On our recent Hard Knock Radio show we sat down with former presidential and vice presidential candidates for the Green Party in 2012, Dr Jill Stein and long time human rights and anti poverty activist Cheri Honkala.. Both women weighed in on the challenges surrounding the Obamacare roll out and they offer up a number of solutions that would help improve things..
Dr Jill Stein is from Massachusetts where Romneycare was implemented. She noted that the Affordable Care Act is based on that model and she laid out what has worked and what has not work since its been the law of the land where she is from. She detailed that Romneycare was basically a giveaway for health insurance companies and that many people upon seeing that they were insured felt good until they actually got sick and realized that most of what is needed to help them was barely covered if at all under the law. She noted that many throughout the country will be in for a rude awakening under Obamacare. She asserts that what is being offered will fall far short of what is needed.
Cheri Honkala who heads up the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign talked about the needs of the folks they routinely encounter with their work. She noted that very few of them and none of the anti poverty organizations she works with were ever invited or able to give input and feedback to the Healthcare Law as it was being crafted. She concluded with Dr Stein, the reason for this was because it was ultimately designed to be a benefit for the healthcare Insurance industry. The underlying goal was privatization.
Both women talked at length about viable alternatives and noted that the real goal and solution is single-payer and medicaid for all..
Later in our interview Dr Jill and Cheri talked about the future of the green party and the Green Shadow Cabinet and how its functioning. They explained how people can be involved and detailed the work some of its key members are doing. They drafted a position paper on how to deal with the TTP (Trans Pacific Partnership ), they sent out an open letter to MoveOn.org on why we they must change directions on Obamacare . You can read that HERE.
Their big project right now is watching the federal budget talks which are hardly being talked about in the mainstream media. The Green Shadow Cabinet is set to unveil a competing budget proposal called the Peace Budget …
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