To say that I am discouraged over this whole healthcare debate is the understatement of the century.

I feel that We the People are being sold out...again.

May be good enough, & seems less a sellout to the industries and AMA that the patrician Senate's operation. Above all, don't let critics wield the surprisingly effective scam of pretending that money spent on health care plan X is a net cost. After all, we'd be spending money anyway, so the issue is the net cost-benefit comparison. Of course, what is borrowed v. collected in real time does matter.

No go. Paying new taxes, not for a real overhaul of the system, but for a crippled "level playing field" public option that will not be in a position to ratchet down costs? That's a political non-starter, as well it should be. If this is the best House progressives can come up with, we're well and truly screwed.

So just forget the whole damn thing. Wait till the unsustainability of the current system produces a full-blown crisis (which is not too many years away), then use that opportunity to kill off for-profit healthcare altogether and build a new public system from the ground up. This "building on what works in the current system" mantra that everyone has adopted is bullcrap. You can't grow healthy tissue on top of a tumor.

Mr. LaBonne, I am completely with you. If thousands of Americans have to die and/or file bankruptcy for the assholes who are supposed to represent us to make a change to finally and completely kill for-profit healthcare, so be it.

Nevermind that thousands of businesses will go under. Nevermind that we will remain uncompetitive in a global market. Nevermind what havoc it will continue to wreak on our already weakened economy.

If this is what Washington wants, fine.

This half measure crap, this mandating us to buy from the for-profits, well, let's just say over my cold, dead body (which I am sure would make the health denying companies pleased as punch).

If thousands of Americans have to die and/or file bankruptcy for the assholes who are supposed to represent us to make a change to finally and completely kill for-profit healthcare, so be it.

Nevermind that thousands of businesses will go under. Nevermind that we will remain uncompetitive in a global market. Nevermind what havoc it will continue to wreak on our already weakened economy.

I wish any of that would actually be prevented by even the least-worst plans being entertained in Congress. Sadly, that's simply not the case. We can have all those bad consequences plus fake "reform" that does nothing to prevent the catastrophe from continuing (but DOES give health care reform a stinking name for yet another generation), or we can wait for the right political conditions and end the carnage once and for all.

Speaking as one from a country in which true universal coverage for everyone exists, a true one payer system, a system that is not based on making a 'profit' when someone has medical problems, I can only say that your system, a system in which based on making a profit based on someone being sick, is itself FUCKING SICK. It's , in fact, evil to me ... welcome to your 'super' capitalism. And forcing people to buy medical insurance , forcing them, in order to then call your already sick / evil system 'universal' coverage is a symptom of the corruption that defines every aspect of your countries reality.

bitch, bitch, bitch. How many posters here have actually read the policy proposals?

bitch, bitch, bitch. How many posters here have actually read the policy proposals?

I did, ace, how about you? Get back to us when you have something intelligent to say.

bitch, bitch, bitch. How many posters here have actually read the policy proposals?
Posted by: ceenik on June 19, 2009 at 3:30 PM |
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quite a few of us have. especially that horrendous finance cmte bill. now the 800 page gargantuan of a house proposal represents its own hurdle but it's being worked through. (there is no reason it needs to be 800 pages). now please go back to selling the people out.

Like I've mentioned before, Congressmen either do not fully understand or choose not to fully grasp the seriousness of the problem. Many, if not most, are beholden to the drug companies, insurance companies, etc. (Those who are not directly beholden have close family members who are). They are so fully entrenched in the "moneyed" interested that they are unable to make a complete overhaul.
We elected these people, they supposedly work for us. Let's start on a level playing field by taking their benefits away from them. Let them craft something we can live with and give them the same exact choices. I suppose this is over simplistic...I'm just so sick of the back and forth on this matter and feel like, in the end, we are going to end up with nothing much better than the current chaos.

What's most disgusting is that HR 676 was already written with how to fund it.

http://www.thomas.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h676_ih.xml

THIS is healthcare reform.

The bullshit they put out today is not.

"House Democrats are eyeing a possible V.A.T."

Not yet ANOTHER regressive tax.

What's happened to all the progressives in Congress? Aren't they there in reality? Why isn't ANYONE fighting for a public plan that helps the individual American. A really sad statement for Americans if this is the best Dems can do with a Dem in the WH and in "control" of Congress. Remember all the Repub crap of the dangers of one-party rule? What we really have is one-party rule by big business interests. So horrifying to watch Congress piss away significant reform AGAIN.

Here's what this is REALLY all about: passing the individual mandate, which is a bailout for the private health-insurance industry, an industry that's in deep trouble.

So here's the deal: no ROBUST public option (i.e. one fully capable of eating the private insurers' lunch in the long run and paving the way for single-payer), no deal. The House Progressive Caucus MUST stand firm on this. Killing the bill is VASTLY, VASTLY preferable to a worthless "compromise".

From a story in today's Chicago Tribune:

The best way for the industry to preserve the private insurance market -- and derail the campaign for a single-payer system -- may be to go along with more palatable proposals on the table now, said Jeffrey Miles, a healthcare analyst and president of the Miles Organization, a Los Angeles insurance brokerage firm. "If healthcare goes down this year, you are going to end up with single-payer care much sooner than anyone expected," he said.

In other words, folks, we're being had. Block fake "reform" and we'll have REAL reform sooner than people think.

Steve LaBonne

You are so right! I will not vote for anyone who does not support single payer. And that includes Pres. Obama.

In my state, North Carolina, there is no third party. So I will go to the poll and write in you!
Or whoever sounds good at the time. Maybe Reginald Perring. At least, like you, he's honest.

all you hacks advocating for single payer have no idea that many of your favorite European countries are rolling back their health care systems. France has moved towards a private system where 80% of the population has private insurance. government programs don't work. many doctors don't accept medicare and medicaid already. the public plan will result in poor care for those on it. And one thing you guys forget is that in Europe, medical school is free for all students. Doctors here need big salaries to pay off their debt. Single payer health care will drive many of the best potential doctors away because they don't want to be servants of the state.

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