Confronting Two Big Lies: A Strategy for Democratic Revival

The point here is that progressives should resist any effort to
lend credence to conservative calls for cutbacks in Social Security and
Medicare. Any calls by Democrats, including President Barack Obama, for
“bi-partisan” commissions to study Medicare and Social Security are
simply cave-ins to ideologically motivated right-wing politicians and
their corporate backers, who want to destroy two of the most important
public-benefit programs run by the federal government. Democrats need
to mount a “Hands Off Social Security and Medicare!” campaign to put
themselves squarely in defense of these programs.

There is an urgent need to fundamentally change the way health care
is run in the US, and the way forward is to expand Medicare to cover
everyone. No longer will healthcare be primarily funded by employers,
who are able to use that benefit as a way of holding workers hostage to
their jobs (and discouraging them from going out on strike). No longer
will we have one in seven Americans unable to see a doctor. No longer
will we have staffs of medical personnel working at insurance companies
with the sole responsibility of denying needed care to insured people.
Longer term, we will find that as the grotesque profits are taken out
of the system, the type of person who is attracted to the medical
profession will change, from money-hungry entrepreneurs to people who
are motivated by a desire to do good and to serve mankind.

Creating a national health system will not happen through
bi-partisan compromise. Nor will the Social Security system be defended
by compromising with those who have been committed to its destruction
since the day it was established back in the New Deal. These are things
that Democrats need to do in the face of Republican opposition. They
are the bedrock progressive programs on which a lasting progressive
American political system can be built.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

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