The politics of trashing the single-payer healthcare plan,
or any healthcare plan for that matter from Obama, have to do with the
Republicans humiliating him so badly that they can recapture their power. So it
is in their best interest to invite the Harry and Louise TV commercials back
(from the Clintons 1993 run at healthcare), plus a bevy of slime ads, pr types
and lobbyists to spread panic plus disinformation and defamation re Obama’s
original intention of Single-payer healthcare.
The Republican point of view is simply not to come out with
the best possible plan for you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and your children, but to
seize power even if it means having a third rate plan, which includes a Public
Option that would like to have only the most costly severe cases shuffled to
it, a Medicare that will be privatized for the most severe aging cases, neither
of which you might want to partake in. This is why Obama has been cryptically
holding back on announcing any features of this plan: to avoid the Republican shredding
machine. But, sooner or later, he has to speak, speak loudly and clearly and on
the money.
Typically, the Republicans are in bed with Big Pharma not to
improve Plan D with the $8 billion a year for 10 years (for name brands only),
or to be able to say sayonara to the insurance companies that can only give you
more care for way more money. This way they all make a bundle off your blood.
They have the nerve to talk about rationed healthcare, and waiting for
healthcare, when we already have rationed healthcare (look at your bill and
your coverage) and we have healthcare you can wait for from mammograms in Florida to an appointment for a physical in anywhere USA.
In short, our healthcare is the pits but we are paying two
and a half times more than any advanced country does for their healthcare, and
the Republicans want it to stay that way or worse. We run far behind Canada in actual care, and Europe, Japan, and other parts of Asia,
while we pay top dollar, and are told we need to put massive amounts more money
into it to bring it up to snuff.
Baloney I say. The problem is not enough money, but not
enough healthcare coming from the very-much-for-profit insurance companies that
are already overpaid.
Their numero uno business is making money, not making people
fit. Don’t ever forget that. It could cost you your life. That’s a fact, not a
scare tactic like associating a single-care payer system with socialism.
Medicare is single-payer healthcare born in the USA. It works fine for seniors and
would work better with the for-profit insurers the hell out of it for good. And
that goes for Medicaid for the poor, also singer-payer veterans’ insurance.
So the whole simple bottom line of scaring the bejesus out
of America, young, middle-aged and old, rich, middle-class or poor, is for the
for-profit insurance companies to keep their golden for-profit insurance goose
laying more and more golden eggs. That’s it. I could call this un-American
insurance, terrorist insurance, because it attempts to terrorize Americans into
voting for it. I could call this the insurance from hell (and be right on the
money) for you good Christians to fear it. After all, who wants insurance from
the devil, to make a pact with him, greedy lost angel that he is, when it comes
to life and death.
So that’s what it’s all about, misinforming you, outright
lying to you, ready to kill to keep their golden goose laying golden eggs. And
it’s about the Republicans humiliating Obama for ever mentioning single-payer
care at the beginning of his speech, or at the beginning of the primary with
Hillary, or during the campaign against John McCain. All three of these people
knew the answer. They were all three potential, viable candidates for the
highest office in the land. But none of them would dive in and commit to single-payer
universal healthcare because some lout would shout, “Socialism, the Bolsheviks
are going to eat us for lunch!” and their campaigns, maybe their careers would
be finished for good.
To me, that’s one of the most un-American things you could
do, to stifle the opinions of presidential candidates, to try to crush good
ideas because somebody’s gonna lose a few bucks over it. Medicare, Medicaid,
Veterans Benefits are each as American as apple pie and single-payer plans.
Anybody who says no must be a fascist who wants to see America
weakened health-wise and financially. Unhealthy Americans make for a threat to
our national security. Throwing money into a flabby, weak for-profit system is
the best way to mess up American health. It’s tantamount to biological or chemical
warfare, underhanded, nasty, like whomever, whatever’s poisoning the worker
bees for the last 10 years, the bees that pollinate our very food supply.
You want fear, I’ll give you fear “in a handful of dust.”
These greedy boardroom bastards look down from their skyscraper windows at so
many ants scrambling down there, not human beings exerting great strength,
daily strength in spite of all odds, to support their families, keep them
healthy, defend their nation, protect the traditions of liberty and equality.
This is who the Republicans are in bed with and the Blue Dog Democrats who
aren’t worth the name Democrat. There’s nothing democratic about them. They
want to sit in the laps of the Wall Street boys, too, and kiss their lips for
money until they bleed.
Those Wall Streeters, you may remember, are the guys like
Paulson who rushed in with a $700 billion ransom note to pay up from the
Treasury post haste or the economy would tumble down on our heads. Well, he got
his blood money, and the subprime crap is still stuck in the toilets of the
Fed, while the investment bankers got cash for it and are writing huge bonus
checks for their buddies, ushering back the lush life, warning us to feed them
more and more cash. Just the way the insurance companies are demanding more and
more for premiums with less and less coverage, bigger co-pays than ever. If you
believe this scum you’re doomed.
