President Obama speaks truth to the health insurance monopolies industry.
Tag: Public Option
Categories
Public Option
Jack Smith, Working Class, posted this as a comment. It’s an important statement and way too long to be hidden as a response to another post so I am taking the liberty to post it in this thread.
A state based public insurance option is NOT!! a Public Option. Nor is it a Strong, National, Medicare like Public Option.
A majority of voters would rather have a Democrats only bill with a Public Option. Rather than a bipartisan bill without a Public Option.
ATTENTION!! Congress Has The Votes Needed To Pass A Public Option – TODAY http://bit.ly/TCq7O
Why A Strong Public Option Is Essential – By jacksmith – Working Class
Robert Reich explains the pubic option: http://bit.ly/dDYSJ http://robertreich.blogspot.com/
Hollywood Supports The Public Option 🙂 http://bit.ly/3XLwPi
It’s not just because more than two thirds of the American people want a single payer health care system. And if they cant have a single payer system 77% of all Americans want a strong government-run public option on day one (86% of democrats, 75% of independents, and 72% republicans). Basically everyone.
It’s not just because according to a new AARP POLL: 86 percent of seniors want universal healthcare security for All, including 93% of Democrats, 87% of Independents, and 78% of Republicans. With 79% of seniors supporting creating a new strong Government-run public option plan, available immediately. Including 89% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 61% of Republicans, STUNNING!!
It’s not just because it will lower cost. Because a strong public option will dramatically lower cost for everyone. And dramatically improved the quality of care everyone receives in America and around the World. Rich, middle class, and poor a like.
It’s not just because it will save trillions of dollars and prevent the needless deaths of millions more of YOU, caused by a rush to profit by the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!
It’s not just because every expert in every field, including economist, and Nobel laureates all agree that free market based healthcare systems don’t work. Never have and never will. The US has the only truly free market based healthcare system in the World. And as you all know now, IT IS A DISASTER!
It’s not just because providing or denying medically necessary care for profit motivations is wrong. Because it is WRONG! It’s professionally, ethically, and morally REPUGNANT!, Animalistic, VILE and EVIL.
THE REASON THE PUBLIC OPTION IS ESSENTIAL:
The public option is ESSENTIAL because over 200 million of you are trapped in the forest of the wolves. Which is the forest of the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! With no way out except through needless inhumane suffering, and DEATH. While the wolves tear at your flesh, and rip you limb from lib. Then feast on your lifeless bodies like a dead carcase for transplant parts.
At the most vulnerable times of your lives (when you were sick and hurting), millions of you have had to fight and loose cruel, but heroic battles. Fighting against the big guns of the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! in the forest of the wolves. All because you have no place else to go. You have no other CHOICE!
But the PUBLIC OPTION will give you someplace safe to go. And it will give us someplace safe to take you. The public option will be your refugium (your refuge). Where the wolves cannot get at you when your down, hurting, and vulnerable. Where everyone who needs it can find rest, security, comfort and the care they need. Protected by the BIG GUNS of We The People Of The United States. THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE AND COUNTRY ON EARTH.
This is why it is so critical that we do not lead another 50 million vulnerable, uninsured Americans into the forest of the wolves, without the protections of a Strong Government-run MEDICARE like public option. We The People Of The United States MUST NOT LET THAT HAPPEN to any more of our fellow Americans. If healthcare reform does not contain a strong MEDICARE like public option on day one. YOU MUST! KILL IT. Or you will do far more harm than good. And millions more will die needlessly. Rich, middle class, and poor a like.
To those who would continue to obstruct good and true healthcare reform for the American people, and who seek to trap millions more vulnerable Americans in the forest of the wolves. We will continue to fight you. We are prepared to wage all out war against you, and will eagerly DESTROY! you. Time…is…UP! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! No Co-op’s! No Triggers! NO INDIVIDUAL MANDATES! without a Strong MEDICARE like public option on day one.
Healthcare reform can be the GREATEST! Accomplishment of our time and century. A time when future generations may say of us, that we were all, AMERICAS GREATEST GENERATIONS.
BUT WE MUST ACT!
I therefore call on all my fellow Americans and the peoples of the World. To join us in this fight so that we may finish becoming the better America that we aspire to be for everyone.
SPREAD THE WORD!
I have been privileged to be witness as many of you fought, and struggled to take your first breath, and your last breath on this earth. Rich, middle class, and poor a like. Life is precious.
Whatever the cost. WE! MUST SUCCEED.
God Bless You My Fellow Human Beings
jacksmith – Working Class
Things You Can Do To Help NOW! http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/09/tired_of_watching_people_die_n.html
No Triggers! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-rosenbaum/a-trigger-for-the-public_b_277910.html
Triggers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/weve-seen-these-triggers_b_283583.html
Krugman on heathcare (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/)
Senator Bernie Sanders on healthcare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSM8t_cLZgk&feature=player_embedded)
John Garamendi on the Public Option and the Grassroots: http://bit.ly/TJMty
Howard Dean on the Public Option http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SKfW2dUnow&feature=player_embedded
We’re Number 37! in quality of health care http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgOl3cETb4&feature=player_embedded
Twitter search (#welovethenhs #NHS #hc09 #hcr #healthcar #obama #p2 #topprog #) Check it out.
To access the links, visit the original comment posted here…
Categories
The Tea Party At Its…
The Teabaggers at their very worst. They can’t handle dissent or disagreement.
This man with the brass balls has more courage than the Democrats in Congress. It is sad that he needed police protection while he made his statement.
(h/t to Pacific John at Daily Kos)
Let me remind you… these people used public roads paid for by the government, were marching on public streets paid for by the government and discarded their trash for the government paid employees to pick up. They use public services everyday and are too stupid to even realize or acknowledge it. This is what under-education looks like.
