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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 8/10/10

THE DAY HEALTHCARE REFORM DIED

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When I heard then Democrat Senator Barack Obama in the Draft Obama political ad Believe Again I regained my hope that people could rise to public office and end the corruption.

I knew if I had my chance I could cut monopoly hospital supply prices in half and maybe the jobs would be saved for awhile.

Our Congressman, the Reverend Emanuel Cleaver, who had already rebuilt a metropolis spanning two states, both Democrat and Republican, solely as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri came to Washington D.C. with the dream of universal health care.

With Representative Cleaver's Congressional Black Caucus focusing on the need for healthcare reforms that would effectively impact socially disadvantaged citizens, the House would not lose sight of the need for competition in health insurance from a public option. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver in a lunchroom video interview on Fire Dog Lake.com criticized the Senate's version of healthcare reform that excluded even the public option and failed to realize the dream of access to quality healthcare for all.

February made me shiver when I read the White House's "Senate-leaning" proposal to consolidate the bills preserving each of the insurance industry's steps.

After 10 years of fighting on my own, I am almost ready to say goodbye to the American way. Giant corporations are now writing legislation, full of subsidies and without public interest or policy goals being accomplished. That's not how it used to be.

The Ford Plant outside of Independence Missouri made pick up trucks, and across the river in Kansas they made Chevy Impalas. Most auto plants in America are now empty and we have no time left to start again.

On August 3rd, Missouri primary voters overwhelmingly against requiring participation in the Healthcare Reform Act. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stated "GOP leaders in Washington pointed to the Proposition C's passage with 71 percent of the vote as a further repudiation of the new health insurance law and a signal of their impending good fortunes in November."

There were 667,000 votes for Prop. C. If you assume all 577,000 who voted for Republicans also voted for Prop. C; and that the 271,000 who voted against were Democrats, there were still about 85,000 votes, meaning that 23% of folks who voted for the Democrats in the primary also voted for Prop. C. This vote reflects the failure of the process used to get the Healthcare Reform Act passed.

Missouri citizens, like the nation as a whole are without knowledge of the benefits of the Healthcare Reform Act and provisions that will radically improve public health.

Instead, they are reacting to the most politically undesirable aspect of the statute, the mandatory requirement that health insurance be purchased or fines will have to be paid. Without this requirement, the statute could never transfer the $ 70 Billion in subsidies to private health insurance companies.

It will take a lot of activism to prevent this aspect of the law dragging down our reform opportunity by being perceived as a Poll Tax . However corporations should have never had this power over our public discourse.

I should have been allowed to present evidence on how laws were being broken in the healthcare marketplace injuring consumers, killing American jobs and bankrupting our states. The public and their representatives in the US Senate would have had more meaningful information from which to enact effective reforms.

The Missouri state Democratic Judge from Independence, Michael W. Manners broke his own orders to coordinate the dismissal of the state law antitrust case against Novation LLC Cartel with two related cases proceeding before the federal judges, Carlos Murguia and the Western District of Missouri Chief Judge Fernando J. Gaitan, Jr.

The men I relied on most, attorney's general Eric Holder, Chris Koster, and Governor Jay Nixon are getting on a different train, leaving our Rural Progressivism and Rule of Law behind.

I still want to get up to dance and celebrate President Obama's success bringing access to decent healthcare to everyone. As a nation we are going to have to revisit healthcare reform and address what Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, who can still hear the music, was trying to tell us.

This editorial derives its imagery from the 1968 song American Pie. See the singer/songwriter Don McLean Singing American Pie on BBC in July 1972. McLean would never explain the lyrics of his song universal but I will. Its all about being true to your roots.

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Mr. Lipari is best known for his design, development and implementation of integrated supply chain management systems. Over the past 25 years, Lipari has changed the landscape on the delivery of institutional medical supplies and is now focusing on (more...)
 
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