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Is the Healthcare Bill Racist Toward Rich Socialite & Poor Redneck Women?

March 26, 2010 By

I read this article and could only shake my head and say wow.. wow wow wow.. and shake my head again..

Davey D

http://www.examiner.com/x-6996-Louisville-Economic-Policy-Examiner~y2010m3d25-Healthcare-Reform-Taxes-Are-Racist

In a previous article I had written about how the Democrats in Washington had driven me into a state of depression caused by their relentless attacks on our nation’s Constitution, freedoms and optimistic spirit.  After Barack Obama signed this disasterous healthcare reform plan into law, one of my good friends called me to ask if my depression was better since I now had mandated healthcare insurance to help care for it.  My answer was that I was still depressed but at least now my care was so much cheaper than it had been in the past.  Right…

During that phone call, my friend also stated that I must be happy that I decided buying a tanning salon that I was thinking about buying a year or so ago.  That is of course due to that new revenue-producing 10% tax on indoor tanning salons.  Of course, the rational is that since the tanning can lead to skin cancer which can lead to a need for healthcare services, then the Democrats must do everything they can to discourage people form tanning in the first place.  There means to that end is of course ‘targeted taxation.’

So that made me wonder why the Democrats did not include a tax in their healthcare reform package against the Sun.  After all, the Sun surely causes more cases of skin cancer than all of the indoor tanning salons combined.  The Sun is very powerful – some people even claim that it is the leading cause of warming the Earth.  Of course, Al Gore and others like him claim that warming on the Earth is man-made.

Therefore, it would make much more sense to have  a Sun tax than an indoor tanning tax, so why would the Democrats not have included that in their plans?  Then it hit me – their ‘targeted’ indoor tanning tax is racist.  That is because it will disproportionately affect whites but have very little impact on some of the Democrats favorite constituencies like blacks, Latinos, Muslims and other people of color.

On the contrary, it directly targets some of the Democrats least favorite groups such as women, especially wealthy socialite women and poor redneck women – two groups that seem to make up the bulk of the indoor tanning customer base.  Democrats and liberals have shown their misogynistic views toward women in their treatments of Hillary Clinton in the most recent presidential primary and Sarah Palin since she has become a household name.  And this tanning tax hits my area of the country particularly hard.  Another friend of mine often comments that he sees more tanned women in the Kentuckiana than he saw in the years when he lived in an area of New Mexico which had a high Latino and Native American population.

But this tanning tax does not just affect women it also affects white men as well, like myself.  I admit that I use indoor tanning services myself at the advice of my doctor to treat some occasional flare-ups of psoriasis.  That is pretty much my one and only medical need at this time in my life.  So thanks to the Democrats’ healthcare reform plan, my healthcare expenses will go up by 10% in the near future.

So clearly this healthcare reform plan is racist and discriminatory against whites and should therefore be deemed (since it is so easy to just ‘deem’ things these days) unconstitutional.  At the very least, this legislation should be sent back and amended to include a Sun tax which will can be applied failrly to people of all color.  Plus, just think about how happy Al Gore will be because if we can somehow tax away the effects of the Sun then he will finally be able to prove that humans are the cause of planetary warming.

Rob Binsrick

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Did Obama Inc. Threaten Dennis Kucinich & Make Him Fold on Healthcare?

March 18, 2010 By

Kucinich had been given an offer that he felt he could not refuse.The Obama administration has finished the job it started in January, 2009: crush the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to clear the way for corporate governance. Rep. Dennis Kucinich‘s was the last Left opposition to Obama’s toxic health care legislation. “Once Obama’s private insurers’ bailout bill is in place, it will be almost impossible to dismantle in the foreseeable future.

”A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click link below to hear Commentary

http://www.swift.fm/mrdaveyd/song/29339/

“There is nothing for a true progressive to do in Obama’s Democratic Party.”

The last Left Democrat in the U.S. Congress has folded his hand, crushed by Wall Street’s servant in the White House, Barack Obama.

Until Wednesday morning, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich was the only opposition from the Left still holding out against Obama’s private insurance subsidy bill – a massive redistribution of wealth to Wall Street masquerading as health care reform. The bill was long ago stripped of any fig leaf of a “public option,” and now awaits passage in its pure form – the formal establishment of a private health care system in which the people are forced to finance the profits of some of the biggest players in the Wall Street casino, the insurance corporations. Far from a step forward towards a society in which health care is every person’s right, the Obama bill is a huge step backward in the opposite the direction from which the entire industrialized world has been traveling. Obama’s so-called reform is in fact, a defeat of the dream of universal health care.

