Trading sex for health care?

That's how Tom Hartmann introduced me to Terri Carlson a couple of weeks ago.

She is a woman who understood that the backroom deals on healthcare 'reform' giving industry what it wanted signalled the alarm when it put Scott Brown into office during Massachusetts' Special January election.

The single-payer and the President...should be a collaboration rather than a challenge.

[From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-tDaaqNwXM&feature=player_embedded.]

Dr. Margaret Flowers has the healthcare answers (and
then some) that Barack Obama called for in his State of the Union
Speech. So why is he ignoring them? Time to put your money where your
mouth is, Mr. President.

HOMEWORK: (find it below the jump)

I wish that I didn't identify with this so much but the author of this piece expresses a thought I've believed characterizes so many of us, myself included.

After passage of the Senate health care reform bill today, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO echos Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) with in his statement of the need for more work in order to align its key measures with those retained in the House bill.  Full quote, as per FDL's David Dayen. is quoted in full:

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat, represents the 28th Congressional District of New York.

I agree with Congresswoman Slaughter and she says it pretty simply so I just want you to see her editorial, at CNN.

A Democrat's view from the House: Senate bill isn't health reform:

Do you REALLY still believe this is a democracy?

From the New York Times, In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’

Members of Congress submit statements for publication in the Congressional Record all the time, often with a decorous request to “revise and extend my remarks.” It is unusual for so many revisions and extensions to match up word for word. It is even more unusual to find clear evidence that the statements originated with lobbyists.


The e-mail messages and their attached documents indicate that the statements were based on information supplied by Genentech employees to one of its lobbyists, Matthew L. Berzok, a lawyer at Ryan, MacKinnon, Vasapoli & Berzok who is identified as the “author” of the documents. The statements were disseminated by lobbyists at a big law firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.


In an e-mail message to fellow lobbyists on Nov. 5, two days before the House vote, Todd M. Weiss, senior managing director of Sonnenschein, said, “We are trying to secure as many House R’s and D’s to offer this/these statements for the record as humanly possible.”

Read more

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Protesters returned to the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman

Yesterday Dailykos diarist, 'the girl', hit the recommended diary list with her post of the powerful impact one person may produce in the simple act of shining bright light into the dark space created by deception.

The inherent power over an adversary that is achieved by lying is particularly odious in application to public affairs.  Large sums of money are invested by private concerns to intentionally distort public understanding of matters of great importance, like the current policy debates on health care or climate change, for example. 

Big Tobacco and Big Oil have spent enough money in recent decades to create and sustain whole industries designed for the single purpose of misleading citizens and the decisions of our policy-makers in public affairs.

Because fairness is not part of the organization charter, corporate concerns have only the bottomline at stake which ultimately requires directors --NOT to equitable policy debates but-- to maximize shareholder value.  And, so, we documented the secret memo series through which Big Tobacco bought the GOP half of American party politics to deceptively achieve protection from legal liability beginning in 1994.

So, the big money behind the teabaggers has been trained on the biggest lies for decades already.

When 'the girl' found them also infringing the Energizer Bunny trademark (the prohibited, unfair use of a registered corporate icon) with its use in attacks on public health care policy plans, her notification of the trademark owners at Eveready was enough to move them to consider legal action. 

You wouldn't solve homelessness by making everyone pay rent or face a fine. You don't solve health care problems by mandating everyone buy insurance and allowing the companies to raise rates by 25%.

"The care denied by 'health insurers' is a death sentence."

On Oct. 29, 2009, four activists, who support a Medicare for All solution to our healthcare crisis, were arrested in Baltimore, MD, for trespassing. They were engaged in a "patients before profits sit-in" at a 17-story tower, which houses an office of the insurance giant, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. In this video, the four: Ms. Patty Courtney, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Dr. Eric Naumburg and Mr. Charles Loubert, explain their decision to choose arrest in order to serve a higher cause--the passage into law of a universal healthcare system that will serve all Americans.

For more details on the Single Payer issue, the arrests and the exact charges placed against each defendant, check out: http://mobilizeforhealthcare.org/.

Bumped and Promoted. Originally posted 2009-10-23 20:14:57 -0400. It seems that both Carol and CTMan also found this (or a very similar) video, too. -- GH

"...one of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing..."

One of the cooler expressions of guerrilla theater that I can recall!

AHIP is the powerful insurance lobby that spends 5 million dollars a week trying to kill health care reform. Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network looking to stop them - with song.

• AHIP and other insurance and HMO interests spend nearly $5 million per week undermining real health care reform, including a public option.

• AHIP has resorted to out-right lying and scare tactics to block health care reform. They sent letters that lie to seniors about what health care reform means for Medicare, and they issued a report on the costs of health care reform legislation that is so misleading even the reports embarrassed authors distanced themselves from the way AHIP used their work.

• Every year, 45,000 people die because they cant get access to the health care they need. Yet AHIP continues to stand in the way of health care reform that would provide coverage to millions of Americans because the industry is more concerned with protecting profits than saving lives.

Lyrics to "Public Option Annie"

Don't you think so?

Weiner Calls on GOP Opponents of the Public Option to Give Up Their Medicare

David Barrows: "Can you trust the corporations?"

Kevin Zeese: Under George W. Bush, the US wrote "health care for all" into the Iraqi constitution!!

 Netting $2.5 billion in profits last year wasn't enough for WellPoint, the nation's largest insurance company.

Now, WellPoint's affiliate, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is suing the state of Maine for refusing to guarantee it a profit margin in the midst of a painful recession. 

Forward this video to a friend in Maine!

http://sickforprofit.com

Better give me what I want or prepare to suffer the consequences.  It is insurance, after all, but does this sound like a protection racket to anyone else?

As I recently posted, the "Mobilization for Health Care for All" video reported that a campaign of civil disobedience would soon begin sit-ins in lobbies of insurance companies around the country to advocate universal health care.