Spineless Democrats & Pres, No Real Health Care Reform, Democrats Lose in 2010, Return of the Republicans--The Future after Collapse of HC Reform

Well, here we go again with a spineless Democratic party and President-- Our election of President Obama to lead a stronger and more assertive progressive Democratic party that would fight on behalf of the real needs of the American people seems to be completely collapsing under the onslaught of big money and big Private Health Insurance, and everything big except a real willingness to fight for what the great majority of the American people have been demanding-- true health insurance reform, with a public option.

Now even the Medicare buy-in seems to be getting jettisoned so that the most spineless of Democratic parties, caving even to Sen. Lieberman, can say it has gotten something done before Christmas. It's gotten something done alright! If this kind of weak excuse for a health reform bill is what we get for all our hard work over the last year, we will be getting the equivalent of a gigantic lump of dirty coal (or more like a gigantic lump of s--t!) in our stockings for the holidays-- thanks to a weak Democratic caucus and President unwilling to fight for anything other than their own status quo--so spineless they're allowing Sen Lieberman, of all people, to determine the fate of health reform!

Democrats, there is no surer formula than this to guarantee that you will lose miserably in 2010, and all Americans will lose with you, since if we end up with another Republican resurgence next year, even the few hopes we had for some kind of progressive agenda during the first years of the Obama admin. will be dashed to pieces.

And here's the future we'll be facing, as you sell the soul of Democratic reform to obtain your mess of pottage: the Democratic House will lose a bunch of seats in the 2010 election; Obama will continue to lose popularity as those who hoped he would fight for true health care reform lose all hope in him, and the Democrats will lose the White House in 2012, all because the hopes for progressive Democratic reform were completely abandoned over health care.

Thanks again, dear Democratic Senators, for being so completely spineless, and for condemning us to a return to Republican regression and stupidity and to the collapse of any hope for bringing sanity back to our government.

And now, after betraying the hope of this country's people, just go off to your holidays, with your own great health insurance coverage, paid for by the tax dollars of those of us who cant even afford health insurance, and please by all means enjoy yourselves for your great work done!

For shame on you all! You make me sick to my stomach and my soul.

For Washington's Imperial Elite, the Health of Our People is a Luxury, while War is a Necessity: This is the Way All Empires End

And if our current political leadership, under the Obama administration, does not soon reverse the tragic course of many decades of thinking that culminated in the disastrous imperial escapade of the Bush administration--if our current political leadership does not soon reject the corrupt mentality of imperial overreach that has brought our nation to the brink of internal collapse--we will inevitably go the way of the empires that preceded us. And we will go the way of previous empires for many of the reasons that history could easily teach, IF our political leaders bothered to pay attention to history.

So why are we in this completely ridiculous and absurd predicament of being asked by our national leadership to continually support an endless war in the name of "defending American citizens" while this same leadership seems unwilling to invest in defending the basic health of the people by supporting a public option?

Yesterday Glenn Greenwald posted a great blog piece titled "America's Priorities," by the Beltway Elite, that goes to the heart of this dark imperial absurdity. Greenwald cites an article from the Washington Post editorial page (the voice of the Beltway elite and the wealthy corporate patrons they represent) that explicitly defends the prosecution of the war as a priority and necessity, while

Universal health care, however desirable, is not "fundamental to the defense of our people." Nor is it a "necessity" that it be adopted this year....

In response Greenwald points out,

a recent study from the Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance documented that "nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance" in America.

45,000 deaths from political inaction is the equivalent of nearly fifteen 9/11 terrorist events annually, occurring NOW, every year!

And these deaths are due largely to the failure of our political leaders to make government work FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE rather than simply for the benefit of the corporations that have been profiting from the current structure of things.

Greenwald goes on in his article to underline the fundamental contradiction and absurdity of a governmental commitment to doing overseas for the people of other countries what that same government is not willing to do for its own people:

So according to The Washington Post, dropping bombs on, controlling and occupying Afghanistan -- all while simultaneously ensuring "effective governance, economic development, education, the elimination of corruption, the protection of women's rights" to Afghan citizens in Afghanistan -- is an absolutely vital necessity that must be done no matter the cost. But providing basic services (such as health care) to American citizens, in the U.S., is a secondary priority at best, something totally unnecessary that should wait for a few years or a couple decades until we can afford it and until our various wars are finished, if that ever happens. "U.S. interests in South Asia" are paramount; U.S. interests in the welfare of those in American cities, suburbs and rural areas are an afterthought.

