Dateline: October 23-25, 2009

Cashing In, Selling Out

AARP’s Tradition of Betrayal

Nowhere in its profuse “disinterested information” about health care reform does AARP endorse the only real reform solution that’s still off the table and undiscussed by the administration, Congress, the major media, or by organization officials as a fundamental human right – universal single-payer coverage assuring everyone in, nobody out. Instead, Washington, in cahoots with powerful providers and AARP, hijacked the process for greater future profits by charging more, providing less, making a dysfunctional system worse, and cheating growing millions with promises they know are hollow.

By STEPHEN LENDMAN   [print_link]

Founded in 1958 for aged 50 and older Americans, AARP call itself “a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization (dedicated to) improv(ing) the quality of their lives,” even though from inception it sold insurance to earn royalties – now to its 40 million members in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands while claiming a mandate to:

• deliver “value to members through information, advocacy and service;”

• work “tirelessly to fulfill its vision: a society in which everyone ages with dignity and purpose, and in which AARP helps people fulfill their goals and dreams;” and

• speak “with one voice – united by a common motto: ‘To serve, not be served.”

Today it’s branches include:

—AARP Foundation focusing on “education….service, (and) legal advocacy efforts;”

—AARP Services, providing “marketplace access to services that people need and want” related to “health and financial products, travel and leisure offerings, and life event services;”

—AARP Financial, Inc. providing “financial advice and education, and managed AARP-endorsed financial and insurance products,” that include health care and other insurance as well as equity, bond and money market mutual funds sold to members;

—AARP Global Network of “likeminded, nonpartisan, national organizations (in five countries) working to meet the needs of older adults around the world;” and

—NRTA: AARP’s Educator Community (formerly the National Retired Teachers Association) comprised mainly of “educators and school personnel dedicated to educational opportunities, advocacy, and service.”

On March 9, 2009, Roll Call’s Katie Kindelan’s article titled, “Defining a Future at AARP” described the organization as “perhaps the nation’s most powerful and well-funded advocacy” group, both inside and beyond the Beltway, impressively headquartered in a 10-story, 500,000 foot DC building.

Nonprofit in name only, “AARP is the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, employing a staff of 2,419 employees, (incurring) $1.16 billion in operating expenses and overseeing annual revenues (well above) $1 billion,” around 60% of which comes from so-called Medigap supplemental insurance sales.

According to Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), “Some of these products are total rip-offs,” so bad, in fact, that AARP was forced to withdraw its Essential Health Insurance Plan and Essential Plus Health Insurance Plan, developed by United Health Group and sold to 44,000 of its members.

PNHP calls AARP “part of the problem and not part of the solution. It is nothing but an insurance (and financial) broker disguised as an advocacy group – and they will never take on the health insurance industry. (It) represent(s) the insurance industry (and its own self-interest) rather than (its members and) the public welfare in discussions about health reform.”

As a result, it’s largely profit-driven offering 17 types of insurance reaping hundreds of millions annually in royalties. Millions more from selling drugs; other products and services including mutual funds; plus federal subsidies exceeding $80 million annually; and annual membership dues of $16 per year, $43 for three years, or $63 for five x 40 million members.

It’s also active on Capitol Hill with a 50-person staff and a 2008 $28 million lobbying budget, much like major corporations and for the same purpose – profits at the expense of member interests, unaware how they’re ill-served by an organization claiming to be their advocate.

AARP’s Role in Enacting the Controversial Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 – the So-Called Part D

Costing tens of billions annually, passage came only after initially being defeated, followed by a three hour all-night suspending of proceedings to exert pressure and offer bribes because passage assured PhRMA big profits at the expense of seniors extorted top dollar for prescription drugs, not the substantial savings government-negotiated prices would have delivered. Yet AARP was one of its staunchest advocates.

In an email later revealed, the organization’s associate executive policy director, Chris Hansen (a former aerospace lobbyist), assured Bush deputy assistant to the president, Barry Jackson, that he was on board with only minor issues to resolve. He said: “We know that there may be details that we will message differently but we are together on the big goal.”

The deal was struck, and in succeeding weeks, AARP leaders worked closely with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to draft a final bill. On November 22, 2003 the House passed it. The Senate followed three days later, and on December 8, it became law after George Bush signed it as “an important step toward fulfilling a longstanding promise to older and disabled Americans” who later learned they were swindled by the administration, Congress, and their premiere advocate that betrayed them for profits, its ties to PhRMA, and greater political influence in Washington.

At the time, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich explained that AARP’s CEO, Bill Novelli, had “a long history of supporting individual responsibility in health care and doesn’t want seniors dependent on government handouts.” Novelli, in fact, invited Gingrich to join an advisory panel to discuss AARP future strategies, including insurance and other products and services it might sell. He also endorsed Gingrich’s book, “Saving Lives and Saving Money” by writing in its forward: “Gingrich’s (marketplace medicine) ideas are influencing how we at AARP are thinking about our national role” in the health care debate. Whether or not “one agrees (with his) policies, the book has interesting and important ideas about transforming the American health care system” to assure it remains a private for-profit system, not one run by Washington.

