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Audacity Would be This: Medicare for Everyone

Submitted by mark karlin on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 7:34am.

EditorBlog

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

The goal and slogan of "healthcare reform" should be quite simple: "Medicare for Everyone."

Why do we have to wait until we are 65 to be guaranteed the right of health coverage?

Who is publicly against Medicare? Just the fringe right wing loonies in the GOP (although a larger number of Republican politicians oppose it as a government entitlement, but won't say so because they would be slaughtered at the polls by outraged seniors who love their Medicare.)

Private healthcare insurance only accomplishes two things: increases the costs of healthcare and denies needed care as much as it can get away with.

So when politicians keep talking about free market alternatives as being more efficient: the private health insurance industry proves just the opposite. In order to make a profit or pay high non-profit insurance (think Blue Cross) salaries, they have to add costs onto the healthcare system. It's that simple.

And they have to deny care as frequently as they can in order to increase profit (or salaries and administrative bureaucracies).

Meanwhile, studies have estimated that Medicare -- which has a pretty straightforward system of payment and claim filing -- saves up to 33% of healthcare costs over private insurance! So what's the quickest way of reducing healthcare costs: push the private insurance industry out of the market except for supplemental Medicare policies and "gold policies" for the wealthy who want their tummy tucks covered.

The tiptoeing around these basic facts most recently got their start in the timid, wonkish healthcare "reform" proposal headed way back when by Hillary Clinton (stitched together by an Ivy League scholarly type named Ira Magaziner). But it was just a convoluted effort to avoid ticking off the powerful private insurance industry.

And why is the private insurance industry so powerful? Because it makes so much money by inflating the costs of the provision of healthcare!

So let's stop trying to appease the "K" Street lobbyists and continue exposing the campaign contributions of private insurance companies (Ben Nelson, are you listening?) to dissenting senators and congressmen.

Audacity would be this: Medicare for Everyone.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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Even More Audacious, Stop Eating Junk, Get Too Healthy to Fail!

Submitted by Kevin Schmidt S... on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 9:40pm.

Andorrans live longer then anyone on earth. What's their secret? No U.S. style AMA medical care, no factory food, and no multi-hundred thousand dollar mortgage stuck in a toxic Option Arm Liar Loan ready to explode!

No bills and no ills. Now that's true prosperity!

Here's the solution to the ills part,

The only diet there is:
TheGardenDiet.Com

Don't spend your nest egg on toxic junk food, and the useless modern day bloodletting from the AMA approved quackery that only treats the symptoms, but renders no cures. Instead,grow your own produce on the south side of your house, plant a few fruit and nut trees, and buy organic at the farmers' market. Healthy food in, healthy body throughout!

Then retrofit your house with extra insulation a white roof, solar panels, windmills, overhangs, trellises, and LED lamps in the greenhouse that produces fresh drinking water from sea water or high humidity.

Don't forget to build a rain water catchment pond on the lowest point of your property, not to be confused with the gray water recycle tank that grows algae, that ferments into Carbon Neutral fuel for your car and electrical generator, and produces CN gas for heating.

If you want true prosperity, stop giving your money away to the old paradigm of false limitations, planed obsolescence, industrial produced environmental pollution, and unhealthy choices that put you in a painfully early grave. Instead, think about the long term consequences of your choices and start living a conscious life. You will be rewarded immediately!

Slogan

Submitted by bemused on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 7:15pm.

I like your slogan "Medicare for All" Here's another: "It's not Socialized Medicine...It's Civilized Medicine. Demand Single Payer!" or alternatively, "...Demand Medicare for All!"

Given Obama's personality

Submitted by abmabardy on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 4:52pm.

Given Obama's personality (extremely moderate/passive) and his revealed M/O (get results through bipartisanship or not at all), our hoping for single payer is a waste of time. A public option is the absolute best we can hope for at this point. If Obama does not grow a pair and use his rapidly dwindling "political capital" to get this option, the rest of his presidency will be a joke. Also, a list should be created naming every single senator who votes against a public option. This list should be made public, circulated on the internet, and used against them in their re-election attempts. They count on the public having an historically limited attention span. If there is ONLY ONE ISSUE the public does not forget, this issue is the one that most affects all our lives. We must hold these hypocritical, self-serving, I-have-amazing-health-care-and-I-don't-care-if-you-ever-get-it senators accountable. We must. We may not get another chance for decent health care in any of our lifetimes.

Grow a pair...

Submitted by LeeAnnG on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 10:20am.

of what? Oh. Right. Those gonads that less than 50% of the population get to have. Since when did having male genitalia equal having integrity or courage? So the opposite of "having a pair" or "growing a pair" is not having a pair. Like women! OK. I get it now.

Excellent idea! Expose these SOBs!

Submitted by Renard on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 7:58am.

Abmabardy has an excellent idea: circulate a list of the senators who vote against a public option, and call upon all liberal organizations like Move-on to get behind exposing these greedy bastards for what they really are, i.e., handmaidens of corporate interests and not true representatives of their constituents. Get rid of them, ASAP!