Obama used every trick at his disposal to place that dream out of reach. He pulled a shameless bait and switch on health care, talking the language of universality while conniving to transfer trillions of public dollars to the private insurance industry. Once Obama’s private insurers’ bailout bill is in place, it will be almost impossible to dismantle in the foreseeable future.A trillion dollars buys lots of loyalty. And to make certain that nobody ever gets to cancel the corporate bailout, the Obama regime would prevent states from setting up their own universal health care programs.

“Kucinich was adamant that he had not changed his assessment of the president’s health care proposals.”

Obama knew that, if he were to have any chance to pass a private health insurance subsidy bill, he would first have to bludgeon the Left into submission. In the course of a little over a year, he has accomplished that mission.

To drive Kucinich back to the corporate Democratic reservation, the White House let loose the yapping dogs of the Daily Kos and MoveOn, who threatened to back an opposition candidate to Kucinich in his home district. President Obama personally browbeat Kucinich four times in the last several weeks, the last time on Monday night. According to the London Daily Telegraph, Obama threatened to refuse to campaign for any Democratic congressperson that doesn’t back his health bill – an invitation to the fat cats to fund challengers to Kucinich in November.

In a Wednesday morning press conference announcing his surrender to the White House, Kucinich was adamant that he had not changed his assessment of the president’s health care proposals. “I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past,” he said. “This is not the bill I wanted to support.” But Kucinich had been given an offer that he felt he could not refuse.It was, said the congressman, “a defining moment.”

And it was a defining moment for those who believe there is anything politically worthwhile that can be accomplished within the structures of the Democratic Party, now firmly controlled by its corporate wing. There is nothing for a true progressive to do in Obama’s Democratic Party, but shut up, and roll over. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

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Senate Panel Rejects a ‘Public Option’ in Health Plan

September 29, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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Booooo to Max Baucus, Boo to Bill Nelson and Boo to all other spineless Democrats who voted to get rid of the public option. Yes we knew this was gonna happen. Yes, we know they are on the take-all that lobbying money  was hard to resist.. Yes, we know , we know, but booo to them anyway. Well I guess all we can do is sit back and watch the movie..as we watch people vote against their interests..

D

Senate Panel Rejects a ‘Public Option’ in Health Plan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/health/policy/30health.html?_r=2

Healthcare tableWASHINGTON — After a half-day of animated debate, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected efforts by liberal Democrats to add a government-run health insurance plan to major health care legislation, dealing the first official setback to an idea that many Democrats, including President Obama, say they support.

All of the other versions of the health care legislation advancing in Congress — a bill approved by the Senate health committee and a trio of bills in the House — include some version of the government-run plan, or public option.

But the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, long ago removed it from his proposal because of stiff opposition from Republicans who call the public plan a step toward “socialized medicine.”

The committee on Tuesday afternoon voted, 15 to 8, to reject an amendment proposed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, to add a public option called the Community Choice Health Plan, an outcome that underscored the lack of support for a government plan among many Democrats.

Mr. Baucus voted no, as did Senators Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, , and Bill Nelson of Florida, joining all 10 Republicans in opposition.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who voted in favor of the proposal, said supporters of the public option would keep on fighting. He has offered a separate amendment to establish such an option.

“We are going to keep at this and at this and at this until we succeed, because we believe in it so strongly,” he said.

Advocates of a public plan say it would provide crucial competition for private insurers and that the larger goals of the legislation, to extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and to slow the steep rise in health care costs, cannot be achieved without it.

The debate came as the Finance Committee resumed debate over the health care bill after a three-day weekend because of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

After the vote on Mr. Rockefeller’s proposal, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, was scheduled to put forward his own public option amendment and it, too, was expected to be defeated.

In the emotionally charged debate, Mr. Rockefeller railed against the practices of private insurers, who he suggested were largely preying on a defenseless American public. “They’re getting away with terrible things,” he said.

But Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, stepped in to voice his party’s fierce opposition to the idea of government-run insurance.