Novelli also expressed concern about “how (Medicare) is financed and operated,” the program AARP opposed in the 1960s, after which it supported the major 1988 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act expansion, aligned with the Republican-controlled Congress in 1995 on health issues, backed the 1997 Medicare Reform Act that let recipients choose between private health insurance plans, and was comfortable with a free-market approach after Novelli became CEO in June 2001.

His background foretold his advocacy. His November Group initiative for Richard Nixon helped devise attack ads against George McGovern in 1972. In the 1980s, his Porter-Novelli PR firm helped the drug industry. When he left in 1990, his clients included Bristol-Myers, Ciba-Geigy, Hoffman-La Roche, SmithKline Beecham, and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

As AARP CEO, Novelli began centralizing control at the top, away from greater grassroots input attuned to local needs and interests. He also hired Republican-leaning staff, including former Boeing executive Chris Hansen as chief lobbyist, who along with Novelli and Mike Naylor (a former John Deere and AlliedSignal executive) orchestrated AARP’s position on Medicare Part D. They then worked closely with Republican leaders to pass it.

According to advocates for universal single-payer coverage and others, passage of the 2003 law potentially marked the beginning of the end for publicly-financed Medicare and clouded the future of employer-provided coverage. AARP played a crucial role, much like today in the debate over health care reform. It’s siding with free-market ideologues destroys its credibility as an advocate for seniors.

AARP’s Support for Obamacare

Its initiative Health Action Now calls “this crucial moment (the) opportunity of a lifetime to fix our broken health care system. President Obama has promised health reform before the end of the year but we need to make sure that Congress follows through.”

It asks individuals to email “decision makers” about the the health care crisis and concludes:

“America needs you to take action to ensure that everyone has a choice of health care they can afford. I urge you to commit to working on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation that will provide all Americans with affordable health care choices and strengthen Medicare and improve long-term care services.”

Based on other public and internal messages, it subtly endorses hundreds of billions of Medicare cuts over the next decade as a first step toward ending Washington’s responsibility entirely by shifting the obligation to states that, in turn, will force their residents to bear the burden through higher taxes, on their own, or for those who can’t afford it, get no coverage when they most need it. That’s Obamacare’s promise, the one AARP endorses with thousands of its members dropping their memberships from an organization mindless of their interests.

On its Health Action Now web site, AARP headlines “Myths vs. Facts (saying) Don’t Let the Myths About Health Care Reform Scare You,” then follows with misinformation and outright distortion of the facts by claiming:

(1) Obamacare won’t ration care;

Fact check:

—proposals call for hundreds of billions in cuts over ten years with near certain greater amounts to follow;

—billions in waste will be eliminated;

Fact check:

—the above cuts will eliminate essential services, thus assuring less care, not more;

—lower drug prices;

Fact check:

—no mandate exists to cut them, just a non-binding promise on existing products and none whatever on new ones;

—”the so-called ‘public plan’ option (will) give American consumers choice if they can’t find affordable, quality coverage in the private insurance market;

Fact check:

—most people won’t qualify for a public option, and the one discussed will provide fig leaf cover for a weak and ineffective plan, not high-quality care for its recipients;

—Obamacare guarantees “all Americans a choice of health care plans they can afford;”

Fact check:

—choices will offer poor options, not quality care;

—reform plans “will NOT give the government the power to make life or death decisions for anyone regardless of their age;”

Fact check:

—hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts and restricted expensive treatments will do it for them;—”Health care reform will help ensure doctors are paid fairly so they will continue to treat Medicare patients;”

Fact check:—doctors already are unpaid and $200 billion in new cuts are proposed;—”None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services;”

Fact check:—Obamacare assures both;—”Health care reform will reduce costly, preventable hospital readmissions, saving patients and Medicare money;”

Fact check:—less care assures more illness, not less, and higher costs to be borne by recipients;—”Rather than weaken Medicare, health care reform will strengthen the financial status of the Medicare program;”

Fact check:—proposed cuts, along with new ones, will weaken and eventually destroy Medicare as well as other social safety net protections because Washington prioritizes banker bailouts, other corporate subsidies, trillion dollar defense budgets, militarizing America, and servicing growing hundreds of billions in debt obligations;

—”The President and Congress have committed to producing legislation that will be paid for so it won’t saddle our children and grandchildren with debt;”

Fact check:—growing debt obligations place a lifetime burden on future generations to pay for them; and —”If we do nothing to fix health care, families with Medicare or employer-based health coverage will likely see their premiums nearly double in the next seven years;”

Fact check: —private insurers are assured unrestricted freedom to raise rates and will take full advantage as they’ve always done.

