Senator Brown Gives 'em Heck on Health Care

Sherrod Brown was a guest with Howard Dean, sitting in for Keith Olbermann tonight. Sherrod told it like I've heard very few tell it on health care. I've never seen him so fired up and passionate as he was tonight -- as well he should be. He says that he didn't get elected to bring home some weak Republican influenced plan. You go, Sherrod! I've pasted the entire MSNBC segment below. Hopefully, someone will edit out and YouTube the Sherrod section. Once that happens, send it all over the place and encourage your friends and family to start emailing their federal servants. Give them lots to think about over their summer break.

The good guys won, didn't we? Freakin' Democrats, please seize the moment and turn health care into something that is sane and equitable. Why can't we be like all the other civilized nations that recognize people should never have to go into bankruptcy because of outrageously high medical bills. President Obama's personal physician came out with a strong statement today about public insurance and the need for a single-payer system. Wasn't it just lovely -- the way the insurance industry poured money into the coffers of certain politicians to make sure that single-payer was not even brought onto the various committee agendas?

Just this evening I got a call from a national Democratic party fund-raising group and I listened to the spiel for about two minutes while I gathered my thoughts. Just before the bit where the person was about to ask for money, I interjected: "No, I'm not giving the Democrats any more money until they all back health care reform that turns us all from profit-making tools of the insurance, medical and pharmaceutical industry corporations into citizens who all deserve equal access to medical care equal to that now enjoyed by our federal public servants." Well, no I didn't actually put it in those words, but I did let them know I would not be donating any money to Democratic organizations that allow this opportunity to slip away.

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Sickly thoughts on health care

Home with the stomach flu -- ugh. I'm gaining a new appreciation for the restorative powers of BRAT (bananas, rice, applesauce and (dry) toast. I'm feeling a whole lot better after a day of rest and the bland diet. Enough so that I can manage to sit in front of the computer and check in with the world once again.

On the news today, I watched Obama's news conference in Canada with prime minister Stephen Harper. One interesting point -- when Harper said that the Canadian stimulus bill was very large but not approaching the size of the US stimulus package -- because Canadian health care doesn't need bailing out.

From the Orangeville Citizen:

We wonder whether he's aware of the fact that while Canada's medicare system had its beginnings in Saskatchewan under the leadership of a socialist premier who happened to be a Baptist minister, the most important step forward was agreement among the provinces that with federal financial aid they could operate their own programs that would be both universal and portable, so all Canadians can be covered even when they move to another province.

Perhaps Mr. Harper or Mr. Ignatieff might give their guest a few tips on the subject of federal-provincial relations, and even suggest he consider the idea of making universal health care a topic of a federal-state conference that would see him invite the 50 state governors to the White House for talks on jointly solving the current health care crisis.

The idea would be to have the governors agree to something similar to the U.S. Interstate Highway program devised by the Eisenhower administration half a century ago. Under that scheme, the impressive system of freeways and toll roads criss-crosses the 48 continental states with each state responsible for building and maintaining the roadways with the federal government contributing much of the costs.

Such an approach would no doubt lead to a wide variety of programs, with individual states deciding whether to offer a mix of public and private insurance options or simply to pick up the tab for those who couldn't afford the private-sector premiums.

However, if Ontario's experience is any indication, the public/private medley won't be cost effective.

Today, few Ontarians are aware of the attempt by the Conservative government of the day to give residents a choice between insurance from the private carriers and the Ontario Medical Services Insurance Plan (OMSIP). Not surprisingly, the private sector wound up with a disproportionate share of healthy Ontarians, saddling OMSIP with far too many with outstanding health problems.

The solution lay in OMSIP's replacement on Oct. 1, 1969, by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), which displaced all the private carriers for everything except supplemental coverage.

It's an idea that proved successful and today is employed in all 10 provinces, the only remaining differences being whether to finance health care through premiums or taxes and whether to cover some new medical procedures when experts cannot agree as to their effectiveness.