“A government run plan will ultimately force private insurers out of business,” Mr. Grassley said, adding that supporters of the public option were trying to open a back door toward a fully government-run, or single-payer, health system like those in Canada or England.

“Public option is a step toward a completely government run plan that they are hoping for,” Mr. Grassley said.

And he rejected assertions by Democrats, including Mr. Rockefeller, that the public plan would compete fairly because it would have to follow the same rules as private insurers.

“The federal government will not only be running the plan, it will also be running the market in which it competes with the private plans and that doesn’t sound like a level playing field to me,” Mr. Grassley said.

Democrats quickly rose up to answer the charges, including Mr. Schumer, who challenged Mr. Grassley to spell out his views on Medicare, the government insurance plan for Americans over age 65 and for the disabled.

“I just want to know what you think of Medicare, which is a much more government-run program,” Mr. Schumer said.

“I think that Medicare is part of the social fabric of America just like Social Security is,” Mr. Grassley said. “To say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best system that it could be.”

“But it is a government-run plan,” Mr. Schumer shot back.

Mr. Grassley, a veteran Senate debater, insisted that Medicare did not pose a threat to the private insurance industry. “It’s not easy to undo a Medicare plan without also hurting a lot of private initiatives that are coupled with it,” he said.

Mr. Schumer pounced. “You are supportive of Medicare,” he said. “I just don’t understand the difference. That’s a government-run plan and the main knock you have made on Senator Rockefeller’s amendment, and I am sure on mine, is that it’s government-run.”

The efforts by Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Schumer to add a public plan to the bill were really just a dress rehearsal for a fuller battle that will play out on the Senate floor in the weeks ahead.

Senate Democratic leaders, however, do not believe there will be sufficient support to add the public option to the bill.

Aides to the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, say that he will not include a provision for the public option when he combines the measures coming out of the finance and health committees.

Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Schumer and other supporters of a government-run plan will bring floor amendments trying once again to add it to the legislation.

And even when the debate over the public option is taken up on the Senate floor, most likely it will not be finished.

There is wider support for a government-run insurance plan in the House, where the Democratic caucus is more liberal. And if the House bill includes a public option, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated, the issue will ultimately be decided in a conference proceedings to reconcile the Senate and House bills.

As an alternative, Mr. Baucus included in his bill a proposal to create private, nonprofit health insurance cooperatives to compete with private insurers.

The Congressional Budget Office has questioned whether the cooperatives would really have much effect. And there are Democrats and Republicans on the Finance Committee who have proposed amendments that would strip the cooperative provisions.

The main architect of that proposal, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said during the committee debate that it would provide “strong not for profit competition to the private insurers.” But he warned that hospitals in his home state would be devastated by Mr. Rockefeller’s proposal, which would initially tie the public plan’s payment rates to the rates paid by Medicare.

Many hospitals, doctors and other health care providers say Medicare rates are too low.

Mr. Conrad urged his colleagues to consider his alternative,. “We have gotten locked in a very sterile debate ,” he said.

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Obama Punks Out to GOP & Insurance Companies-Public Option is Outta Here

August 17, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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I am here in Washington DC this morning and all this weekend the buzz is Obama has already cut a backroom deal with the insurance companies and skittish Senators. He seems determined to once and for all publicly derail the Public Option. Translation people are now at the mercy of insurance companies. Translation a whole lot of folks are about to be screwed royally.

If Obama backs out as indicated it will mean a loss and hence you can expect all other controversial measures including Immigration Reform to be off the table. You can also expect a more aggressive GOP, in spite being the minority to be embolded and may actually push to put the smash on people even more.

The lesson here is that folks who came out in record numbers and organized to put Obama into office will have to take that same energy and fight to make sure their aspirations and expectations are met and they have a seat at the table.

The other thing to note is that Obama and his healthcare team did very little to reach out to the hordes of young people who voted him into office on this issue. He didn’t reach out to them for ideas, help or even to target them in commercials. He did very little outreach to poor communities and communities of color.

This is a bad, bad, bad, look for President Obama

-Davey D-

White House appears ready to drop ‘public option’

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090816/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_overhaul

BarackObama-175WASHINGTON – Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama‘s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. Such a concession probably would enrage Obama’s liberal supporters but could deliver a much-needed victory on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers.

Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess. Obama had wanted the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation’s almost 50 million uninsured, but didn’t include it as one of his core principles of reform.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that government alternative to private health insurance is “not the essential element” of the administration’s health care overhaul. The White House would be open to co-ops, she said, a sign that Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory.

Under a proposal by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., consumer-owned nonprofit cooperatives would sell insurance in competition with private industry, not unlike the way electric and agriculture co-ops operate, especially in rural states such as his own.

With $3 billion to $4 billion in initial support from the government, the co-ops would operate under a national structure with state affiliates, but independent of the government. They would be required to maintain the type of financial reserves that private companies are required to keep in case of unexpectedly high claims.

“I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” Sebelius said. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.”

Obama’s spokesman refused to say a public option was a make-or-break choice.

“What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday.

A day before, Obama appeared to hedge his bets.

“All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”

It’s hardly the same rhetoric Obama employed during a constant, personal campaign for legislation.

“I am pleased by the progress we’re making on health care reform and still believe, as I’ve said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest,” Obama said in July.

Lawmakers have discussed the co-op model for months although the Democratic leadership and the White House have said they prefer a government-run option.

Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called the argument for a government-run public plan little more than a “wasted effort.” He added there are enough votes in the Senate for a cooperative plan.

“It’s not government-run and government-controlled,” he said. “It’s membership-run and membership-controlled. But it does provide a nonprofit competitor for the for-profit insurance companies, and that’s why it has appeal on both sides.”

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said Obama’s team is making a political calculation and embracing the co-op alternative as “a step away from the government takeover of the health care system” that the GOP has pummeled.

“I don’t know if it will do everything people want, but we ought to look at it. I think it’s a far cry from the original proposals,” he said.

Republicans say a public option would have unfair advantages that would drive private insurers out of business. Critics say co-ops would not be genuine public options for health insurance.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, said it would be difficult to pass any legislation through the Democratic-controlled Congress without the promised public plan.

“We’ll have the same number of people uninsured,” she said. “If the insurance companies wanted to insure these people now, they’d be insured.”

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said the Democrats’ option would force individuals from their private plans to a government-run plan as some employers may choose not to provide health insurance.

“Tens of millions of individuals would be moved from their personal, private insurance to the government-run program. We simply don’t think that’s acceptable,” he said.

A shift to a cooperative plan would certainly give some cover to fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats who are hardly cheering for the government-run plan.

“The reality is that it takes 60 percent to get this done in the Senate. It’s probably going to have to be bipartisan in the Senate, which I think it should be,” said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., who added that the proposals still need changes before he can support them.

Obama, writing in Sunday’s New York Times, said political maneuvers should be excluded from the debate.

“In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain,” he wrote. “But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing.”

Congress’ proposals, however, seemed likely to strike end-of-life counseling sessions. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has called the session “death panels,” a label that has drawn rebuke from her fellow Republicans as well as Democrats.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, declined to criticize Palin’s comments and said Obama wants to create a government-run panel to advise what types of care would be available to citizens.

“In all honesty, I don’t want a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats setting health care for my aged citizens in Utah,” Hatch said.

Sebelius said the end-of-life proposal was likely to be dropped from the final bill.

“We wanted to make sure doctors were reimbursed for that very important consultation if family members chose to make it, and instead it’s been turned into this scare tactic and probably will be off the table,” she said.

Sebelius spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week.” Gibbs appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Conrad and Shelby appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” Johnson, Price and Ross spoke with “State of the Union.” Hatch was interviewed on “This Week.”

written by Phillip Elliott

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Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

July 23, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama’s left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?

healthcare_again

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-health-care-plan-really-better-nothing

The health care debate inside and outside the matrix

Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you’re inside or outside the matrix.

Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan is at last making its way through Congress. It’s being fought by greedy private insurance companies, by chambers of commerce, by Republican and some Democratic lawmakers.

Under the Obama plan, we’re told, employers will have to insure their employees or pay into a fund that does it for them. Individuals will be required under penalty of law to buy private insurance policies and for those that can’t afford it or prefer not to use a private insurer there will be something called a “public option.” This “public option, the story goes, is bitterly fought by the bad guys because it will make private insurers accountable by competing with them, forcing them to lower their costs. Both the president’s backers and opponents agree that the whole thing will be fantastically expensive, and the president proposes to fund it with cuts in existing programs like Medicaid which pay for the care of the poorest Americans and a tax on those making more than $300,000, later raised to $1 million a year.