Nowhere under “Myths vs. Facts” does AARP suggest the only real reform solution that’s off the table and undiscussed by the administration, Congress, the major media, or by organization officials as a fundamental human right – universal single-payer coverage assuring everyone in, nobody out. Instead, Washington, in cahoots with powerful providers and AARP, hijacked the process for greater future profits by charging more, providing less, making a dysfunctional system worse, and cheating growing millions with promises they know are hollow.

It’s become traditional at AARP, cashing in at members’ expense after advocating to “improve the quality of their lives.” Will more dropouts follow over concerns about its betrayal? Very likely as Washington steamrolls toward an end of year resolution that will erode health care coverage for most Americans and deny it entirely to millions under the mantle of reform and AARP’s endorsement. It’s tradition continues.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Dateline: October 29, 2009

Ecuador and Bolivia Show How to Pursue Independent Economic Policies, Stand Up for Their Rights, and Win

By MARK WEISBROT

Among the conventional wisdom that we hear everyday in the business press is that developing countries should bend over backwards to create a friendly climate for foreign corporations, follow orthodox (neoliberal) macroeconomic policy advice, and strive to achieve an investment-grade sovereign credit rating so as to attract more foreign capital.

Guess which country is expected to have the fastest economic growth in the Americas this year? Bolivia. The country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, was elected in 2005 and took office in January 2006. Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, had been operating under IMF agreements for 20 consecutive years, and had a per capita income lower than it had been 27 years earlier. Evo sent the IMF packing just three months after he took office, and then moved to re-nationalize the hydrocarbons industry (mostly natural gas). Needless to say this did not sit well with the international corporate community. Nor did Bolivia’s decision in May 2007 to withdraw from the World Bank’s international arbitration panel (ICSID), which had a tendency to settle disputes in favor of international corporations and against governments.

But Bolivia’s re-nationalization and increased royalties on hydrocarbons has given the government billions of dollars of additional revenue (Bolivia’s entire GDP is only about $16.6 billion, with a population of 10 million people). These revenues have been useful for a government that wants to promote development, and especially to maintain growth during the downturn. Public investment increased from 6.3 percent of GDP in 2005 to 10.5 percent for 2009. Bolivia’s growth through the current world downturn is even more remarkable in that it was hit hard by falling prices for its most important exports – natural gas and minerals, and also by a loss of important export preferences in the U.S. market. The Bush administration cut off Bolivia’s trade preferences that were granted under the ATPDEA (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act), allegedly to punish Bolivia for insufficient co-operation in the “war on drugs.” In reality, it was more complicated: Bolivia expelled the U.S. Ambassador because of evidence that the U.S. government was supporting the opposition to the Morales government, and the ATPDA revocation followed soon thereafter. In any case, the Obama administration has so far not changed the Bush administration’s policies toward Bolivia; but Bolivia has proven that it can do quite well with or without Washington’s cooperation.

Ecuador’s leftist president, Rafael Correa, is an economist who, well before he was elected in December 2006, had understood and written about the limitations of neoliberal economic dogma. He took office in 2007, and established an international tribunal to examine the legitimacy of the country’s debt. In November 2008 the commission found that part of the debt was not legally contracted, and in December Correa announced that the government would default on roughly $3.2 billion of its international debt. He was vilified in the business press, but the default was successful. Ecuador cleared a third of its foreign debt off its books by defaulting and then buying the debt back at about 35 cents on the dollar. The country’s international credit rating remains low, but no lower than it was before Correa’s election – and it was even raised a notch after buyback was completed.

The Correa government also incurred foreign investors’ wrath by renegotiating its deals with foreign oil companies to capture a larger share of revenue as oil prices rose. And Correa has bucked pressure from Chevron and its powerful allies in Washington to drop his support of a lawsuit against the company for massive pollution of ground waters, with damages that could exceed $27 billion.

How has Ecuador done? Growth has averaged a healthy 4.5 percent over Correa’s first two years. And the government has made sure that it has trickled down: health care spending as a percent of GDP has doubled, and social spending in general has expanded considerably from 5.4 percent to 8.3 percent of GDP in two years. This includes a doubling of the cash transfer program to poor households, a $474 million increase in spending for housing, and other programs for low-income families.

Ecuador was hit hard by a 77 percent drop in the price of its oil exports from June 2008 to February 2009, as well as a decline in remittances from abroad. Nonetheless it has weathered the storm pretty well. Other unorthodox policies, in addition to the debt default, have helped Ecuador to stimulate its economy without running too low on reserves. Ecuador’s currency is the U.S. dollar, so that rules out using exchange rate policy and most monetary policy for counter-cyclical efforts in a recession – a significant handicap. Instead Ecuador was able to cut deals with China for a billion-dollar advance payment for oil and another one billion dollar loan. The government also has begun requiring Ecuadorian banks to repatriate some of their reserves held abroad, expected to bring back another $1.2 billion, and has started repatriating $2.5 billion in Central Bank reserves held abroad in order to finance another large stimulus package. Ecuador’s growth will probably come in at about 1 percent this year, which is pretty good relative to most of the hemisphere – e.g. Mexico, at the other end of the spectrum, is projected to have a 7.5 percent decline in GDP for 2009.