Categories
The American Way
President Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, believed that the American way was to pass socialized medicine for people 65 and older. Prior to becoming president, Ronald Reagan spoke against Medicare. He believed that older Americans did not deserve socialized medicine and when he became president, he got the ball rolling to dismantle government. Ever since the days of Reagan, the Republicans have been working to eliminate socialized medicine for the elderly and if President George W. Bush had his way, Social Security would have tanked along with the rest of the IRA’s and 401K’s last fall.
It amazes me that there are people on Medicare and Medicaid screaming and protesting at town hall meetings this summer. They object to other Americans receiving “socialized” medicine and at the same time they are unwilling to give up their “socialized” medicine. That’s not the American way.
Categories
Act Blue
We need to reward the supporters of a public option in health care. Here’s a link to a list of Representatives that have the courage to fight for us. We can show our appreciation by supporting their campaign.
Categories
Health Care We Can Afford
This past weekend, a health care event took place at the Wise County Fairgrounds, Wise, VA. Some people waited two days to receive free health care because either they didn’t have insurance, couldn’t afford insurance or didn’t have enough insurance.
It’s criminal that all Americans can’t have health insurance. A woman was denied breast cancer surgery because she was treated for acne in the past.
And it’s terrible. Basically, anyone who had to fill out a medical underwriting application to get health insurance (this is basically the individual market, not the group market that people are in if they get insurance through their employers) is at risk of finding out that that insurance doesn’t actually exist precisely when he or she needs it most. The insurers claim that rescission is very rare; at the Congressional hearing, two of three industry representatives said it happens to less than 0.5% of policies per year. But that is a deeply misleading number. That means that if you are in the individual market for twenty years, you have a 10% chance of your policy being rescinded; 30 years, and it goes up to 14%. There is a big difference between health insurance and a 90% chance of having health insurance. And remember, insurers only try to rescind policies if you turn out to need them; so the percentage of people who lose their policies when they need them is even higher. (The denominator should exclude all those people who never need expensive medical care, at least not before 65 when they go onto the single-payer system.)
Who wants to be one of the 0.5% that has their health insurance policy rescissed? The members of the Senate Finance Committee need not worry about their loved ones being refused surgery for breast cancer because they have great health care benefits paid for by us, the tax payers and by the very woman who was refused surgery for her breast cancer because of a history of acne.
Back to the original story about the free health care offered at the Wise County Fairgrounds. NPR reported on this event. You can read the complete story here or listen to the story here.
It was a Third World scene with an American setting. Hundreds of tired and desperate people crowded around an aid worker with a bullhorn, straining to hear the instructions and worried they might be left out.
Some had arrived at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Va., two days before. They slept in cars, tents and the beds of pickup trucks, hoping to be among the first in line when the gate opened Friday before dawn. They drove in from 16 states, anxious to relieve pain, diagnose aches and see and hear better.
“I came here because of health care — being able to get things that we can’t afford to have ordinarily,” explained 52-year-old Otis Reece of Gate City, Va., as he waited in a wheelchair beside his red F-150 pickup. “Being on a fixed income, this is a fantastic situation to have things done we ordinarily would put off.”
The most amazing part of this story was the cost of providing health, eye and dental care to 2,700 people was less than $1 million dollars.
RAM organizers say they spent about $250,000 providing care worth about $1.5 million. In 10 years in southwest Virginia, they say, they’ve treated more than 25,000 people. They have eight more expeditions planned this year, from Virginia to California.
Granted, the work was performed by volunteers. Even if you take the cost of the salaries for 1,800 volunteers, it would still be less than $1.5 million. The reason? Services would not be charge per item of care. Instead, the cost would be the quality of care and not the quantity of care. The insurance industry uses a numeric code for every procedure and every item which means the more codes that a physician can check off, the more money the physician makes. If the physician gets paid a salary instead, then the physician won’t be tempted to see 4 patients at the same time. Providing salary based care instead of item based care is why the Cleveland Clinic is able to provide quality, affordable health care.
Health care reform seems like forever in the making and if the health care reform bill that comes out of Congress does not include a Public Option, then there will be no change at all and we will continue with the poor quality of health care that insurance companies provide while their executives fly around the country in private jets with gold plated flatware.
Call your Congress person, today and everyday and demand that they support a public option.
Senator Specter has been traveling the state of Pennsylvania these past few weeks. He has taken the time to meet with his constituents. This past weekend, he attended the Berks County Democratic Committee Meeting and spoke with precinct leaders from Berks County. Yesterday, he met with a group of health reform advocates from Pennsylvania. He now supports a public option.
Speaking moments ago to a large and animated crowd of union organizers and health reform advocates in a brewing house just North of the Capitol, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) said he supports a public insurance option.
“Schumer has it right about having a public component,” Specter said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has taken a lead role on negotiations over the public option in the Senate Finance Committee, and earlier this year proposed a compromise: the committee’s health care bill should include a public plan, he said, but one that competes on a level playing field with other insurers. Such an entity wouldn’t be able to use its sheer size to set prices the way Medicare does–but it could nonetheless incur savings in a host of other ways, and in so doing drive down the cost of health insurance in the private market.
Perhaps more importantly, though, the Schumer proposal is in line with the principles of the major reform campaign Health Care for America Now–and, as such, just about every major health care and labor organization in the country.
Sounds like Senator Specter may be listening to the voters of Pennsylvania.
“Health care is a right,” Specter said. “Your presence here has a big effect. You will get health care this year.”
I’ll still be watching his voting record.
Organizing for Change 