And after citing the authority of none other than Adam Smith (of The Wealth of Nations), who understood in the eighteenth century something about the economic and political dangers of imperial overreach that our own political and economic elite have refused to acknowledge, Greenwald concludes:

Lounging around in the editorial offices in the capital of a rapidly decaying empire, urging that more Americans be sent into endless war paid for with endless debt, while yawning and lazily waving away with boredom the hordes outside dying for lack of health care coverage, is one of the most repugnant images one can imagine. It's exactly what Adam Smith denounced. And it's exactly what our political and media elite are [doing].

Unfortunately, our Beltway politicians, including many in the Obama administration, seem not yet to have learned the tragic lessons of the history of the fall of previous empires: that tragic story--especially after the lessons of our own previous imperial war in Vietnam--should be familiar to anyone who has read much history. But then we know how difficult it is for folks in DC to take seriously (& act on) the lessons of any history beyond that of their own immediate election cycle.

As for the people of the United States themselves, it should now be clear that the only solution to this imperial rot at the head of our politics is to vote out of office any politician, Democratic or Republican, who demonstrates by their votes that they have not yet learned the basic lessons of the fall of previous empires.

One of those key lessons is:

Any political elite that values the prosecution of war over the health and wellness of its fellow citizens is doomed to lead the nation to disaster.

And if the people of a democratic nation does not have the will to organize to change the nature of that political leadership, then that people (meaning we, the people) will be complicit with our political elite in paving the way to that end.

With the election of President Obama, "We, the People" merely began a process of political and policy change. But as we have clearly seen, the election of 2008 was only the beginning of a process that still has many additional steps that need to be organized to achieve significant change.

Winning the Public Option--and with it the beginning of true health care reform--is the next necessary step in rejecting a national policy that values war more than the health of our own people and communities.

Winning this battle for true health care reform will be the first key step toward the kinds of nationl policy change needed to replace a government of, by, and for the corporations with one that more truly represents a government of, by, and for the people. And perhaps then we, the people, will begin to receive the kind of priority attention from our national politicians that until now has been accorded primarily to corporate lobbyists.

The Defining Challenge for the Obama Administration: Ensuring the Facade of Reform does not Betray the Promise of True Health Care Reform

Since my last post, President Obama has begun to demonstrate how he can play a pivotal leadership role in the defining struggle over health care reform. His inspiring and reinvigorating speech to the nation and the Joint Session of Congress on September 9 emphasized the value and need for a public option to bring health care spending under control. For any Health Care Reform bill that fails to create the structures to deliver equitable health care access to all Americans, and to bring health care spending under control, will be a "Reform" bill in name only, and in reality a lie and betrayal of Reform.

If Congress and the President pass a "Reform" bill that fails to win equitable access to health care for all Americans, and to bring the rise in health care spending under control, such a passage will not only betray the promises and hope of health care Reform for a generation, but will be substituting a lie and the facade of Reform in place of true Reform for the American people. And the negative political, social, and economic consequences of substituting the facade of Reform for real Reform will not take long to manifest themselves. The anti-reform Republicans, and the institutional status quo will make sure of that.

While the Democratic-led Congress may feel that passing any Reform bill in 2009 is better than passing no bill at all, the consequences of bowing to anti-Reform pressures to pass a bill that substitutes the facade of Reform for the real thing will quickly turn around to haunt the Democrats in ways that will be even more negative for them than passing no bill at all would be.

This past week's failure of the Senate Finance Committee to include the public option in its recommended version of health reform policy, and the uncertain fate of the public option in this month's upcoming Senate debates, will require President Obama to demonstrate creative leadership not only to show he can shape an effective and forceful Congressional coalition for true Health Care Reform, but to show he can raise public and Congressional awareness and understanding of the essential need for a public option as a catalytic new force to drive institutional change of both the health care insurance and broader health care provisions industries.

This is a tall order, but the American people would not have elected Mr. Obama to be President if they had not believed he was capable of taking on this kind of challenge to become a truly transformative leader in this great transformative moment of both crisis and opportunity for our country.

The greatest leaders of our history, such as Presidents Lincoln and F.D. Roosevelt, rose to the tremendous challenges of their times not by thinking they could solve the country's greatest problems for the country, but by humbly recognizing and accepting that their greatest contribution would come from CLEARING AND OPENING THE WAY that would allow America's people to to go to work together in new ways to solve these problems for themselves.

In the past, as in the present, "opening the way" to change meant standing up against the seemingly overwhelming force of the political and institutional status quo in Washington, and fighting for the interests of the broad majority of America's people, instead of the minority of the powerful corporate elites who too often control the agendas of the political and institutional status quo of the nation.

For the sake of all Americans, and the future of the United States as a country and national community, we must all struggle to both challenge and support President Obama as he takes on this pivotal and defining challenge in the days ahead.