Can the US ever wrest itself from the private carriers and the pharmaceutical companies? Will 50 million uninsured folks ever receive affordable coverage? What I really don't understand is why it is so difficult for the people in charge to understand that health insurance costs are what is killing our industries. All because some people freak out at the term "socialized medicine."

Call me crazy, but I'd gladly give up my very decent school teacher health and retirement plans if all Americans could receive the same fair plans.

Down but not totally out

The title of this post could reference Hillary Clinton, but I'll save her for a bit later. I'm the one who has been down -- with some kind of bug that would not go away. Not a normal cold. Not the flu. But something that brought about fever, swollen glands, scratchy sore throat, lung congestion -- and would not go away on its own. I'd think I was getting better only to feel the symptoms coming on again.

Finally the fever came back and the swollen glands made my face balloon, so I gave up and last Thursday went off to the doctor who didn't have a clue, but sent me to get X-rays for possible pneumonia (negative), prescribed an antibiotic, and set up an appointment for me with an eye, ear and throat specialist. That appointment is for two and a half weeks from now. Sheesh. I sure as heck hope I'm not feeling like this in two and a half weeks. The antibiotic seems to be helping and I think I can drag myself back to work tomorrow.

Sitting in the waiting area of the X-ray clinic, I happened to overhear three nurses at the desk discussing the presidential race. They were all white middle-aged women and they were all for Hillary and adamantly so. One of them stated rather loudly that if Hillary wasn't the nominee, she'd be voting for McCain. The others nodded in agreement. Here in front of me was living evidence of what exit polling and pundits have been blathering about for weeks -- Hillary's base support.

If I'd felt at all well, I might have spoken up and tried to get them to consider how awful it would be to vote in McSame for president. And yet, I kind of know what they are feeling. Once again, women are supposed to be nice and step back so that the men can take the leading roles. The saddest thing of all is that there are really no great prospects on the horizon for women -- other than Hillary -- to step forward and vie for the prize. A very depressing NYT article mentions a couple of women here and there, but confirms that the pickings are slim and the road is still very difficult for women to gain power in government.

It would be great if Obama picked a woman for VP. But the chances of that happening are slim to none, because that would "weaken" the ticket in the eyes of all the male pundits, politicians and bloggocrats. If he really wants to convince me that he's the candidate for change and for a new form of politics, he would ignore the conventional wisdom. What do you want to bet he goes for a white male southern conservative democrat to balance the ticket?

I'm going to vote for Obama, no doubt about that. But if he wants my active support, then he needs to think long and carefully about what to do about women of a certain age who feel the glass ceiling smashing down our hopes once again. If he doesn't pick a woman VP, he could take up some of Hillary's core issues, especially health care, and take a more progressive stance that meets the needs of working people.

Hillcare continued

I have really good health insurance, at least so far. But I haven't needed a lung transplant like my friend Kevin's wife Darcy had to get. Read the story here. Kevin links to my post from yesterday on Hillary's health care plan, but his blog post is the one to read, He gives us a big jolt of reality about the inequities in private health insurance vs government funded. You might be surprised who wins.

Here's a related story, quoted in DailyKos today, from the American Prospect, The author suggests that Edwards' stance on health care pushed Hillary's further than anyone expected. And speaking of DailyKos, here's another post that analyzes the Kucinich health plan.

It's going to be a tough week here at the Village Green as real life busy-ness takes over for the next few days. I will try to keep up with health care news and invite readers to post opinions, links to articles and data on this subject.

Calling Dr Hillcare

Remember when Hillary was demonized for her first health plan back during the era of Bill Clinton? The image of her as Dr Hillcare is a relic from those days. I found this doll at the Goodwill a few months ago and thought it might become a useful prop at some point. So I splurged and paid ten bucks for it. Looking it up online, I find that it is a collectible item, and was originally designed to be a draft stopper to be placed -- legs spread wide open -- at the bottom of doors. It was packaged with anti-Hillary propaganda and is now worth $70. Wow -- my first investment property!