Tell the Democratic Party leadership that you won't contribute a dime to the party until these scumbags respond to some party discipline on this issue.

If the middle and working class cannot unite on this single issue and DEMAND meaningful health care reform (single payer, or at the very least, a public option with real teeth that would drive private insurance costs down through competition), then we are all dead meat.

Medicare for One and All, an Immodest Proposal

Submitted by vicmill1 on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 11:41am.

As a happily retired American who's been enjoying the sweet luxury of a fabulous public plan called Medicare, I would like to suggest that we (the folks on Medicare) exchange our benefits with everyone in the USA who doesn't have it so they can see what the truly public option feels like and we (the oldsters) can revisit the feeling of panic which might make us more (dare I say it?) empathetic. If this results in Medicare for all, I would gladly pay more in taxes. Who the hell wouldn't? (Oh, and by the way, I choose all my own doctors and no government stooge has ever told me I had to wait for anything...) Victor Miller

Single Payer Healthcare opens Pandora's Box of Accountability

Submitted by Norm on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 10:36am.

In Greek mythology, Pandora's box is the large jar (pithos) carried by Pandora that unleashed many evils on mankind – ills, toils and sickness – and hope.

We Americans live in a mythical country called Democratically Free America. Hollywood, the Corporate Media and our Government tells us so, so it must be true.

Unfortunately, Democratically Free America exists only in the minds of the greedy bastards that are perpetuating this big lie. Clearly surrendering to the will of the American People by providing Single Payer Healthcare would open Pandora's Box of Accountability.

First and foremost, it would expose the myth that we have been better off with broken medical system we have endured for the past 100 years;

Second, there would be subsequent public demands to regulate as controlled substances, alcohol, cigarettes and fast foods and soft drinks due to their health costs to the American People;

Third, the public would start questioning all the food additives and genetically modified foods that the corrupt FDA has allowed to be used in America to poison the American People;

Fourth and last, the public would start questioning why we Americans allow the Corporate Media to dictate purchase of the overpriced patent protected drugs that are no more effective than their generic analogs.

We still regulate and allocate

Submitted by smchris on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 1:08pm.

Let's all be a little less hysterical on the second point. Yes, you see a McDonald's ad on French TV there will be something similar to a cigarette package warning on the bottom of the screen except it will be about the benefits of limiting fat and sugar and increasing consumption of wholesome foods. I don't think anybody is mandating how many times per week a person can eat at McDonald's in France. Will a fat person be less likely to get that heart transplant if there is one heart and the other patient is an otherwise clean-living 7th Day Adventist? Very likely. That's what we're doing here too and don't think we aren't. Same for alcohol and cigarettes. I understand the French may actually be drinking less but they are hardly abstainers and they are just getting into EU public smoking regulations that are very similar to what the U.S. is doing. On the other hand, maybe American culture is less free than French culture and we'll all be required to carry around our digital treadmill logs to prove we're fit and worthy. Who knows?

Greedy Rich Bastard Fears

Submitted by Norm on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 8:43am.

Personally, I would have no problem with the government heavily taxing McDonalds so that the social costs of grease-laden french fries and hamburgers were paid into the Single Payer Healthcare system instead of McDonald executives bonuses.

There is no reason to ban any drugs except for cocaine and heroin. It is just that Madison Avenue has no problem selling us overpriced poor nutritional food stuffs poisoned with additives. Likewise for the catpiss one calls Budweiser beer.

My comments were intended to expose the absurdity of the current political climate where a bunch of wealthy doctors, insurance executives and hospital administrators are able to bribe Congress to sit on their butts and do nothing while our healthcare system kills 18,000 people a year due to neglect and where we pay 70% more for crappier healthcare than anyone else in the industrialized world.

few errors

Submitted by godblessfdr on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 8:28am.

Under medicare people still have to have supplementary insurance because medicare pays only 80% of the bills,so we don't need medicare for all ,we need universal health insurance.and your statement to your own question"who opposes medicare"just right wing loonies is wrong.I am sure our Democratic centerist oppose it also

Agreed!

Submitted by mckathiki on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 8:00am.

Medicare for all Americans would be wonderful. If "health care reform" is finalized without a viable, affordable public option for those of us with no health insurance then we will know for certain who owns Congress.

dont hold your breath

Submitted by poljunkie50 on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 2:08pm.

Dont hold your breath. The final product wich the powers that be will call healthcare "reform" will be pretty much the status quo. Any new additions to the existing system will no doubt be carefully crafted to benefit the same interest groups as the last big change in healthcare that they call a prescription drug "benefit". It helps people to a degree but was a huge windfall to drug companys and doctors. No matter how big a majority of the people want a public health plan, they wont get it until they hire their own lobbyists and throw millions of dollars to our elected "representatives" in campaign money. There are very few people in our government who care in the least what the people want, and that includes our new president.Only the money talks in the modern USA.

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