The standard reporting and even quasi-academic analysis of Bolivia and Ecuador are that they are victims of populist, socialist, “anti-American” governments – aligned with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba, of course – and on the road to ruin. To be sure, both countries have many challenges ahead, the most important of which will be to implement economic strategies that can diversify and develop their economies over the long run. But they have made a good start so far, by giving the conventional wisdom of the economic and foreign policy establishment – in Washington and Europe — the respect that it has earned.

Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

This column was originally published by the Guardian.

Form Letters and Business as Usual

By RALPH NADER  [print_link]

I just received a letter from President Obama. Right there on the outside envelope are the words “I need you.” After not answering several letters which I have mailed and faxed to him, I was, for the briefest of moments, curious about this personal plea for help. Then, of course, I realized that it was a form letter from Mr. Obama via the auspices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).I started reading the two page, single-spaced missive. His words prompt responses. He opens with undeniable declarations, to wit: “There are times in the life of our nation when America’s course can only be set by the concerted effort of citizens determined to pull our country through.  This is one of those times—and your personal involvement in moving America forward is absolutely essential.”

Just what this “personal involvement” is all about is unclear, other than to make a “contribution of $25, $35 or even $50 to the Democratic National Committee” which is somehow supposed to make sure that “America’s families are actively engaged in the critical decisions that lie ahead.”

This money will fund something called “Organizing for America” under the DNC which will unleash “volunteers and activists” to “carry our message…all across this great country of ours.”  The “message” includes “reforms that will bring down the cost of health insurance for families.” But Mr. Obama has taken the one reform—single payer, which he used to support—off the table and replaced it with a bill over a 1000 pages that will do just the opposite—to the delight of the drug and health insurance industries (see singlepayeraction.org).

Continuing into the letter, Mr. Obama emphasizes that “in communities all across America, people are worried about whether they’re going to have a job and paycheck to count on.”  But he has done nothing to support the card check reform to facilitate workers forming unions—an objective he supported during his presidential campaign. Still no push on Congress, no ringing statement of support, as he has uttered numerous times in promoting his various bailouts of Big Business.

One way to help low income workers to pay their bills is to elevate the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour which is what the minimum wage was in 1968, adjusted for inflation. The federal minimum wage is now $7.25. Adding $2.75 per hour would increase consumer demand in our faltering real economy. The Democrats and Republicans, who gave bailouts in the trillions of dollars for the paper economy of the mismanaged, speculating, reckless big banks, big investment firms and insurance giants like AIG, should provide some economic assistance to workers on Main Street and not just Wall Street.

Mr. Obama writes: “Let’s put America’s future in the hands of people who are willing to work hard, willing to take their responsibilities seriously….” Perhaps Mr. Obama should read the short book by one of his Harvard Law School professors, Richard Parker, titled Here the People Rule. Professor Parker makes a strong case that the government has a constitutional duty to facilitate the political and civic energies of the people.

An important pathway toward this objective is to provide facilities whereby the people can easily band together in their nonprofit civic advocacy associations which they would fund themselves. Mr. Obama can start this process now by supporting a provision to establish a financial consumer association (FCA) with the pending legislation to start a consumer financial regulatory agency.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) supported a Financial Consumer Association in 1985 when he was in the House of Representatives. Remember the savings and loan bailouts?  A similar provision can be included in the pending health insurance legislation. These facilities help to redress the present severe imbalance of power between the unorganized people and the corporate power machines which are often taxpayer subsidized and able to deduct lobbying expenses.

These consumer facilities have some precedents. In Obama’s home state of Illinois thousands of consumers of electric, telephone and gas companies voluntarily pay their membership dues to their private advocacy group: Illinois CUB (see http://www.citizensutilityboard.org).

He asks for our “personal participation.” Well why doesn’t he meet with the leaders of consumer, worker and poverty groups in the White House with the frequency with which he meets with the CEOs of giant corporations in the banking, insurance (Aetna), oil, gas, coal, auto and other commercial interests?

Instead he has turned his back on the very constituencies which gave him most of his votes. These are the people who remember Mr. Obama’s campaign promises and all his intonations of “hope and change,” including moving to reform the privileged tax laws for the rich and corporations and revising the notorious trade agreements.

Since Mr. Obama wants “personal participation,” how about moving for D.C. statehood or at least his expressed desire for voting rights and Congressional representation for the residents of the nation’s capital? As the months drag on with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House, people are losing hope for any change in their present state of political servitude.

Ralph Nader is the author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, a novel.

