Another Trojan horse by the baleful Boyarsky, posing as a champion of human rights, of all things! What a grotesque joke! This is the same belligerent Boyarsky that was reveling in the human rights catastrophe in Gaza last January when the zionazi wehrmacht was murdering and maiming Palestinian civilians. Aren’t human rights a ‘human right’?!! Or doesn’t that apply to Palestinians??? “Unfortunately, the significance of” Boyarsky’s message “was buried by the mass of [his] bad reporting and punditry on” health care.  So under the pretense of promoting the ‘human rights’ – at least of Americans and Israelis – the cunning Boyarsky manages to slip in a few plugs for some of his favorite causes i.e. “China joined with Russia in voting to demand that Iran stop building a nuclear facility that the Islamic Republic had long kept secret.”  But unfortunately, we’re still waiting for the U.S. to join with China and Russia to demand that Israel stop building up its nuclear facilities that the Jewish State has long kept secret. Boyarsky’s unaccountable digression continues with a lengthy blurb from the right-wing ‘Atlantic’ and then proceeds to plump for the equally bellicose Obama’s zionist-inspired agenda by reminding that he “has the all-but-impossible job of convincing an increasingly skeptical nation that Afghanistan is not a quagmire.” What a phony argument that will take! Talk about phony arguments, Boyarsky has them in spades! “The Republicans ignored Afghanistan in their support for President George W. Bush’s Iraq disaster. Suddenly, Afghanistan is their cause. And their solution for a still-weak economy and joblessness is tax cuts for the wealthy. The only reason they want to ‘put aside’ health reform is to kill it.” You don’t need Republicans to kill it, you’ve got that old zionist comrade Joe Lieberman to kill it (at the same time that he’s helping to kill Palestinians to Boyarsky’s great applause!). And as is well known, all the top Democrat’s supported Bush’s Iraq disaster and economic bailout “for the wealthy”. In fact “It will be a historic moment when the federal government begins to accept responsibility for all Americans’ health”…and for the health of Palestinians and Iraqis and Afghans and Iranians and many others impacted by American imperial foreign policy; and that of its human rights-less client states like Israel. Any “Second Bill of Rights” has to start with the rights of all, even Palestinians. “This is what we have to remember as the Senate immerses itself in the politics and numbers of health care beginning this week.” But don’t expect the deceitful Boyarsky to remember that.

There is no bill yet, and, have you even read the House version? Its crap…the “subsidies” will largely be tax credits, private insurance cant turn you down for pre-existing conditions, but they can charge you up to 5x as much; 3x as much for elderly not eligible for Medicare. Medicaid payments to drs will be cut 25%, expecting the states (broke right now, partly thanks to Dems not directing more “Stimulus” money to states rather than tax credits, which were useless neo-con crap) to pick up the tab. (the expansion of Medicaid to 200% of poverty—if it passes—will be funded for 2 yrs, then dropped by the fed)

I salmost blew chow when I heard him say how much we are going to give Pakistan in military aide, and how we will rebuild Afghanistan, when people here are living in the streets.

The for-profit medical industrial complex bailout. If thats your idea of historic, I guess.
It will go down in history as blocking true reform for decades to come.
I am tired of hearing excuses as to why the US cant do a national plan. That is all they are—excuses.Many countries had private plans, and, still do (for rich folks, or else the REGULATE them) There is only one reason we DONT do it (not cant) and thats money—lobbying money. Donations to Obama and Dems. Thats why. They are the corporate party now.

Good quotes, FRTotus

If we will not have a national plan, the very least that Congress can do it remove insurance industry’s protection from anti-trust (if health care is indeed a “product”—which , if Congress is making you buy a private plan, they surely think that it is and NOT a human right—which, people of conscience, know that it is)

Whatever happened to “the same health care that Congress has”?  What bullshit. This bill should NOT pass—-it is insurance indusstry candy

FRTothus: for the quote you listed, I think Afghanistan is more like a quicksand pit, almost always lethal for those who end up in one.

