Originally posted 2011-02-11 12:29:30 -0500. Bumped and promoted. - GH

(Written by an American expat living in the European Union)
There are 59 million Americans who don't have medical insurance. There are 132 million Americans who don't have dental insurance. What if there were an alternate United States where everyone was medically and dentally insured? Well it just so happens that I live in what some call the United States of Europe otherwise known as the European Union and here everyone that I see everyday is fully medically insured. They live on average longer than we do in America and they pay less for their medical system than we do in America, even though they insure 100% of their populations.
Why can't the Teabaggers see this? If they could see it, would it change anything? Would it change you? It changed me. It is possible to change America, one person at a time. All we have to do is get the word out that universal medical works in every major industrialized country in the world, therefore it can also work in America not only to provide health care but also to become America's biggest employer with jobs that pay a living wage that can't be outsourced.

"You know what," Hannity replied, "it's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option."

Time to 'Assanginate' Rupert Murdoch.

Remember the "Fair and Balanced" and "We Report, You Decide" messages that remind television viewers of the public stance of the GOP's 24/7 cable news echo-maker, Fox News Channel?

Remember, Dr. Frank Luntz , the talking points-pollster who crafts the Republican agenda into everything from the "Contract with America" through Enron's California power crisis-mandate to change national energy policy ('New Economy technology uses more electrons') to fighting the popularity of health care reform under President Obama?

Media Matters reported, today, that Fox News personalities were directed, by senior management, to make sure that on-air 'reporting' remained in-line with official Fox News verbiage for spinning references to "public option." 

A year ago, Connecticut Man1 posted "Single Payer Heroes," the news that eight protesters were arrested because they dared to leverage the 'single payer option' into roundtable hearings where we learned, only later, seats had been reserved for paying customers.

Dr. Margaret Flowers was among the heroes who wrenched their bodies onto the gears of the policy-making machine, last May.  She has proven to be a strong and credible advocate for reforming a defective healthcare system ever since.  

That's just one reason, among the many to vote for her to win the Women's Health Hero Award, but you have to do it, now, today:

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.

A little summing up of the sitch from Glenn Greenwald:

Progressives:  We want a public option!

Democrats/WH:  We
agree with you totally!  Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it,
we just don't have 60, so we can't have it.  Gosh darn that filibuster
rule.  

Progressives:  But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.

Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists:  Hey progressives, don't be stupid!  Be pragmatic.  It's not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform.  None of this their fault.  It's the fault of the filibuster.  The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they're powerless, and they just can't get 60 votes to do it.  

[Month later]

Progressives:  Hey,
great!  Now that you're going to pass the bill through reconciliation
after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love,
because you only need 50 votes, and you've said all year you have that!

Democrats/WH:
 No.  We don't have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller). 
Besides, it's not the right time for the public option.  The public
option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill --
which polls at 35% -- unpopular.  Also, the public option and
reconciliation are too partisan, so we're going to go ahead and pass
our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.

Just a very serious and pragmatic view of reality. We get it and we aren't gonna just roll over on it. Dems better deal with their problems now or they will pay the price in the voting booth. Because we do get it.

Darn, just realized the fatal flaw in that goofy plan.

She's an actual human citizen.  Sorry, that is, she's a non-corporate who circulates blood rather than the dollars able to buy all of the free speech needed to obtain an audience with our leaders.

Remember the Baucus caucus? I guess she didn't contribute to fund Senate Finance Committee reelection campaigns, or maybe not enough.

It seems so perverse since President Obama's SOTU specifically asked for the ideas she's trying to communicate to legislators for a year.

WE ARE TURNING THE TABLES ON OBAMA -- You in?

Flowers v. Obama

SINGLE PAYER IS NOW OFFICIALLY ON THE TABLE? How do I know?

ALL OF US -- with the help of Dr. Flowers --- JUST COLLECTIVELY PLACED IT
THERE. 

The challenge is
on! 

In a comment to a post by Rabbi Michael Lerner in Tikkun Daily, Kucinich Denounces Health Care Sell Out by House Dems, Jill Schmidt asked:

I don't get why insurance companies aren't for a bill that will get them 21 million more clients. If anyone out there gets it, please reply.

Jill poses an excellent question that is shared by hard-working, thoughtful Americans from coast to coast. Fortunately, Goldman Sachs revealed the answer in a perverse ten page report posted in its entirety by Huff-Po reporter Sam Stein. (Kudos to Sam for his excellent work!)

The answer also explains why we must continue to work with the Democrats who actually voted for a health care reform bill to end the tyranny of insurance corporations over our personal lives.

At least two provisions in the House  health reform bill are very troubling, the de facto repeal
of Roe v. Wade and this.  In a powerful post on the Welcome Back to
Pottersville, poster Jurassicpork laid it out.  This is as clear and
logical a statement as I've seen on the utter contempt that
Congress has for the people.  We're creating a new criminal class,
people who can't afford health insurance.  The solution - fines and
prison.  All thanks to the Money Party which has reached depths
previously unimaginable.  Well worth a read.  Michael Collins

Meet Andy Cobb, a former professional deceiver for Blue Cross Blue Shield. He’s done all the damage he could being a pretty face for Blue Cross Blue Shield’s health insurance, so now he’s branching out toward his next big whitewashing opportunity. Watch the video and vote at sickforprofit.com : Where should Andy work next: Wal Mart, Blackwater, Goldman Sachs, or FOX?

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

Originally posted Wed, 09/30/2009 - 23:05, bumped for addition of Buzzflash of post - standingup

I had the good fortune to travel to Washington, DC., and interview Senator Jeff Bingaman on September 18 about Medicare for All, the Baucus Bill and other topics related to health care reform.

Everybody's favorite diarist, Land of Enchantment, was kind enough to edit my video and post it on YouTube.

Thank you LoE for putting up with me and editing the video! It is embedded after the fold. A summary (not a transript) of Parts One and Two follows the videos for the YouTube impaired.

First, a disclaimer:

I am not a professional journalist and I happen to like my Senator. Last winter, a few New Mexico County health directors got wind of a quiet Bush Administration plan to eliminate emergency rooms serving the uninsured through an arcane change of regulations. We could not believe the lack of news coverage, and went to Senator Bingaman for help. He took on the issue (with no help from leadership in either party, or any other Senator), and successfully pushed through a moratorium on the rules changes as an amendment to the budget for Iraq.

I diaried our Medicaid Rules Adventure here and here.

He could just as easily have let all the indigent and teaching hospitals go under and then blamed the Republican Party. That's why I like him.

Here's the vid in two parts. Please don't hold the camerawork against me!

Part 1

I had the opportunity to interview New Mexico Congressman Ben Ray Lujan in his Washington office on Thursday September 17. Limited internet access while traveling, unfamiliarity with mp3 files, Rosh Hashanah and the complete failure of our household plumbing conspired to prevent me from posting the interview and transcript until today. I apologize in advance for the poor sound quality.

And I must add the following disclaimer: I am not a hard-nosed professional reporter, but rather a constituent of Congressman Lujan. I like the policies he supports. What follows is a friendly dialogue about health care between a Congressman and a constituent.

Several main points of interest emerged.