Dateline Thu, 10/29/2009

Crossposted at http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/175

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  [print_link]

Last week, we discussed why President Obama was heaven-sent for the GOP, pre-election. In my view (disagreed with by several commentators who made their cases very well I thought), he was the only prospective Democratic candidate who could have beaten John McCain. This was especially true if the Bush Administration had somehow been able to postpone the bursting forth of the economic crisis for less than two months. As is well known to BuzzFlash readers, it had of course been building for several years under Georgite economic policies. It is likely in retrospect that the “free-market” decision to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt was, first, in their minds, the way to put things off. For if they had known what was going to happen both to the economy and their election chances, they would have done everything in their power to prevent that occurrence.

But anyway they didn’t. The global financial system did partially collapse. Stock market prices around the world dropped dramatically. And Barack Obama did win the election. Just to reprise my argument of last week, if McCain had won, things both domestic and foreign would have been even worse, in many cases much worse, than they are under Obama. After all, McCain would have for the most part following Georgite policy. (Oh, you think that a Democratic Congress would get in the way? Given what they are doing, rather not doing, with a Democratic President in the White House, I doubt it.) But then, just think. All the blame for our current problems caused by Georgite policy that is being tossed at Obama could be laid at the feet of — the Georgites. Ohmygosh. How much fun that would be (for us commentators, that is. Not for the millions, indeed potentially billions around the world who are suffering in many different ways because of them). Which leads us to a discussion of how Barack Obama has been heaven sent for the GOP since his election as President.

It begins with what was in retrospect a major mistake made by his campaign: to make a major feature of “why elect me?” “Looking ahead, with Hope, for Change” and “Changing the Way Washington Does Business.” And it was done without too much attention paid, and for the most part only in general terms, to change from “what” in terms of policy and from “whose” way of doing business. Some of us thought that was a Big Mistake at the time but we were not consulted for the most part, and if any of us were, our advice was not taken. It is so ironic that the biggest indicator that Obama was having nothing to do either with the Rev. Wright or Prof. Ayres was that both of them, had they actually been involved in the Obama campaign, would surely have been pushing him, very strongly, to take on BushCheney head-on. At any rate, his principal advisors obviously came to the conclusion that not to attack the Georgites very much was the way to go.

Whether following that path was the only way to go to win the election — we will never know. But we do know what the adoption of that strategy meant for the content of the election debate and for the projection/protection of Obama’s policies since he became President. It meant that during the campaign “hope” and “change” became highlights. What Bush/Cheney and Georgitism (the highest [or lowest] form of neoconned neoliberal Reaganism, otherwise known as “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” from each individual to the family of nations as a whole) brought to/wreaked upon our nation and the world was not much discussed. For example, how Bush/Cheney military/’security’ policy actually weakened rather than strengthened our defenses and national security by, for example, ignoring the warnings of 9/11 and way overextending our armed forces in Iraq (to say nothing of lying us into that war) was little referred to. How Georgite policy made the financial crisis almost inevitable. How part of the motivation of the massive tax cuts for the rich and the resulting war-driven deficits was, in Grover Norquist’s term, to “starve the beast,” which is how they refer to the Federal government. For the most part, these issues didn’t come up.

Furthermore, the creation of “the negative atmosphere” in Washington was not a bipartisan creation. It was a Republican creation. What they have done since the election, from Limbaugh’s declaration “I want him to fail,” to Jim “No homosexual teachers in the classroom” DeMint’s declaration on “Obama’s Waterloo,” to the McConnell/Boehner Congressional strategy of “we will never say anything but no” is to prove the point.

So why has the President been heaven-sent for the GOP since he has been in office? Two reasons. Because of the way he ran his campaign, he removed from his arsenal all of those weapons he had for laying the blame for all of our current crises at the feet of George Bush.  Sure the Republican Scream Machine would have screaming “blame game.” (That of course is something they never engage in [ho, ho, ho]. If you can stomach it, listen sometime to Giuliani or Gingrich talking politics and just count the seconds until the word “Clinton,” Bill that is, appears. But that is really neither here nor there. Of course Republicans are hypocrites. It seems to be genetic with them.) And so what? That is exactly the game that Obama should be playing.

Who cares what Beckoning Savagely Le-vinitating O’RHannibaugh say? They will never make nice, nor will, for that matter, McConnell/Boehner, to say nothing of Cheney of course. Obama was left a zillion booby traps, major ones that are public, ranging from Afghanistan to (the loss of) Zoological diversity (and perhaps some not public ones, such as possible rogue right-wing cells in the military and the CIA). But he has almost totally prevented himself from talking about them, except on occasion almost in passing.

Finally he was heaven sent for the GOP because until very recently at least (and knows, he may get back to it) he has pursued the Impossible Dream of “bipartisanship” with a Party that simply will never say anything but “no,” not even “no thank you.” There are some elected Democrats, such as Congressmen Alan “the Republicans’ answer for ‘no insurance’ is die” Grayson of Florida and Anthony “Single-Payer” Wiener of Brooklyn, NY, and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who know which end is up, are ready for battle, and are in fact battling. But the President seems to shy away from doing so, whether by nature or by design it doesn’t matter.