We must hope and pray that President Obama and our real leaders in Congress will not shy away from making this a consequential political struggle over the principles by which the future of this nation will be defined. Will it continue to become a nation of the corporate elite, controlled by inequitable powers that deny the right of all citizens of this nation to fair and humane health care? Or will this nation begin to live up to the promise and requirement of any humane 21st-century nation, that all its citizens be guaranteed fundamental rights to health and equitable care?

It has often seemed over the last months that too many Democratic leaders, including the President at times, have been far too timid in making clear the principles for which they are willing to fight, and for which they are willing to stake their claims to leadership. Are Democratic leaders now willing to make clear that they are fighting for a more equitable and just nation for all Americans through this struggle over health care, or will they show themselves continually willing to compromise these principles away, so that their leadership ends up standing for nothing more than their own petty interests?!

This challenge now needs to be issued to every Senator, as well as to the President and all the members of his administration, to encourage them to claim the strong democratic backbone of the principles of justice and equity for which this nation stands, and for which their leadership either stands, or fails to stand. And if they fail to stand for these principles, they fail to stand for the hopes and needs of the American people and our common country.

In this kind of defining struggle for the future of this country, there is no middle ground, no sitting on the fence over these fundamental principles of equity, fairness, and justice for all Americans.

Either the corporate interests of the status quo will win this political battle for the reform of health care and the future of the country, or the American people and their most representative leaders will win it. There will be no middle ground.

And if this battle cannot be won in the first round of struggle over the Health Care Reform bill in 2009, true democratic leaders will not compromise away these principles in order to declare a false victory and abandon the real struggle for these principles. They will continue to fight to bring this struggle to a head, so it can be clearly and truly fought out by all Americans, who will together decide their common fate in 2010, if not in 2009.

True Democratic political leaders will stand up for the principles and reality of real Reform, and will rather vote against a 2009 bill that offers only the facade of reform, than betray the promise of true reform.

And in this political struggle over real Reform and the future of our nation, we will all get the leaders we deserve: If we are not willing to struggle to engage each other and our elected leaders to challenge them to become the leaders we need on health care reform--leaders who will make it possible for us to work together to remake our nation into a just and equitable nation for all its citizens--then we will continue to end up with the same kinds of ineffective leaders we have had over the last several decades--"leaders" in name only who have been more engaged in feathering their own nests than in serving the true interests of the American people.

This month, and the months ahead, let us all not only hope, but fight to make sure it is possible for President Obama and our Senators to become the true leaders we need in this moment--for hope without action is a betrayal of not only the promises of change, but of our own positive potentials as citizens and a nation.

Health Care Reform Follies: The Obama Retreat from Change... into the Waiting Hands of the Private Insurance Corporations

Now that the Obama administration has gotten itself lost in the forest of its own naive search for bipartisan agreement on a Health Reform plan that Republicans never had any intention of supporting, the Administration appears to be retreating directly into the open hands of the Private Insurance lobby, which will be delighted to see Obama promoting a private "reform" plan that forces tens of millions of new customers into its insurance coffers without any threat of competition from a public plan. But if this is what the Obama administration has lead us to, we must all now ask: Where have all the promises of change melted away to?

When it comes to defending any hope for true reform against the full-fledged political assault waged by the private corporate insurance lobby and the army of supporters who stopped at nothing, including the promotion of the most absurd fear-mongering and lies (such as “unplugging grandma”) in order to try to scare Americans into thinking that any change in the status quo of health care would lead to terrible results (AS IF the current system is not leading to terrible results!!!), I guess we can no longer depend on the Obama administration to uphold our hopes for change. Instead, President Obama seems to be abandoning all dedication to change in order to engage in a full-armed embrace of the corporate interests of the Private Insurance industry!

After having made the huge mistake of initiating the Health Reform struggle from a weak position that did not even allow Single Payer options on the table, the Obama administration is now further abandoning--even before the real battle in Congress has begun--the shadow of the so-called “public option,” which Obama had originally indicated was at the core of his whole reform proposal. Now even that public option has become “optional,” in order for the Administration and Democratic Congress to pass a health care bill, whether or not there is any reform left in it!

But what is the point of passing a Health Care Reform Bill that has been gutted of anything resembling real Reform?!!

What has happened to the Health Reform in Obama's Health plan? Simply put, the Private Insurance Industry seems to have been handed an amazing victory, even before Congress returns from its recess, as the Obama administration collapses into the hands of the Insurance Lobby without even putting up much of a struggle.

--So much for Reform; so much for the Hope for real Change! In place of CHANGE, the Obama administration now seems to be willing to surrender anything, including the public option, in order to be able to pass any kind of health care bill, even if Reform and Change have been gutted from the soul of the bill.

Since the Obama administration seems now to be abandoning all Hope in the Struggle for Change, even before the end of its first year in office, it's now up to all Americans who still believe in Change and the need for true Health Reform to rise up and require their Congressional representatives to completely reject the sad excuse for a health reform bill that the Obama administration is preparing to hand us.

