Kennedy’s had a recent reminder of his mortality. The old lion is in winter, and he’s spent decades trying to get universal health care passed. I think this is the right decisions, a chance to leave behind a legacy that really matters. And Kennedy can really, really hurt anyone who gets into his way. The dying Democratic icon wants one last thing before he passes away, healthcare for all Americans. If you’re the member of Congress who stops him from giving that to all Americans, unless you’re in a deep red district, you’ll pay a hard price.
In some ways this makes me more hopeful for universal healthcare than anything else – a giant like Kennedy making it his swan song. I only hope that he is able to push through something really good, like the Medicare-for-all he has supported in the past, rather than something horribly watered down with individual mandates. No one likes their car insurance, so it boggles the mind that some folks want to do health insurance that way. I think Kennedy knows that.
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No offense to Kennedy, but it does not give me confidence that someone as ill as he is a major force in the medical care fix.
Go Teddy! Rawhrr… ;-)
Party pooper…! ;-)
Daschle and Kennedy could make quite a team.
Two Dem heavyweights…! ;-)
Daschle gave a speech today in Denver re. healthcare – must read
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_11148011
BTW Rocky Mtn news for sale
Yep. A summit on medical care. That’ll fix it alright.
Josh links to an article that sez Rocky Mtn news is shutting doors. No buyers.
http://www.9news.com/rss/artic…..yid=105249
Uh oh, the devil’s in the details…!
Single payer is imperative…!
One of Hillary’s booboos was to craft hers behind closed doors.
Single payer universal healthcare sounds like the only big principle he needs. And you’re right the rest, all of it, is the details, lots and lots of details.
I suspect that Obi’s guys may realize that the same old same old has failed every time and they may have to do something radical. But I suspect that there will have to be some sort of mass riots or demonstrations to back him into it. If we act like lobsters tossed in the cooker and do nothing, the same shit will keep happening.
As the economy tumbles and none of their “fixes” do anything someone has to call quits to that and call a re do and dissolve the whole friggin financial BS system which is screwed to high heaven. You can’t fix it, so stop trying.
Change we can believe in.
Heh, but IOKIYAR and you’re Darth strategizing on Energy policy, eh? ;-)
That alone would help the Big 3 stay solvent! It would also level the playing field in regards to world competition for manufactured products/services. Just think how much BIG Business would save!
Anyone noticing that as Rome burns, President GW Clusterfuck is out takin a victory lap and totally ignoring the smoke?
Whatta fuckhead!
He’s giving speeches about how SUCCESSFUL his administration has been—projectile vomiting comin here folks.
That’s what they said.
Fact is that any excuse is good enough not to do anything.
can’t Obama use some of those nasty emergency powers that shrub arrogated , to fix the healthcare system? before he abolishes those powers, that is. We were talking about structural risks on the previous thread. I forgot that healthcare is a big one – that large numbers of people may start making locational/employment/educational decisions solely based on the availability of increasingly inadequate levels of healthcare. Not a big risk, but still…
Exactly! What a foreign concept, eh? ;-)
Obama could do just about anything he wants. That’s why lack of action, delaying tactics, etc. is such a tell.
Isn’t it funny how the Reichwing Revisionists are already out in force while Shrub is still in office…!
Bingo Bingo! “All the other Governments do it why doesn’t ours”?
Never ceases to amaze me that Big Business hasn’t got behind single payer long ago! Of course the Health Care Business are all part of the old boys club and BB doesn’t want to step on the other BB’s toes!
Well, it is something of a record 8 years and no mistakes. /s
Single payer universal health care! Grow up America. It works in Canada, France, the U.K., Italy etc.. Why reinvent the wheel just to make big pharma and the insurance companies more profitable.
Simple. Cause the businesses that don’t give medical benes can outcompete the ones that do, and the ones that do would be regarded as whiners, and the workers as unfairly benefitting from their bad unions.
That’s exactly why it won’t happen here.
Sachs made a terrible mistake at the hearings today by saying that France was going to bail out its auto industry.
One of the most penetrating questions I’ve seen leveled is… How many in the Industrialized Countries have filed for bankruptcy because of health costs…? Which includes how many businesses, too…?
