Does anyone know where Dennis Kucinich’s name is even mentioned in this interview, being he is the only candidate running on a true Universal Healthcare plan, endorsed by thousands of Physicians for Universal Healthcare? Hillary, Obama, and Edwards’s plans are not only not good enough, but take a ton of patience to sort through before you realize it’s just more of the same old same, with maybe a couple of new band-aids, such as Hillary’s tax credits.
Does anyone believe that if alive and politically active today, Big Bill Haywood, or Eugene Debs of the IWW would be expressing such embarrassing sentiments, shameless fawning, and “fantastic” of all words, for the woman famous for burying Universal healthcare the first time around, and has since been notorious for taking money from the astoundingly corrupt, evil, and twisted mafia families that make up the health care "industry"? It is my belief that true liberals and radical union leaders would be endorsing universal coverage for all workers. That would mean every person (not customer) would have healthcare regardless of their ability to pay for it at any given moment, and would not have to rely on such weak solutions and false promises of government puppets trying to control the cost of healthcare. Many on the left would ideally prefer Socialized medicine, but I am sure a Single Payer System would do just fine if it meant the 18,000 Americans that die every year from lack of needed care would finally receive it, as it is done beautifully in France, Sweden, Canada, Germany, and every other industrialized nation where people are the primary concern of healthcare – not profiteering.
Imagine if it were your mother or brother laying there dieing because he/she couldn't get the care they needed because an insurance company deemed their surgery “unnecessary” or “too risky.” All the while your hard earned tax money was going to provide millionaire Senators like Hillary Clinton with the best care our tax money can afford them. In reality, the people of this nation pay for their healthcare coverage, but I suppose what's good for them isn't good for us. We foot the bill for their wars of attrition, as well as for their health insurance, and what do we get in return, if lucky, our families, friends, and co-workers back home with dismembered limbs, mental illness, shattered families, and joblessness.
Is Rivera not aware that American service workers have unaffordable, and inadequate healthcare, or did all of those prestigious studies put out by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of John Hopkins University get lost under the Hillary Clinton photos shuffled all over his desk? Did Rivera also happen to miss Michael Moore's movie SICKO? After all Mr. Rivera and Clinton are both "New Yorker's” correct? So naturally they must have read the article in the New York Times on June 12th 2006, which stated:
"Separate analyses by the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that tracks campaign finance, and by The New York Times show that Senator Clinton has received $854,462 from the health care industry in 2005-6, a larger amount than any candidate except Senator Santorum, with $977,354. Other industries have opened their wallets to Senator Clinton, a formidable fund-raiser. But none warred with her as the health care industry did.
Contributions to Senator Clinton over the last 18 months include more than $431,000 from doctors and other health care professionals and more than $142,000 from hospitals and nursing homes."
Abraham Lincoln once stood before Congress, and boldly stated in regards to the worker's of America "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861"
Those were the words spoken to congress by a real American President in his FIRST annual message to Congress. Unlike these criminal actors and actresses performing for the cameras today, President Lincoln knew what being a leader of the people meant. I doubt corporate minion, pseudo feminist, faux-populist, and political opportunist Hillary Clinton would utter such bold words even in rhetoric before congress if they all gathered around her deathbed - she doesn't even know what they mean. Are we going to throw all of our support behind Hillary out of fear that Dennis Kucinich is unelectable because he lacks the corporate media celebrity and backing of the super rich elite owners of this nation? In reality, it is principles, concrete plans, and courage combined that would destroy the possibility that Rudy Giuliani, or Fred Thompson could emerge in 2008 as President.