With this in mind, and following the demands of his constituents, New York House Representative Weiner and other supporters of a Single Payer plan have called on all House Democrats to reject the soulless version of health reform embodied in HR 3200, and instead to demand that a true Single Payer Reform bill (HR 676) replace it.

All Americans who care about Health Reform and Health Justice for All, may go to Healthcare Now to learn about the Single Payer option, HR 676, and how to support it. If we do not wish to follow a soulless Congress and Administration along the path of abandoning all Hope for significant Health Care Reform, it is crucial that we all act now to CALL AND HOLD our Congressional representatives, and the Obama administration, to account!

We voted for President Obama in the belief he would help us to bring about the Change we need. But now it seems Obama is quickly heading down the path to becoming just another tedious politician who is more interested in appearing to pass legislation, rather than in actually helping to change things for the better. If we care about the soul of this Administration, and the promises of change it embodied for the American people, it's now time to hold President Obama and our Congressional representatives to their promises, and to require them to uphold the responsibility they have to us, the citizens of this country, to whom all elected politicians, including the President, owe their jobs and their offices.

Here is the letter I wrote to my Congressional representatives (You can write and send a similar one by clicking here):

Dear Representative:

I write to strongly urge and insist on your support for the Weiner Single-Payer Amendment to HR 3200, which will receive a floor vote in September. The Obama administration's weak version of reform is now collapsing, as we predicted it would, under the weight of the private insurance industry's full-throttled and self-interested opposition. Now it is time for all true supporters of health care reform to reject the self-defeating weakness of the current Administration’s version of reform, and to demand instead the full-bodied version of Single Payer reform, and organize to carry forward a true fight for the kind of Health Care Reform that is most needed in the United States.

The weak version of Health Care reform that the Obama admin. has been supporting, with its so-called "public option," is now being abandoned by Obama in the face of the vicious onslaught of distortions and lies sponsored by the private health insurance lobby. This lobby has never had any interest in compromise for true reform, and the vicious attack conducted against even President Obama's weak version of reform has clearly demonstrated the short-sighted and naïve character of the strategy that sought to engage a bipartisan approach to health care reform. Since the Republican party is largely in the lap of the private health care industry, where did the Obama administration think bipartisanship could possibly lead them, except into the same lap of compromise and abandoned reform promises that the industry would demand. This outcome was foreshadowed from the very beginning of the Health Care Reform debate, when Obama would not even allow Single Payer options to be placed on the table as an option for discussion. But by abandoning the Single Payer option from the beginning, he has doomed any chance for true Health Care Reform, unless the American people now unite to demand that Single Payer be placed on the table as the only real way to achieve Health Care reform.

Since it is clear the private insurance industry has no interest in compromise, its time for all progressives and Democrats who care about reform to unite around a truly progressive Single Payer Model. The Weiner amendment would replace Division A of HR 3200 with the text of HR 676, the “U.S. National Health Care Act,” sponsored by Rep. John Conyers. This amendment would effectively transform HR 3200 into single-payer legislation, and is now the best way to rescue the health care reform bill from the assured defeat that it will otherwise face. The Single-payer Health Care act is a superior reform to HR 3200 in many ways:

* Single payer would provide universal and comprehensive coverage for all medically necessary services. Unamended, HR 3200 would leave millions uninsured or with skimpy coverage.

* Single payer allows patients free choice of doctor and hospital. Under HR 3200, insurance companies would continue to deny care and restrict access to services.

* Single payer pays for itself by eliminating $400 billion in insurance company administrative waste and redirecting it to care. HR 3200 requires $1 trillion in new revenue in the next decade.

* Single payer establishes proven and effective cost-containing mechanisms to ensure that benefits are sustainable over the long run. HR 3200 lacks effective cost controls.

The Weiner amendment presents an historic opportunity for congressional Members to register their support for single-payer national health insurance as the best way to solve the U.S. healthcare crisis. It additionally will provide a vote that Members can stand by when approached by constituents.

While we recognize the political imperative to pass healthcare reform, it is important to remember that the purpose of reform is to ease the burden for all Americans. Only single-payer healthcare meets that goal—both medically and economically. The Weiner Amendment deserves the vote of all who favor true Health Care reform. I therefore request and urge your support for this Amendment, in order to make clear that you will stand and fight for true health reform for all your constituents and for all of this country's people.

In the absence of such true Reform, the status quo will only continue to consolidate its power, and while our Health Care Reform Follies continue to proliferate, our capacity for true democracy will continue to disintegrate.

Sincerely,

Your constituent (one of the people to whom you owe your office and your elected authority)