The doll represents how the far the right wing will go to destroy someone they perceive as a threat to the status quo -- rich people getting richer at the expense of all of us regular working folks. It also says a great deal about right wing attitudes toward women, especially women with intelligence and access to power.

I don't think anybody would disagree that Hillary's first round of fighting for health care was a pivotal moment in her career. She could have given up then and there -- instead she chose to seek actual power rather than that granted through her husband. I've been waiting to hear what her new health care plan would entail. Today was the big launch day and tomorrow, Hillary will be giving a web cast on her plan. You can go here to read a summery of the plan and to register for the live web event.

At lunch I checked my Faithless (Atheist and Agnostic) Group email and found a posting from one of our members about Hillary Clinton's newly revealed health plan. He was outraged. In his words, "This isn't universal health care, this is mandatory health insurance. Health insurance is not health care. Millions of people who have insurance aren't getting the health care they require because the insurance companies decide what gets covered. And this nation values the private sanctity of the insurance companies more than health care. "

Well that got my dander up, but then I got home from work and turned on the TV. Tucker Carlson was having an apoplectic fit about Hillary's American Health Choices Plan (PDF file). He was having a hard time with the "mandatory" part of it, claiming that it was his right as an American to have a choice not to choose to have a health plan and that when he had his first child and he was young and without a lot of money, he chose not to have insurance. Good thing that his kid didn't have unexpected problems at birth. Guess Tucker weighed the odds and decided to take a risk with his kid's life.

If Tucker is that outraged at Hillary's plan, maybe it isn't so bad. Another from our Faithless group pointed out that Hillary's plan sounds very similar to Edwards' and Obama's and furthermore makes this very excellent point: "But if she really expanded Medicare and the federal employee plan so that anyone not already covered by their employer could join -- for a reasonable price -- that really would be reform."

And: "Of course, one might guess that if there were a decent federal program, most employers would stop offering health plans and pretty soon everybody except rich people would be on the government plan and we'd basically have socialized medicine like other civilized countries. But offering both is a way to move in that direction without explicitly saying so, and while allowing the rich foot-draggers to keep their private plans if they want to."

I've downloaded the new Clinton plan and will try to read it and make some notes for further comments. I hope some energetic Netizen puts out a nonpartisan comparison chart showing all the details in each Democratic candidate's health plans so we can see if there is much of a difference. And I am particularly interested in what all my readers are thinking about all this. As always, your comments are welcome!

Dennis speaks a few uncomfortable truths

Here's a great interview with Dennis Kucinich about health care for US citizens -- courtesy of Truth Dig and Joshua Scheer. The following really struck me as something all of us have to keep focused on. We can't let the elected officials get away with cheating us of universal health care. I agree with Dennis -- it is simply not humane to continue to make health care a capitalistic commodity, with exclusive clinic's for the wealthy and bankruptcy for the middle class working citizen who doesn't have access to affordable health care.

"I’ve got one more thing to say about it, if I may, and that is—I went to the Democratic platform committee in 2000 with Lila Garrett, Tom Hayden [and Gloria Allred] where I offered a presentation that the Democratic Party take a strong stand on universal healthcare. My proposal, unfortunately, was rejected. I brought the same proposal embodied in the Conyers/Kucinich bill to the Democratic platform committee in 2004. Once again, the plan was rejected. Both times the plan was rejected because of the unfortunate influence of corporate interests upon the Democratic Party hierarchy. And so it is urgent that the American people are aware that our political system has frustrated the emergence of healthcare for all because of the tremendous influence which the insurance companies and the drug companies have on our political process. It doesn’t mean that this influence is fatal, but people need to know that it exists. "

We've got to be ready to bombard that platform committee with outraged pressure to take a stand on health care. It is outrageous that the Democrats have been caving to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

Cartoon via the Grey Panthers. I'm sure I'll be signing up for that organization before I shuffle off this mortal coil.