If nobody has noticed yet, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic front-runners are trying to redefine the words "Universal Healthcare" for us. Now Universal Healthcare basically means having the “option” to buy private insurance at the state or federal level from the same drug dealers in silk suits. As Marlon Brando states in regards to the exploiter class in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata "A monkey in silk is still a monkey". Under this smoke and mirrors system of "Universal Healthcare," everyone technically has access to private health care, meaning it is technically "universal", yet who is going to make healthcare affordable in the hands of the multinational psychopaths that feel they have the right to own our health? Who is going to remove the snake of wasteful for profit insurance and medications from the sheets of our costly hospital beds? Is Mr. Rivera going to make sure we get the health care we deserve by “supporting” Hillary, Edwards, or Obama? Technically speaking, everyone has access to buying a Mercedes as well, but not everyone, especially the unemployed, or the working poor, or even the lower middle classes that often live paycheck to paycheck, can afford it, and the same rule applies for healthcare. The truth of the matter is neither Hillary Clinton nor Mr. Rivera seems to posses the leadership foresight that people need to obtain true Universal coverage, or they would endorse the Kucinich/Conyers’ house bill H.R. 676.
The radicals of this country need to muster up the wherewithal to stomach the putrescence found in American politics, and it’s vast array of class collaborationist institutions. We need to invade the union halls and grab any opportunists we may encounter by the horns and demand accountability from the upper ranks, or else we will be marginalized, and have no platform to fight against the rapacious G.O.P and their counterparts in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party.
One of the best tools we can utilize in our struggle for humane healthcare is the information found in H.R. 676. If you are not already familiarized with this plan, let me fill you in on some of the history, being you won’t find the corporate media paying it much mind:
“In 2003, Representative Conyers first introduced HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act (USNHI). This bill would establish a unique American universal health insurance program with single payer financing. As a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system that improves and expands the already existing Medicare program, it would be available to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories.
The goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans will have access, guaranteed by law, to the highest quality and most cost effective health care services regardless of their employment, income or health care status. They would receive all medically necessary primary care, dental, mental health, prescription drugs, and long term care services by the physician of their choice, and with no restrictions on what providers they could visit. With 47 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million who are underinsured, the time has come to change our inefficient and costly fragmented non-system of health care.”
At one time in American history, leftist believed that unions were powerful engines for social change. They paid close attention to the feelings of worker's, and some unions still do. As Mr. Rivera says "We have been having conversations with the CEOs of hospitals. At the same time, many of our colleagues have had many conversations with workers around Boston."
This past summer, I did some work for a food workers union in the North East, and I smelled a rat from the word go. Essentially the union assignment involved planting us outside of a movie theater playing SICKO, in which we were to hand out buttons that read "Universal Healthcare for all", which was in reality a state sponsored initiative in our state very similar to the system in place in Massachusetts.
The union informed us that we would be advocating for Michael Moore's SICKO, but in reality we came to learn their activities were being funded by Aetna, and was endorsing state mandated insurance - nothing like H.R. 676. Why would a profit base corporation such as Aetna, estimated in 2006 with a net worth of 9.96 billion dollars be funding Michael Moore's film, and furthermore using the union as a front to push the initiative? The answer is simple, because we will be purchasing the "Universal Healthcare" from them – nothing will change. They can't deny the problem in front of them, so they are saying they are on board in getting us Universal Healthcare. This whole federal/state-mandated health care plot is a giant hoax being perpetrated on a public that is not educated on alternative systems of health care, yet to my surprise after browsing the Internet, some people are not so fooled, yet many are still chanting Hillary!
How can Americans receive true Universal healthcare, as other industrialized nations have had for years? We can get educated NOW on H.R. 676, at present being endorsed by Presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich and running mate John Conyers. Another effectual method would be reading and recording H.R. 676, and demanding your local radio station broadcast the "Medicare for All" bill.
Even measures as easily implemented as a small payroll tax on big corporations, or a higher federal income tax on the super-rich, or the reallocation of our bloated military defense budget could mean with the stroke of some pens all of the healthcare coverage worries would be over, and a memory we would be more than happy to forget fast. Citizens of other industrialized nations, for all of their flaws, are shocked and appalled at our countries treatment of its people in the realm of healthcare.
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