Big business would like to see everyone have insurance and get it off of their backs but as long as someone else pays the bill single payer is not their thing.
Half of all personal bankruptcies are owing to medical bills. If you’re interested, I’ll try to find a link. It was a study done about 2-3 years ago, and has been widely quoted since.
I’ve seen it, M’dear! No need to look for it…! ;-)
Okey dokey.
Sachs is an A Hole of the first magnitude.
The health insurance industry is already in the fight and part of what Daschle is saying is for us to get in the fight.
I can’t wait for the insurance cos. to say how govt insurance is inefficient then not want to compete with medicare for all.
In France if they didn’t help their auto industry politicians heads would be rolling in the streets. Maybe that kind of fear is what’s needed in the U.S..
Actually, most of his testimony was quite good. Doing penance for past sins. What I cited was one of his few wrong notes.
I’m not a big Sachs fan, and would like to see him next to W & Shooter in hell for what he did to Russia, but fair is fair.
And how do you expect that kind of consequence to develop here?
The reason big business does not get behind universal health care is because our elites -in business, media, medicine, and the law – have more class consciousness and solidarity than the rest of us.
Right, Sachs did a real number on Russia yet the corporate media in the U.S. painted him as the savior.
Not to mention their portfolios.
Xenos, it’s time for Americans to develop a class consciousness. As Warren Buffet has said on more than one occasion ”there is a class war going on and my side is winning.”
Americans have to be engaged and be participants in democracy. If that means marching on Washington in the hundreds of thousands then so be it. We can’t be arm chair citizens. It’s a participartory endeavor.
Uh oh, I’ve been remiss in my duties… Swopa’s upstairs…!
One of the best things he did today. Some jerky airhead critter, think she was a D from CA, but might have been a R, said that her constuents were really against bailing out auto cos. What Sachs said was: what your constituents are really angry about is an unemployment rate of 6.7%. And if you think they’re angry now, just wait until the unemployment rate gets to be 10% in a couple of months, and 12% not long after. It’s your job to watch over the macroecomics and explain it to your constituents. She seemed taken aback.
Guess Sachs is no longer a Shock Doctrine proponent, at least for now.
So how do you expect that to happen?
Enema stick with a gear shift knob.
Tommy Douglas, who put through Canada’s health care plan decades ago, has been voted (at least once) by Canadians as their most admired public figure. It would be a fitting future tribute here to Ted Kennedy.
I’m running back and forth from the News Hour to cooking dinner to blogging. Hard to keep up. How do I expect ”that” to happen. Engagement with groups like MoveOn, ActBlue, and even FDL. At some point their needs to be a mobilization of progressive elements. Get us out from behind our keyboards and onto the streets.
What a great comeback. I agree about Sachs but what a wonderful reply.
One aspect of the current U.S. health care situation that I’ve not seen addressed is the costs to employers for the medical component of workers’ compensation insurance, and the costs to adjudicate claims that workers’ injuries arose out of and in the course of employment.
These latter costs are both internal to companies, which may fight such claims & send a representative to the hearing, and to the state and federal governments, which adjudicate them (or, apparently, in some states, turn the adjudication over to a for-profit agency).
These costs also include payments to physicians not to treat injured workers, but to evaluate the connection of injury or disease to employment. Such evaluations are needless with single-payer.
Single-payer health care (NOT health insurance, guaranteed care with no co-pay) would eliminate all of this.
It would not eliminate adjudication costs for extent of permanent disability, or for disputes about pay for time off due to injury. But only a small proportion of the claims that I handled years ago for the U.S. Department of Labor were for those reasons.
There are also considerable costs to state & federal taxpayers for bankruptcy courts, and costs to the bankrupt for bankruptcy lawyers, that single-payer health care would eliminate.
That is the problem..both parties get lots of money from these blood suckers.
It is my guess that insurance companies will be part of Kennedy’s plan. They are so entrenched right now that it would be impossible to get rid of them all at once. Probably, he will try for halfway measures that will finally, somehow, give coverage to all without causing people to go bankrupt.
The DNC rejected having a single payer plan and went with Hilary’s plan, instead. He will have to work within their decision?
http://www.lonestaricon.com/ab…..#038;z=275