It’s about time that someone begins attacking some of the key assumptions of Gooper logic….

I didn’t get in a comment on Ian Welch’s last beautiful (yes beautiful) post on economics and why we’re sinkin’ fast, despite being more productive. So, …

Essentially we have a system where corporations and rich individuals have taken over and they’re simply forcing more and more wealth into their hands and away from the underlying system. This is causing stresses which will eventually push us into a deep dark hole.

We’re seeing it in increasing costs in health care, increasing oil & gasoline prices, increasing tax breaks for the rich, a housing sector disaster, a derivatives market problem (over leveraging) and so on.

Politically there are 3 active groups in America: the Republicans (Conservatives) who think everything is fine and we should speed up our race to the cliff’s edge; Conservative Democrats who hedge everything and seem to know there’s a problem, but don’t have the backbone to gen up a real lasting solution and fight to get it in place and Liberal Democrats who know there’s a problem and want to solve it, but who have been in a minority and can’t do it by themselves.

Then, there’s the problem of leadership. Edwards offered great ideas and energy to do a lot of positive things. Characterized as dangerously Liberal he was muted and pushed aside. He also had less name recognition and didn’t get the public funding support needed. His precise policies could’ve been called Conservative or Liberal Dem, but he was out to solve problems Progressively, a la Teddy Roosevelt. At least he helped set the agenda and gave us many ideas to work with. Clinton is only a leader when pushed to it by political forces. Obama is still a bit of a cipher. He talks a good game, but there’s a newness which leaves me wondering whether he can really get anything done. Still, he’s our only hope for clean good government and perhaps responsiveness to an eager Liberal electorate.

Without Edwards the big question for Liberals is what the plan is. What’s the big picture? What’s the architectural blueprint? What will Senate and an Obama presidency produce? Will it be hodgepodge or something coherent and forceful and to the point.

We need to focus on people, the system, transparency and fixing the big problems which everyone agrees are sinking our ship.

Maybe Ian or someone else would care to write about this new economic time and how government should behave to fix our problems.

And I haven’t necessarily seen that commitment to service as a part of the healthcare bargain in far too many instances over the past few years. It’s enough to make a person cynical and skeptical of motives, isn’t it?

Sure did the trick for me ;)

I ask them a few questions…..
“Define socialized medicine”
“So you want to abolish the military medical system?”
“Would you call the VA healthcare system socialized medicine?”

THE two socialized medicine systems in America are and have been for the military and Vets….. Rummy nearly killed the stateside military healthcare delivery system but still it exists in military initializations around the world

Thanks for the insight and the opinions. I think you have put together a great challenge here, that demands real answers from “The Republican Candidate” (who needs Manchurians when we got Republicans…). but I would guess we will never get those answers because the hypocrisy will be so transparent.

It is ironic that, regardless of how long it may have taken them to treat him, Mccain got more health care as a prisoner of war than Americans with pre-existing conditions or no insurance due to low income, get from our “world class health care system.”

I posed a starting point one time in a health-care thread here, long ago. First, consider the run-around every patient gets during the diagnosis of their ailments; the labwork and clinics can be endless and frustratingly futile. I am sure Elizabeth wouod agree, and anyone else who has gone months waiting for definitive diagnosis.

This first step in the healing process, (actually identifying the disease or condition,) is second only to ballistic drug costs in contributing to the astronomical rise in health-care costs as a whole.

Federal diagnostic clinics wqould eliminate a big part of this cost. It would provide primary health providers with IMMEDIATE diagnosis tools, and then it would be up to them how to treat it.

This would limit liability insurance costs drastically, especially to the federal medical doctors, because their only job would be to discover, not treat the patient.

It isn’t the whole-answer those of us who envy Canada and France would prefer, but it would be a very good start in the right direction, and would take one of the most hypocritical and critical profit motives out of the CEO’s managed-health-care loop.

Federal diagnostic clinics should be the first step towards universal healthcare. Because, if I may be trite, after prevention, diagnosis is where healthcare begins.