Healthcare: Change the Debate Support a Real Public Option

There Is No Real Conflict Between..... (0.00 / 0)

the sincere proponents of Single Payer and those of the "public option".

The operative words in that sentence are "real" and "sincere".

We all want the same end.   Universal comprehensive high quality health care that is freely available to all Americans without regard to income or lack there of.

Imagine the status of American life if every street at each block in the city (or mile in the sticks) were owned and managed by a private corporation that charged you a toll for using their "property" at every point in your journey.   Or imagine the status of American life if there were no public police and fire services....if they were all "privatized"?   Imagine the status of American life is there was no government run military....if it were ALL in the hands of private armies of warlords each out to grab as much booty as they could get away with.    In some sense, that's what we have now with the existing insurance industry.

There are certain kinds of systemic activity which truly should be conducted as a community.  Police, fire, schools, military... (and one could go on to list hundreds of other areas)  are areas/functions that would all be best run by government.  

There are REASONS we developed the concept and the reality of government.....and the provision of universal comprehensive quality health care fits right within the framework of those reasons.

Single payer means that you still choose your doctor and hospital....it doesn't mean a total government takeover it just means that there is a SINGLE PAYER who's interest is your healthcare as opposed to the many hundreds of existing private payers who's interest is their profits over your LIFE!!!

The private insurance industry is a parasitic entity that provides no medical care.  None!!!

If someone wants private rooms, or cosmetic surgery or boutique medicine where they can have Michael Jackson style medical care in which hoards of doctors will cater to your every whim.....them, fine, let the rich pay out of theor own pockets for the services of doctors who are in it for the  money!   I certainly don't want too put the private sector out of business.

As it is now the private insurance companies are fucking us all over big time.

Between Medicare, the VA, SCHIP, Medicaid and the Indian Health Services...much of not most of the health care system is already government run.   What the private insurance industry does is try to skim off the most healthy portion of the remaining population to insure.   They jack up the rates for anyone who has ever had any kind of medical diagnosis for anything that might conceivably lead to illness.  

Then even if you or your employer have the money to pay the high rates......the private insurance industry does everything in it's mighty power to "legally" screw you out of any coverage if you ever actually get seriously sick.

The private insurance industry cashes in on the fact that people leave their jobs and/or have financial problems that require them to drop the imperfect and flawed coverage they may now have.......then at every point where you start over again, they limit your access to care based on "pre existing conditions".....and then the deductibles and co payments are so damned high that if you ever get seriously sick most folks don't have the savings to cover them and that's why medical bankruptcy is the most common kind of bankruptcy.

The private insurance industry relies on the fact that most of the time most Americans are not sick and in need of medical care to lull those of us who naively/ignorantly think we actually are "covered" into a false sense of security.   The truth is that most Americans are a few months paychecks away from being broke, homeless, uninsured.   Very few can afford a few months of COBRA.......and even those who paid the whole 18 months still find them selves with no coverage at the end of that expensive "grace" period!

So now we are looking at "health care reform" that proposes to subsidize private insurance companies to the tune of trillions of dollars.....for the "privilege" of just maybe having some kind of watered down/sabotaged/poison pill-ed "public option"?

If we don't get a REAL public option....and that would mean the functional equivalent of HR676 for all those that choose it....the we are better off rejecting the billshit compromises and making REAL SINGLE PAYER the issue of the 2012 and 2014 and 2016 general elections!!!

The ONLY reason we don't have single payer now is because the insurance industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep it "off the table" in congress and out of site in the mass media.

In any real and fair debate/discussion between single payer advocates and the advocates for the existing insurance industry the single payer people kick ass.   THAT'S why we have a massive PR and lobbying effort to keep the American people as ignorant as possible about the DETAILS of the existing system vs Single Payer!

And yet, with all of the dastardly deception and damnable distortions coming from the ethically contemptible creatures of the status quo...... 59% of the American people STILL are in favor of a single payer system.

That percentage will only get larger.    

We will eventually have single payer.   The only questions are how many more years it will take and how many more trillions of dollars will be ripped off by the parasites and how many more millions of Americans will have to get sick, suffer and DIE for the sake of filling the greedy pockets of the tiny number of "corporations/people" who are getting filthy rich off of the rest of us.

Dennis Kucinich is a true patriot and a modern American hero.   Thank you Rosie for giving him a bit of space on the front page of this progressive blog!

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by: Nick Lento @ Sun Jul 19, 2009 at 20:09:24 PM UTC