 |
Add to My Group
1
1
1
View Ratings |
Rate It
Obama's New, Improved Leech Therapy
By The Pen (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)
For OpEdNews: thepen - Writer
Obama's New "Improved" Leech
Therapy
The sheer sappiness, even from progressives, of most of the commentary
we've heard in the aftermath of President Obama's address to Congress this week
on health care is truly breathtaking. Now we are going to tell you what really
happened last Wednesday night.
The first thing we need to understand is that
Obama HAS NO PLAN, at least not one that he will publicly disclose, otherwise he
would put forward a particular bill and say, "This is what I want Congress to
pass." Instead, what he did the other night was embrace a hodge podge of
half-baked congressional proposals, all of which have ONE purpose and singular
directive ... to NOT curtail in any way the usurous profit margins of the
existing health care industry.
Worse yet, he went out of his way to SMEAR the
one proposal that would actually make a meaningful difference, to institute a
single payer system, like any of the ones which have been so successful in every
other major industrial country. Indeed, what was so incredibly conspicuous by
its absence was the fact that, while he dedicated a large part of his speech to
debunking the lies being told about health care reform, there was not a word
about the heinous and slanderous lies being told about single payer, namely that
it is not working in all these other countries or that people there are not
happy with their single payer systems.
Instead he stabbed single payer in the
back by trying to characterize it as "radical change". This is EXACTLY the same
tactic that right wing propagandists have deployed against any proposal Obama
himself might make that would be even slightly worthwhile. Remember last month
when every right wing Republican magically had the same expression, "risky
experiment", coming out of their mouths all at the same moment. Same tactic from
Obama, same dishonestly slanted demagoguery, and you'd have to be a serious
hardcore Obama moonie not to see it. Obama literally played single payer
advocates in the Congressional audience for suckers.
There was a mini uproar
when a lunatic fringe Republican house member committed the offense of being in
contempt for yelling out, "You lie," when Obama asserted that bills in
consideration would exclude illegal aliens, even though that part was probably
true. But what about when Obama said that they would consider the best ideas for
reform? What kind of a lie was that, when the best idea of all, single payer,
the approach favored by a majority of the American people when they are asked,
the only change that would make an actual meaningful difference, has been pushed
so far off the table that it is not even to be given serious consideration?
Funding of the health care system in America is the 21st century counterpart of
leech therapy. We have a massive medical insurance "industry", the function of
which is to "manufacture" senseless and unnecessary paperwork to generate
outrageous profits for itself, in excess of 30 percent of every health care
dollar, sucking the very life blood out of our economy. THAT is the problem, and
yet all Obama wants to talk about is building on "what works".
NOTHING about the
way we pay for our health care today works, except maybe for medical
mega-corporation CEOs reaping their obscene salaries and bonuses. For THEM it
works just fine, and they want to keep it just like it is. For the rest of us it
is an unmitigated disaster, a veritable Katrina for our whole economy, and
nothing Obama said the other night was intended to change anything of substance
about it.
Remember in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina when George Bush got up
on TV with the misleading rap Karl Rove put in his mouth, talking about how they
were going to study "What went wrong, and what went right", complete with cute
synchronized hand gestures, as if ANYTHING went right. Nothing went right about
the federal response to that cataclysm. And there is nothing worth building on
top of the way insurance companies are currently gouging the American people.
So
when Obama talks about the government creating an "insurance market", all he is
really talking about is making the government the COERCIVE SALES AGENT for the
medical insurance leeches. What is the need for creating such a thing? Don't we
already have a market where people can shop for the plan they like? Isn't it
called the "free" market? So the only difference they are talking about is
creating a compulsive mandate, backed by fines if you don't buy one of the
provided choices, to FORCE you to buy essentially the same overpriced insurance
you couldn't afford last week, or to have taxpayers subsidize the difference.
Sure, the hideously egregious insurance industry practices of denying coverage
in every possible unjustified way needs to be outlawed. This should have been
done decades ago. But what Obama is talking about is trading the one dollar we
would get back in our pockets that way, for license for the same corporate greed
heads to take TWO dollars back out with their other hand, by hooking up a
catheter direct to the U.S. public treasury, for hardship cases who cannot
possibly cough up the required insurance ransom. Net result, even more
outrageous profits, not less, for the same culprits we have now, and at taxpayer
expense!!
The reason why the Congressional Budget office predicts that only 5%
would participate in the so-called "public option" they are talking about is
because it would not save us any actual money, so it would have minimal
participation. This is even assuming it would ever kick in at all, with them
trying to trick it up with triggers and such, so it would NOT provide any real
"competition" day one or day 730. It is being conceived of as the weakest
possible alternative, a kind of welfare option for those who can prove they are
totally destitute already, just the way the insurance industry wants us all to
be eventually.
A real single payer system would give we the people, we who need
and have a RIGHT as citizens to the health care we deserve, real power to
negotiate favorable prices for our health care services.
And THAT is the LAST
thing those exploiting us now would ever voluntarily allow. And Obama and too
many members of Congress are in league with the medical industry devils, bought
off, paid off, or just naively backing off, making deals behind our backs and
then announcing them as "done" deals, and giving speeches to try to bamboozle
the American people into thinking they are getting real substantive reform when
in fact they are not.
What Obama did more than anything else last Wednesday
night was throw down the gauntlet to US, standing in the way of real single
payer reform. He said as bluntly as possible, for those with ears to hear, that
if you want single payer you will have to fight HIM, to go through HIM. For his
real constituents in this are NOT YOU, they are the medical industry special
interests, in that way just like George Bush served only the upper class, and we
might as well face up to it now. Because for him to even suggest that a silly
new insurance "market" would give you as a medical care consumer any negotiating
leverage comparable to single payer, with each of us out there still forced to
bargain all alone by ourselves, is absurdity on steroids. 
1 | 2
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
by Willard G. Manning
$7.50
Lowest New Price $272.69
Number of pages: 60
Publisher: RAND Corporation
$4.00
Number of pages: 38
Publisher: Rand Corp
by M. Susan Marquis
$4.00
Number of pages: 37
Publisher: Rand Corp
by Allyson Ross Davies
$10.00
Number of pages: 126
Publisher: Rand Corp
| 6 comments |
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (1) Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