Enter William Kristol
William Kristol, who’s one of their big “thinkers,” and I
use term loosely, “urged his party,” noted July 24, 2009, in Bill
Moyers Journal, “to block any health care plan for fear Democrats would be
seen as, quote’ . . . the generous protector of middle-class interests.’ Now he’s
telling the GOP. to “Go for the kill . . . throw the kitchen sink [at it] . . .
drive a stake through its heart . . . we need to start over.
”So in lockstep are the Republicans that when strategist
Alex Castellanos issued a memo on the battle plan, party chairman Michael
Steele echoed it word for word in a speech at Washington’s National Press Club.
“Castellanos: ‘Slow down, Mr. President. We can’t afford to
get health care wrong.’
“MICHAEL STEELE: ‘Slow down, Mr. President. We can’t
afford to get health care wrong.’
“BILL MOYERS: Castellanos: ‘The old,
top-down Washington-centered system the Democrats propose will empower Washington to restrict
the cures and treatments your doctor can prescribe for you.’
“MICHAEL STEELE: ‘The old top-down
Washington-centered system the Democrats propose is designed to grow Washington’s
power to restrict the cures and treatments ‘your doctor can prescribe for you.’
“BILL MOYERS: Castellanos: ‘President Obama is
experimenting with America,
too much, too soon, and too fast.’
“MICHAEL STEELE: ‘Your experiment promotes --
proposes too much, too soon, too fast.’
“BILL MOYERS: As the Republicans fired away, big
business stepped up the attack, too, their lobbying and advertising guns
blazing. In certain key states where members of Congress remain on the fence,
the airwaves are vibrating with television commercials aimed at shifting hearts
and minds away from any change that might threaten profits.
“[ADVERTISEMENT SOT]: What will happen to your family’s
health care if Washington
runs it?’
“[ADVERTISEMENT SOT]: ‘Now Washington
wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the US.” BTW, read this entire link for
your own good.’
The Republicans look at this imminent defeat of single-payer
healthcare as Obama’s, Waterloo, the 1815 battle which ended Napoleon
Bonaparte’s rule as Emperor of France, “a humiliating defeat and a turning
point in European history. Right-wingers like Glenn Beck see Obama as Napoleon,
an emperor who must be stopped.”
There are the true
sickos
Somebody throw a net over them. They’re frothing at the
mouth. They’re stark raving nuts. And what does Congress do? They sit on the
fence, waiting for the next campaign contribution. As Moyers says, “The big
drug companies are already so pleased with what they’ve been promised that
they’ve brought back Harry and Louise [as mentioned earlier] –the make believe
TV Couple who helped take down the Clinton healthcare plan.”
But this isn’t new. This crap’s been going on since 1948
when Harry Truman (not exactly a socialist by any stretch) tried to introduce a
universal health care single-payer plan to the US and got hit in the face with
the same pies these guys are throwing today, except their grenades now. This is
61 years ago, folks, sixty-one! And the Repuglicans are up to their same old
tricks. Are you going to buy this and sell your health down the river? Believe
me, Harry and Louise are going to have a big fat laugh on you, because they’re
in on the scam, and the agency that created them, and the high-rollers that
paid for it.
In addition, we’ve got another golden egg, the Mandated
Insurance Plan, that’s supposed to cover the uninsured, that is, with the help
of government subsidies, that’s for 85 percent of the 47 million that can’t pay
for anything now. So this is another pre-packaged cash gift for the for-profit
insurance companies. On and on, it goes. And what we have to do, with one
voice, is tell them we don’t want a damn dime to go to the for profit-health
insurers any damn which way. Period, story over.
Let them go back to hurricanes, terrorist hijacking
airliners, and other disasters to make their untold billions. But get ’em the
hell out of healthcare. Or we will be their victims. Let’s wipe that big greedy
smile off Bill Kristol’s face and put one on every single-payer insured
Americans.’
I mean, whether this takes a month or a week to do, let’s do
it right. And right means single-payer. We can expand it state by state, year
by year, or use Medicare, starting by lowering the age of admission to people
in their 40s, as one healthcare expert suggests. But let’s just get on track
with the right train to take all the people to a better place and not crash at
the next turn in the economy. For in the long and maybe even in the short run,
we will be saving money, money not wasted on the fat cats’ bottom lines, on
investor “expectations,” Wall Street “predictions.”
So Obama, come out come out wherever you are. Show your face;
make us all proud. Speak up, and as the same healthcare expert said, go down on
your sword for this one if you have to. If this will be your measure, let it be
for the truth, for the health of the people you chose to lead and who chose you
to do it. Half-solutions, bebop botched solutions do nothing for anyone except
the greedos. And nobody gives you awards for half-finished work, or for
finishing fast. Sock the real thing to ’em, brother. Beat the politicization of
single-payer healthcare. Just do it! Jump like Jordan for the stars.
Guaranteed, you’ll land with the rest of us in a good place. I do believe that.
Amen.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York
City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of
Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at
www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.