Aug 2009
The Sorry State of the U.S. Senate
Aug 26, 2009 19:03 Filed in: Health
Hunter, a regular contributor to the Daily Kos, delivers a bitter diatribe on the U.S. Senate. I fear that he is dead on.
Read and weep.
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/NA8IIey8saA/-No-More-Faith:-The-Senate-Topples-Into-Incompetence
Read and weep.
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/NA8IIey8saA/-No-More-Faith:-The-Senate-Topples-Into-Incompetence
Comments
The Near-Impossibility of Establishing a Fair and Universal Health System
Aug 06, 2009 22:14 Filed in: Health
Right now, I would say that the chances of a decent health plan are slim to none. In fact, those chances are about the same as the chances for serious reform of our financial system. Big Pharma and the banks have become so wealthy and powerful since 1981 (the beginning of Reagan’s presidency and the beginning of the end of the regulatory regime enacted during the 1930s and designed to prevent the kind of financial meltdown we recently experienced), that they can probably sink any efforts at real reform.
Obama apparently did not appreciate the utter ferocity and ruthlessness of which the rich and powerful are capable when their power and wealth are threatened. That is what we are seeing now: mobs organized by right-wing groups in the pay of the drug companies infiltrating and disrupting town meetings with representatives with the clear intent to intimidate supporters of a national health plan.
Obama made two big mistakes, in my opinion. First, he aimed too low by taking the singer-payor option off the table before he even started. A single payor insurance system is by far the best method of efficiently delivering medical care to everyone. A single payor system would, of course, put the medical insurance industry out of business, and they will do anything to prevent that from happening. Why would Obama trade away the nuclear option before the game even started? It appears that he did it in an attempt to bring the industry to the table. He also promised that he would block any measure that would cost the pharmaceutical industry more than 80 billion dollars. I suppose that he is expecting reciprocity; that is a pipe-dream.
Second, he needed a villain, and by cozying up to the health industry and the Republicans in Congress in an effort to be “bipartisan,” he eliminated two potential villains that would have more than adequately served his purposes. Without a populace charged up with a passion, either for healthcare reform or against Big Pharma or their water-carriers, the congressional Republicans and the Blue-Dogs, little is going to be accomplished.
And if nothing is accomplished, we will continue to spend 16% of our GDP on healthcare, more than twice what other industrial nations spend, and we will remain far less healthier than our counterparts.
You are going to hear much propaganda over the next few months about how the U.S. has the finest healthcare system in the world. Don’t believe it. We don’t.
Here are the rankings by the World Health Organization. Read and heed.
One simply hopes that Obama knows what he is doing. As I wrote before, he is a strategist and takes the long-term view. But things don’t look good right now.
Obama apparently did not appreciate the utter ferocity and ruthlessness of which the rich and powerful are capable when their power and wealth are threatened. That is what we are seeing now: mobs organized by right-wing groups in the pay of the drug companies infiltrating and disrupting town meetings with representatives with the clear intent to intimidate supporters of a national health plan.
Obama made two big mistakes, in my opinion. First, he aimed too low by taking the singer-payor option off the table before he even started. A single payor insurance system is by far the best method of efficiently delivering medical care to everyone. A single payor system would, of course, put the medical insurance industry out of business, and they will do anything to prevent that from happening. Why would Obama trade away the nuclear option before the game even started? It appears that he did it in an attempt to bring the industry to the table. He also promised that he would block any measure that would cost the pharmaceutical industry more than 80 billion dollars. I suppose that he is expecting reciprocity; that is a pipe-dream.
Second, he needed a villain, and by cozying up to the health industry and the Republicans in Congress in an effort to be “bipartisan,” he eliminated two potential villains that would have more than adequately served his purposes. Without a populace charged up with a passion, either for healthcare reform or against Big Pharma or their water-carriers, the congressional Republicans and the Blue-Dogs, little is going to be accomplished.
And if nothing is accomplished, we will continue to spend 16% of our GDP on healthcare, more than twice what other industrial nations spend, and we will remain far less healthier than our counterparts.
You are going to hear much propaganda over the next few months about how the U.S. has the finest healthcare system in the world. Don’t believe it. We don’t.
Here are the rankings by the World Health Organization. Read and heed.
One simply hopes that Obama knows what he is doing. As I wrote before, he is a strategist and takes the long-term view. But things don’t look good right now.