Barack Obama is a very smart man, possibly one of the three smartest (Jefferson and Lincoln being the other two) to ever occupy the White House. But he is now in a position where being a professor of Constitutional Law and a community organizer doesn’t cut the mustard. He is faced by street-fighters, and very good ones. If he is going to be able to abandon his current role as heaven-sent for the GOP, he is going to have to undergo some major changes. If he does not, he stands in serious danger of becoming as I wrote on TPJmagazine.us recently, the next Democratic one-term President, and the country will be the worse for it.

Bush, Cheney and the Georgites planted the wind. Obama is reaping the whirlwind. He may not realize it. If that’s the case, he had better wake up pretty soon. If he does realize it, he really ought to tell the rest of us all about it, beginning with just who planted the wind that as a whirlwind is wreaking such havoc. And oh yes. Labeling Fox “News” as a GOP tool is a start. But it’s just a start.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of 30 books. In addition to being a columnist for BuzzFlash, Dr. Jonas is also Managing Editor and a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine; a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad; a Senior Columnist for The Greanville POST; a Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter; a Contributor to The Planetary Movement; and a Contributing Columnist for the Project for the Old American Century, POAC.

SELECT COMMENTS

Bush’s “Job” Was to “Disempower” the People:

Submitted by konopelli on Thu, 10/29/2009 – 12:14pm.

to gut the Constitution, to attack the infrastructures of justice and fairness, and to facilitate the Corporat take-over of the public’s political and economic ‘commons.’

Obama’s job is to make (“white”) people forget how much they hated and distrusted the Busheviks, and to displace those emotions onto himself and the Dims, thereby preparing the way for the next wave of Puke theo-fascism…

Wow friend,

Submitted by Start Loving on Thu, 10/29/2009 – 4:34pm.

I hope you don’t drown in that massive pile of sh*t you’ve just written.  I almost did.  Whew!

When the going gets tough the Left give up….

Submitted by imsloan on Thu, 10/29/2009 – 3:18pm.

God, your argument is so flawed on so many levels, where to begin? Let’s start with your wish that McCain/Palin had won…and that this somehow would be good news for progressives as the Right will be forced to own all the catastrophes that occurred on their watch. What a load of horse pucky! First thing that would happen would be the final marginalization of the Democratic Party… The obvious narrative would be that, given the horrendous job  the Republicans have done in the past eight years, if the Dems can’t, with an intelligent and attractive candidate, beat a half-senile fool and a dingbat whackjob from Alaska, then they will never EVER win the presidency again.

Your second big flaw is in thinking that somehow, the Republicans, given four more year of blithering idiocy will somehow take responsibility for their actions. I would wager that they would push back against culpability with even more ferocity than we’re seeing now.

And as far as your boilerplate disaffection with Obama is concerned, answer me this…would we even be discussing health care reform, the repeal of DOMA, DADT or a drawdown of troops in Iraq, or the fact that FOX is nothing but a propaganda arm of the far-right with McCrazy in the WH?

The point I think you are trying to make, without actually saying it in so many words is that if Obama wasn’t in charge, then our agenda wouldn’t get so criticized by those mean, mean Republicans. I’ve got advice to you and all of the other hand-wringing pie-in-the-sky liberals out there. IT’S TIME TO MAN UP!

Criticism, fair or unfair goes with the territory of governing. I suspect a lot of these people whining about where the hope is simply can’t get over the euphoria we all felt when we kicked the GOP out on their ass.

That was the fun part. This is the hard part. Obama campaigned on change we can believe in, not change that will happen painlessly and in an instant. Obama’s mistake was not to campaign under “You want change? Well change is hard, so roll up your sleeves and go to work and don’t whine that it’s all my fault. This is a DEMOCRACY which means we ALL have a stake in governing. Don’t put all of it one person to answer all your questions and solve all your problems. That’s what Republicans do.”

Simulpost with OpEdNews // Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Give-Em-Hell-Harry-Start-by-Rob-Kall-091028-10.html

Dateline: October 28, 2009  [print_link]

The Democratic party’s (terminal) disease is utter corruption and spinelessness, given their official “liberal” mask.  As a result, while the criminal behaviour of Republicans is clear and expected, the Dems’ posture is often incomprehensible.

By Rob Kall, OpedNews.com

Editor’s Note: Rob Kall is correct here, the “kid gloves” treatment to opponents of SERIOUS healthcare reform (not the current ultradiluted and pseudo reform being peddled by Obama and his crew) is misplaced in political terms. But Rob errs in choosing Harry Reid, one of the great opportunistic wet noodles in the Congress, to act as a brave warrior in this crusade. Expect more disappointments from this quarter.

Time to make the lives of opponents of health care reform living hell. Do whatever is legal to make them and their families and all around them annoyed, irritated, hassled, and worrying about what will come next. It’s time to stop giving slack to recalcitrant Democratic senators. It’s time to play the hardest hardball with them from in and out.

