculous sums based upon the illness of the participants (us!) We need to outlaw insurance for profit in healthcare (except for things people want rather than need, like facelifts), make medicare available for all (easy to do so revenue neutral too) and stop trading the health of Americans on Wall Street.
Validating others is so low on my list, it isn't even on my list.
What you call negativity is honesty.
Stay high on hopium all you want, but reality is dealt on this street corner.
Did you bother to listen to Kucinich?
More insurance is not reform.
As to the idea that the left should stop asking or demanding while the right continues to natter on; a vibrant, true democracy demands that its citizens speak truth to power. Major changes requires all kinds, the people who kick in the doors and the people who are inside cutting the deal.
The worst part was the "I will veto it if it raises the deficit by a dime" nonsense. What will he do if Congress passes a great bill (yeah, I know; this is definitely a hypothetical) that raises the deficit by $10? A smart politician should never commit himself to a specific result like that, when he has no control over the outcome.
It really looks like Obama thinks he can win over the republicans by convincing them that he's right. How he is able to maintain that belief is beyond me. Of course, it's possible he just made that speech to convince his followers that he did everything he could to pass real reform, so they'll forgive him when he fails. And if he's able to make them believe that, it would be pretty impressive.
"I thought Obama's speech was great; what's starting to bother me is, the more I look at the meaning behind the rhetoric, the more it becomes apparent that whatever health care reform we get isn't going to fix the central problems with our broken system. They want mandatory coverage, which means fines against people who don't want to pony up to the insurance companies. The reform isn't going to bring down health care costs, and there will most likely be no public option, nor any other competition to an insurance industry which has already demonstrated it is more interested in the bottom line than in providing a fair deal to people who need coverage. What that means is, you either give your money to thieves and parasites or get hit with stiff penalites by the government. What a bargain for the American people huh?"
It amazes me that people are still celebrating the speech as if it was anything more than pretty words. We fucking lost; welcome to serfdom everybody.
No. Progressives will kill the thing if it really goes down like that.
Progressives, we need to think about ending this marriage with the Dems--we are, at least, as strong in numbers as the savage Repub base.
From CNN today: The Gang unveiled their plan today -- there is no public option, but:
" It also makes health insurance mandatory for all Americans, offering tax credits to those who couldn't otherwise afford it. It sets up exchanges where consumers can shop for the coverage they want, and it expands and standardizes Medicaid, health care for the poor.
Probably the most controversial provision is for nonprofit member-owned cooperatives. In place of a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers."
If this plan goes forward as is, it would be a win for the insurance lobby. One hopeful sign is that the speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi recognizes this...
"WHITFIELD: All right, Brianna Keilar, on Capitol Hill, thanks so much. Appreciate that.
So, this Baucus bill, as Brianna was just reiterating, does not have a provision for a public option, a government-run insurance plan. So, does that weaken the Obama administration's argument for a public option?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in, speaking exclusively to CNN, and she says, no, but...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: If we are going to mandate health insurance for all Americans, if we're going to subsidize that health care for tens of millions of people, how can we give all of these new consumers to the health insurance industry with no accountability, no competition? And no real challenge for them to honor the reforms that we have in the bill. No, we're in pretty good shape on that."
Will accountability mean keeping costs down, providing healthcare for everyone as opposed to mandating health insurance for everyone by 2013? Probably not.
Anthony Wiener's H.R. 676 provides universal coverage for everyone from birth. That would be real reform.