The constant drumming of fear, hate and endless war is similar to George Orwell’s book 1984.

Republicans boldy state that health care is not a human right, yet they are obsessed with banning abortion, trying to ban all birth control and some of these depraved cretins want laws on the books that if a couple is married for three years and has not produced at least one child, that they divorce and marry someone else to procreate with. Seems these heartless Repubs only want women as incubators to fill the need for cannon fodder for their endless wars and when these unfortunate soldiers who do survive the wars for entertainment for the rich, deny them medical coverage by all means necessary, that was promised them. After all, paying for the actual medical expenses needed by American society might cut into the $57,000.00 an hour these high paid crooks, I mean CEO’s steal by outrageous premiums for medical insurance.

We need to be like other countries who have medical insurance for their people, however, in those countries these insurance companies are non-profit unlike the ones in America. If our insurance companies were mandated to become non-profit as the rest of the world,according to my latest research, we would see a huge drop in medical cost. Perhaps this is the best solution, make all insurance companies non-profit, pay employees, including the higher-ups a reasonable wage and not the out and out greed and thievery we have now.
Now that would be change I could believe in.

hello. completely agree, these oafish windbags will never write me a voucher for an operation. militarism has only been (parden the slaughtering)the funnelling of tax dollars to corporations. the far east only wants the dollars to keep flowing in their direction, and are willing to backtrack when necessary. the media propaganda machine lies so regularly that they believe their own phony polls. America is on the verge of a new bill, and it will be the demopublicats using America’s credit card: and they ought to be stoned, tarred, and feathered.

Within what imaginary universe does this nonsense hold?  Obama is no FDR, and he and Reid are not “pursuing that long-sought goal”...“where Americans had the right to a decent job, home, education and ‘adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.’”  In fact, quite the opposite is the case.  Need we go into the billions and trillions handed over to the banksters, the mountains of cash handed over to the war makers?  Lies about Iran’s “secret” nuclear facility, which they are entitled to build, and are nonetheless not keeping secret, continue to be endlessly parroted by “journalists” who seek, by the alchemy of repetition, to turn the self-serving lies of a belligerant empire into accepted fact.

Boyarsky claims “[Obama’s] strategy of giving the ball to Democratic congressional leaders, rather than dictating his own health plan, now looks like a smart move.”  Mandating that the citizens buy policies from the very companies that profit from denying coverage could be characterized quite differently.  The “move” is “smart” only if the constituancy is limited to the corporations, but falls apart as venal when the citizens, the majority, are included.

Boyarsky asks, parenthetically, “What would Gen. Douglas MacArthur have said?”  Let’s ask him, how about?

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it ...”
(US General Douglas MacArthur)

Boyarsky did get something correct, though: “The challenges facing the president are immense. He has the all-but-impossible job of convincing an increasingly skeptical nation that Afghanistan is not a quagmire”  In other words, how does Obama convince a nation that is getting wise to the lies that seek to justify endless war, and convince them to disregard the evidence and accept those same lies as truth?

That’s some challenge, but I’m certain the corporate press, and the lapdogs who provide the trivia in-between the ads will, as ever, do their damndest.

“The propaganda system allows the U.S. leadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers.”
(Edward S. Herman)

“With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests.”
(Michael Parenti)

“The corporate media and pundit class increasingly function as press agents for whoever is in power.”
(Adolph L. Reed. Jr., The Progressive magazine, November 2001, p18)

Wishful thinking——maybe in 20 years.  The present health care system is too entrench to be so easily dislodged.  What the US will get in the current health care bills is akin to Medicare D——a plethora of private companies with a myriad of plans vying for the chance to put their hands in your pockets.  Currently seniors have the option of Medicare, Medicare advantage plans, Medicare D, and supplemental plans to augment Medicare.  It would be hard to come up with a more confusing system——who thinks up these things?!