From in the senate, Harry Reid needs to get as tough as it is possible to get. Joe the MFing …. well, add your own expletives… Lieberman is making history, duplicitously stabbing his party in the bag, killing cloture. It is time for Harry Reid to make history not just for Lieberman, but for any Dem who stabs the party in the back by enabling a filibuster that prevents an up or down vote.

What can Reid do? He can take away Lieberman’s appointment as head of the Homeland Security committee. He can move his office to the basement. He can scrutinize his expense bills. He can have him investigated on ethics complaints. He can cut his perks to the bone and reject any requests for expenses or extras, like junkets to Israel. He can make sure that any pork Lieberman tries to grab is trimmed and pruned to nothing. He can make Connecticut constituents see clearly that a vote for Lieberman cost them big.

Then there’s outside– what the people can do. They can make Lieberman’s life miserable, his family’s life miserable, his synagogue’s members annoyed.

Consider the pro-life protesters who camp outside of abortion and family planning clinics. They make the lives of the workers at those clinics miserable, They make the clients uncomfortable so volunteers are needed to escort them in to the clinics. Do the same thing to Lieberman.

There are plans for protests this week– against health insurance corporations. People have committed to being arrested for civil disobedience. Maybe they should be protesting at Lieberman’s home, his children’s homes, his grandchildren’s schools. They can carry signs calling him a murder, a perpetrator of the American Holocaust– the one Alan Grayson described. They can harry him at Capitol Hill like gnats on a summer day, driving him to run away. They can do whatever is possible that is within the law and, for those who are committed to civil disobedience, they can go a bit further. This should only be done with advance legal counsel and should absolutely be non-violent. Those getting arrested should be lionized as heroes fighting for this century’s most important civil rights issue– the right to health care.

And it should not stop with Lieberman. Every senator who is blocking healthcare reform should get the same treatment– a bi-partisan effort, but particularly the Dems who would be betraying their colleagues. Force them to cast these votes to prove what shills for the insurers they really are. Go after their families. Go after them when they attend their churches. Use signs calling them murders and whores. Give them the same treatment the pro-life protesters give abortion clinic workers.

And it should not stop with senators. Go after the CEOs. Use signs calling them killer and traitors. Go to their churches and synagogues. Go to their children’s schools. Make them uncomfortable. Fight them. Give the CEOs and all the workers the same treatment the pro-life protesters give abortion clinic workers. Why go after the hourly workers? They carry out the orders to deny services, to cancel or deny contracts and health care services because of pre-existing conditions or whatever lousy excuse.

People are dying every day. Families are being brutally savaged, having to make the decision between food on the table or life-saving drugs or treatments. This doesn’t happen in the world’s civilized nation.

The US, without health care for every American, is no longer fit to be characterized as civilized. The legislators and lobbyists and workers who prevent or block or fund the blocking through lobbying of true health care reform deserve everything that can be legally thrown against them to make their lives hell.

Give ‘em hell, Harry. And give it to them, activists across America. Make it excruciating for them to chose to screw Americans for the insurance industry.

Author’s Bio:

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor. He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com. With his experience as architect and founder of a technorati top 200 blog, he is also a new media / social media consultant and trainer for corporations, non-profits, entrepreneurs and authors.

A few declarations. -While I’m registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much, but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans. -My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Stephen Colbert uses his well-honed stiletto to satirize health insurers abuses.

The fraud continues while the media pretend not to see it

Crossposted with Black Agenda Report (BAR) on 10/28/2009  [print_link]

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

This week the Senate’s Harry Reid announced the consolidation of the Senate Democratic caucus version of health care reform. How central the “public option” is or is not depends on who you ask, as do precisely how many people it would be offered to and on what terms. What is clear is that it remains a Massachusetts-style bailout plan to subsidize private insurers, rather than one providing universal care at affordable rates. Meanwhile the gap between the actual public option and the imaginary ones sold by progressive Democrats is growing. How long it can be concealed, and what will happen when it is revealed are anybody’s guess.

This Halloween a couple of persistent spooks haunt Congressional Democrats and the White House on the health care front.

The first is the overwhelming public sentiment in favor of a government-run, everybody in nobody out Medicare For All type health care system. The proper name for this kind of setup, single payer, is rarely mentioned or acknowledged directly, except in tandem with exculpatory phrases like “…but it’s politically impossible…” or “…I’m in favor of it but we don’t have the votes…” or dismissed with in favor of some “…uniquely American solution…”

The fact is, single payer is so popular that Congressional Democrats have taken to describing their so-called public option to voters in terms that make it hard to tell the difference between it and a real single payer system. This deliberate falsehood has been perpetrated by some Democrats in the progressive caucus from the beginning of the current congress, and it continues to this day.

