Thomas, August 25 at 7:09 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

The goal of this so-called “reform” is to FORCE you to buy insurance, but let the insurance companies charge you as much as they want, with NO regulation for TEN years. It is nothing less than the ENSLAVEMENT of the American people to corporate mobsters.

By whose definition of intended reform do you arrive at such judgment? No bill has been written, no law passed, no legislation enacted, no statement by any democrat has stated this position, in fact the contrary has been trumpeted by most defenders of reform.

What we have now regarding health care seems mob like to me, costs rising rapidly, services denied, folks ousted for the crime of actually needing care yet you decry a reform effort that has come to no conclusions as yet.

If you have facts hitherto unnoticed please link to them. By the by, have you dropped the ‘G’?

We must not allow Public Single Payer Medical Care to get off the table.

The Government IS Medicare, therefore the ONLY solution for the entire country is the PUBLIC option, but NOT Medicaid; Medicaid makes people sign everything they have away for their health care.

PUBLIC OPTION ALL THE WAY for medical care, as long as Medicaid is OUT, will be the best thing the United States has ever done for the nation as a whole.

The most significant difference between a health program run by the government and one run by large corporations is that when the government’s version isn’t working well, ordinary people without extensive stock portfolios can replace the decision makers.

This is the message that we need to be sending, because nobody’s hearing it.

Whether you feel as though you have lost again to the plutocrats, you have, that is, unless you bury your compromised representatives in email, phone calls, faxes and media messages. For the latter you’ll have to create somewhat of a spectacle because that is the only thing the corporate media responds to.

If you want to continue to pay 31% for private administration costs, somewhere around 20% of your income (on the average) on health care costs, buy over-priced drugs or not buy them in order to pay the rent, see private health care executives get tens of millions in un-earned compensation, and see record banruptcies due to health care costs, then by all means, say nothing.

My plan probably won’t bankrupt me, but yours might.

Quote: “Only a few years ago, the same crowd was in a full-throated roar about how government-guaranteed Social Security benefits had to be turned into private investment accounts. They claimed—with perfectly straight faces—that we’d all do better if we retired on our Wall Street riches.”

Good point.  How many lost everything they had and now rely on Social Security as their only source of retirement funds?  I couldn’t even venture a guess, there’s probably statistics out there somewhere.  Consider that these same scammers knew, at that time….. of the recklessness of doing so.  Yet, there they were touting all it’s supposed “opportunities”, the golden eggs, the riches and an “if it glitters… it’s gold” sureties.  They make a den of thieves look like the flippin’ Welcome Wagon.

Simon Johnson and James Kwak, have an excellent article at the Washington Post regarding healthcare reality, an excerpt:

“If you are against the public option, you should be deeply, fundamentally, bitterly against Medicare.

Instead, the opponents of the public option are billing themselves as defenders of Medicare. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), for example, claims in a news release that projected reductions in the growth of Medicare spending mean “fewer choices and lower health care quality for our nation’s seniors.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082501075.html

Nauseating.  If I had a dime for everytime Boehner alone, even discounting the rest, made me want to vomit, I’d definitely be mid-middle class.

To the right, a scary government take over of health care, means that no more billions in profits can be taken from the grazing sheep.

But, then what’s really scary is the take over of government by the big corporations, especially after they wrecked the economy, and nothing happened except they got billions of tax payer dollars for essentially screwing us. And their still running the show.

The the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical, and hospital lobby is linning up for the big payday that’s coming.

Forget about health care reform this is just another way for the corporations to collect tax dollars, without competition, and with protection by the goverment for their incompetance.

We’re up to 200,000 deaths a year from medical mistakes at this point. Soon that number will seem miniscule by comparision to what the corporate take over of health care will bring.

Yes, I “misspoke” refering to “her” remark. It should have been simply “the” remark.

But, this does not detract from her use of the remark and the need to view and discuss this in the big picture from all sides. Just what kind of health insurance does the “right of the right” wish framed as the question, “if you did not have health insurance, were under 65, your employer did not offer it, make too much for Medicaid, the plans that you looked at were too expensive and not worth the cost, possibly have pre-existing conditions, what options would you expect to be available to you?” Or there abouts:-)

The status quo, contrary to Marie,  IS in fact an option, probably the option that will result from the ‘debate.’  The simple historical truth of the matter is that the US is ruled by a ruling class who controls the major corportions in neoliberal fashion and there is no public power capable of overcoming it.  The American population is stupified by TV and deluded by the learned and mass media. 

That is why a social revolution os inevitable historically; there is no other way to break the power logjam.  the neoliberals of both parties are driving the US into barbarism, as illusstrated by this struggle over medical reform.  But nobody wants to know this yet, so a revolutionary movement still is a future development.  Except for Dmitry Orlov, who is considering what is necessary fo incrreased Collapse Preparedness.

Take it easy, folks.  Cocco is characterizing “left-of-the-left” as the words of others, namely the liars and dupes of the healthcare industry.  I’ve seen the equivalent of this—“the liberal wing”—bandied about by pundits.  It gives the measure of how effective reform opponents have been in falsely framing the issue.

The words “socialized” and “socialist” are radioactive. Reform opponents know this and use it to play the yokels like a violin. If only Americans could understand that “social” means community and caring, not communism.  But they’re too busy wallowing in their consumerist trough to actually think, as the mobs at the town hall meetings illustrate.

Consider this the start of reform. We start now and
when the lies are revealed we can get real and make
health care universal and affordable,FOR EVERYONE.

Ms Cocco is just as guilty as the MSM with her remark “left of the left” used in framing the argument.

Do I really have to point out those to the ‘right of the right’ who have been chanting, “Hands off of my Medicare,” to illustrate the absurdity of using differences in abstract political ideologies to make divisions in social realities?

It was my understanding that Single Payer was favored by a majority, or at least a plurality, of the citizenry, which is a pretty big “left of the left”.

“The “left of the left” doesn’t want the type of public option currently under discussion. It wants a national, single-payer health care system modeled on Medicare. But the “left of the left” has essentially been told to shut up about a single-payer health plan because it isn’t politically feasible.”

I am unsure as to the authors definition of “left of left”. I think its meaning is twofold; those who are not willing to buy into Democratic incompetence and; those who refuse to buy into the reform of health care that is no reform.

The left has been told to shut up about pretty much everything in fact, but, I believe, had we a President with actual balls, which we do not, he and Ms. Cocco might be surprised to find that the public actually supports single payer health care when they hear both sides of the issue.

All you say is true, and the question is whether the politics of fear will be sufficient to block “reason”. 

It may very well succeed in the short term.  Americans are very fearful because there is such a primitive “safety net” in this country.  The lack of concensus about the balance between “hunger” driving capitalism versus “safety” breeding indolence is causing violent shifts.

One thing is crystal clear. The Health Insurance “racket” is running out of gas.  Even the Insurance racketeers know that they can only milk this cash cow for a short time longer and that socialized medicine like Medicare for All is the inevitable solution.

The only question is who gets to do the legislation, Democrats or Republicans and the motivation for the legislation.  Democrats will do it out of a desire for justice and fairness.  Republicans will do it out of fear of mob unruliness and bad profits.  Either way it will happen.