The “public option” has that magic word “public” in it, and that’s reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.

That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.

What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama’s left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama’s way or the Republicans’ way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.

But bubbles are delicate things. Keeping this one intact requires so many vital topics to be avoided, so many inquiring eyes to be averted, so many fruitful conversations to be squelched that it’s hard to see how the president, the bipartisan establishment and the corporate media can pull it all off.

The real Obama Plan: doesn’t cover the uninsured till 2013, if then.

The first clue that something is deeply wrong with the Obama health care proposal is its timeline. According to a copyrighted July 21 AP story by Ricardo Alfonso-Zaldivar,

“President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won’t be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.

“In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.”

According to a peer reviewed 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine, 62% of the nation’s 727,167 non-business bankruptcies were triggered by unpayable medical bills in 2007. Most of these had health insurance when they fell ill or were injured, but with loopholes, exclusions, high deductibles and co-payments, or were simply dropped when they got sick. In 2008 that figure was 66% of 934,000 personal bankruptcies and in 2009 it could approach 70% of 1.1 million bankruptcies. And 18,000 Americans die each year because medical care is unaffordable or unavailable. Waiting till 2013 means millions of families will be financially ruined and tens of thousands will die unnecessarily.

If the Johnson administration with no computers back in the sixties could implement Medicare for 45 million seniors in under a year, why does it take three and a half years in the 21st century to cover some, but not all, of America’s fifty million uninsured? And why does the Obama Plan make us wait till after the next presidential election? Politicians usually do popular things and run for election on the resulting wave of approval. Delaying what ought to be the good news of universal and affordable health care for all Americans till two elections down the road is a strong indication that they know the good news really ain’t all that good. And it’s not.

Inside the matrix of TV, the corporate media and on much of the internet, discussion of the Obama plan’s timeline, the human cost of another three years delay, and the comparison with Medicare’s 11 month rollout back in the days before computers are almost impossible to find. We can only wonder why.

The Obama plan is about health insurance, not health care.

As BAR has been reporting since January 2007, the Obama plan is not a health care plan at all, it is a health insurance plan. Based largely upon the failed model in place in Massachusetts since 2006, the Obama plan will require employers to provide coverage or pay a special tax. Everybody not covered by an employer will be required to purchase insurance under penalty of law, in much the same manner as you’re currently required to buy car insurance.

“In my state,” testified Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School last month before Congress, “beating your wife, communicating a terrorist threat and being uninsured all carry $1,000 fines.”

As in Massachusetts, the health insurance plans people are forced to buy will cost a lot and won’t cover much. In a July 20 National Journal article Dr. David Himmelstein says,

“Nearly every day that he is in the clinic, Himmelstein says, he sees a patient who has problems paying for care “despite this reform.’ Some of them had free care before the 2006 law took effect but are now expected to handle co-payments. If you’re not poor enough to get a subsidy, say you’re making $30,000 a year, you’re required to buy a policy that costs about $5,000 a year for the premium and has a $2,000 deductible before it pays for anything. For substantial numbers of people, it’s effectively not coverage,’ Himmelstein said. The policy he described is about the cheapest Massachusetts plan available, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program report, which Himmelstein co-wrote.”

A family of four making under $24,000 a year in Massachusetts gets its insurance premium free, but is still expected to cough up deductibles and co-payments and live with loopholes and exclusions that often deny care to those who need it. And in both the Massachusetts and Obama plans, funds to pay those premiums come out of the budgets of programs like Medicaid that already pay for care for the poorest Ameicans.

The Obama plan’s “public option” is a bait-and-switch scam

A July 21 pnhp.org article titled “Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold” outlines how the public option is neither public, nor an option.

“Public option” refers to a proposal… that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today…

“Hacker (its author) claimed the program, which he called “Medicare Plus” in 2001 and “Health Care for America Plan” in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient – large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead…

“Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population.”