Single payer partisans were the first to call it. Back in May Kip Sullivan of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan detailed the differences between the real public option and the one described in glowing terms by progressive legislators. He called it a “bait and switch” job. And when Howard Dean declared on Democracy Now that the public option is best thought of as Medicare, Harvard’s David Himmelstein labeled him a liar. That kind of deception works fine as long as there are multiple versions of the Democratic health care bill, each well over a thousand pages long in dense legalese, studded with hundreds of cryptic references to other legislation. It holds up as long as most people don’t know the effective date at which the uninsured will begin to be covered under the president’s plan is 2013. It’s good enough as corporate media stick to the script and mention few or none of these things, and the day of reckoning is months or years away. Lies are good and useful things, until you get caught.

Thanks to the relentless work of single payer forces, including some members of the Congress, the web of deception around the public option is unraveling. The day the Senate version of the health care bill was finalized even Rachel Maddow got around to posing many but not all of the same deal-breaking questions Kip Sullivan, PNHP and others single payer activists were asking five months ago, questions that the public option’s sponsors couldn’t answer then, and can’t answer now.

• How can the public option “compete” with private insurers to lower their costs when it will be limited to only a few million people?
• How can the public option “compete” with private insurers when its pool will be disproportionately poor and sick?
• Why must we wait until 2013 for the Democratic plan to cover the uninsured?

The behavior of some leading Democrats on single payer is positively schizophrenic, poo-pooing, downplaying and dismissing single payer while they describe their incredibly complicated some-of-you-in and most-of-you-out versions of the public option and the “robust” public option as Medicare For All in everything but name and unique American-ness. There are, of course other questions Maddow and company could ask whose answers, or non-answers would be even more damning. But these are a good start.

The second scary trick looming ahead of Democrats is of course the 2010 election cycle. When the truth comes out, and voters eventually see the gap between what they want, what Democratic leaders are claiming for their versions of the public option, and what they seem likely to get, it’s easy to envision a lot of very unhappy Democratic voters, and not so easy to predict what they might do.  Many of them won’t vote Republican in any case, but might stay home in numbers big enough to tip the balance in some congressional districts.

The foundation of the president’s plan, and the plans of Democratic leaders isn’t single payer, it isn’t Medicare For All, and it’s not even any kind of public option, robust or otherwise. The foundation of of their health care reform remains bailing out the private insurance companies, guaranteeing them a lucrative market by forcing Americans to buy their policies, some of them with taxpayer subsidies and funds squeezed from existing Medicare, Medicaid and other care for those at high risk and low incomes.

Democrats can lie about or suppress discussion on these things for a little while to come. But the truth will come out, much of it well before the 2010 elections. The standard alibi of blue dog Democrats has always been that they can’t support any “robust public option,” let alone single payer because their districts are sooooo conservative. But this doesn’t hold water. Many blue dog districts are among the highest in proportions of the uninsured, and rife with bankruptcies, caused in large part by unpayable medical bills. These blue dogs have been shielded from progressive challengers in primary elections by none other than Rahm Emanuel for two or three terms now, and they expect that protection again for standing with private insurers against the voters of their districts.

2010 is beginning to look a lot more like Clinton’s first mid-term election, in which Democrats lost dozens of seats and the political initiative passed to Republicans for the next 14 years.

If Democrats refuse to pass a health care bill that is very close to Medicare For All, they are storing up trouble for the near future. They only thing, increasingly, that congressional Democrats have to recommend them is that they aren’t Republicans. Whether that will be enough to re-elect them in 2010 is anybody’s guess.

Private insurance companies have a business model to protect. They are making a killing. 120 killings a day, in fact, and 45,000 a year. Single payer activists, whose aim is to take private insurance companies out of the health care equation, aim to raise the price of doing business for private insurers to unacceptable levels with tactics that have begun to include nonviolent civil disobedience in and around the offices of insurers, who are the only real death panels.

Congress and the White House are continually bombarded with letters, phone calls, faxes and emails demanding the consideration of Medicare For All, HR 676, simple and effective single payer legislation introduced by Congressmen Conyers and Kucinich, and sponsored by 90 of their colleagues in this congress. The initiative in the struggle for universal health care remains where it always has been, in the streets and in the public and private meetings of single payer advocates. The harder they press, the more divided congressional Democrats become, between those who adamantly oppose single payer AND the imaginary public option, and the faction that keeps telling us their “robust public option” is so much like single payer that we’ll hardly know the difference.

If you want to become involved in the fight for universal, everybody in, nobody out health care, go to www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org [1] and sign up to be included in the flow of information and connected with like minded activists in your city or town. It’s time to demand what most people voted for last year. Health care for everybody. Now.

Brother Bill Dixon has devoted his life to social justice activism.  With fellow radical journalists Glen Ford and Margaret Kimberley, he manages BAR, by far one of the most authoritative and indispensable news and commentary sites with a multiracial audience.  TGP is proud to feature their commentary.

Source URL: http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/harry-reid-democratic-leaders-and-white-house-still-faking-funk-universal-health-care

Links:

[1] http://www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org/

[2] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/harry-reid-democratic-leaders-and-white-house-still-faking-funk-universal-health-care&linkname=Harry Reid, Democratic Leaders and the White House Still Faking the Funk on Universal Health Care