The White House is committed to twisting arms in the both houses of Congress and reconciling the two versions of Democratic bills to emerge from the House and Senate. What emerges will be the Obama plan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate version of the Democrats’ pending health care legislation leaves 33 million uninsured and omits the public option altogether. The House version includes a “public option” estimated to cover only 10-12 million people, a number far too small for it to create price pressure on private insurance companies, while leaving 16 or 17 million uninsured. Instead of setting prices for health care, it will be forced to pay whatever tthe private insurers already pay, and perhaps more.

As private insurers use their marketing muscle to recruit younger, healthier people who’ll pay for but not use their benefits, the public option will be a dumping ground for the customers they don’t want… the middle-aged, the poor, those with pre-existing conditions. And of course the Obama plan’s “public option’ will be managed by contractors from the private insurance industry.

Private insurers spend a third of every health care dollar on non-health related things like bonuses, denial machinery, advertising, lobbying and bad investments. Medicare spends 2 or 3% on administrative overhead. Bush’s “enhanced Medicare” administered by private insurance contractors, spends about 11% on overhead. That’s about what we should expect from the Obama public option. So much for change.

So far, discipline is holding. Nobody in corporate media, the administration, or among Democrats in Washington has gotten round to telling us that the public option has been eviscerated. But its powerful appeal and the awesome power of the word “public” are offered by Obama supporters as the central reasons to shut up, clap harder, and get behind the president on this.

Taxing the rich, paying for health care. How the Obama Plan stacks up against single payer.

Along with being funded by cuts in Medicaid, the Obama plan is supposed to be funded by taxing those who make $300,000 or more per year. That’s not a bad thing. The wealthy don’t pay nearly enough taxes. But the US already spends more on health care than anyplace else on the planet while leaving a greater portion of its population uninsured than anybody.

The Obama plan will not contain costs. It will subsidize the insurance vampires well into the next decade. On the other hand, single payer would eliminate the private insurance industry altogether. In many advanced industrial countries, most of the practices private insurers follow here, such as cherry picking healthy patients while dumping and denying sick ones, are illegal. Why can we do that?

Single payer, according to a study by the California Nurses Association would eliminate 550,000 jobs in private insurance while creating 3.2 million new ones in actual health care. It would be responsible for $100 billion in wages annually and a source of immense tax revenues for local governments.

So is the Obama plan really better than nothing?

The Obama plan seems calculated to buy time for private insurers, to end the health care discussion for a decade or more without solving the health care problem, do so in a way that discredits the very idea of everybody in- nobody out health care. It will leave tens of millions uninsured, a hundred million or more underinsured, and the same parasitic private interests in charge of the American health care system that run it now.

The Obama plan as it now stands requires us to let another 18,000 die for each of the next three years and allow more than a million additional families to be bankrupted by medical expenses before we can judge whether or not the plan is working. It’s easy to imagine Obama partisans telling us in mid 2013 that it’s still too early to be sure.

The Kucinich amendment, which allows the few states wealthy enough to try it the liberty to fashion their own single payer regimes is intended to attract progressives and single payer votes in Congress without breaking the bubble. By itself, it should not be a reason to support this bill.. The wealthiest state in the union is probably California, and it’s handing out IOUs instead of salaries this month. It’s hard to see what would be lost if this health care bill went down in flames, and we started over again next year.

Can he get away with it?

Maybe. Maybe not. If the corporate media and the president can keep discussion of the devilish details to a minimum, if they can silence, co-opt and intimidate the forces to Obama’s left — if they can keep most of the public inside their bubble of fake reality, Barack Obama may achieve his goal of thwarting the reform that most of the American people want — an everybody in, nobody out single payer health care system on the model of Canada or Australia, or Medicare for All. It won’t be close, it won’t be easy, and with nothing to be gained, progressives shouldn’t make it any easier.

Since the president’s success depends mostly on keeping people silent and in the dark, he will probably be unable to mobilize the 13 million phone numbers and email addresses collected during the recent presidential campaign, and now held by OFA, his campaign arm. If an organizing call went out to them, too many would try to read the bill and discuss the options, and such a discussion could easily get out of hand. When OFA called house meetings on health care last December, the most frequently advanced question was why we couldn’t or shouldn’t get a single payer health care system.

Single payer isn’t dead yet. It’s very much alive among Barack Obama’s own supporters. To succeed, he has to bury it alive, to keep them in the bubble, in the dark and quiet, or clapping so loudly they cannot hear themselves or each other think. It’s not over.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor at BAR, and can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , , ,