jim's op/ed

As if the bailout of Wall Street wasn't bad enough, played for suckers I mean.
(EDIT- There are questions that must be answered and people to be held accountable.)
Now it looks like Obama is going to be stuck with a "public option" that funnels more money into the hands of the greedy in control of our dysfunctional health care industry.

What we need is a single payer, publicly funded, universal health care plan.
Everybody in and no one left out. It does not appear that is what we are going to get.

Some say we have to "slow down" and not to rush into this.
Hell, we've only been waiting for decades.
These are the same pinheads who rushed into throwing trillions at Wall Street.
The same pinheads who were quick to ignore the rule of law as they followed Bush and Cheney into Iraq and later rushed to sacrifice our civil liberties when they signed up for the Patriot Act.
Things move so slow in Congress, it's as if they do nothing at all. They really want to slow things down until it's not a hot issue and people get bored waiting, then they can kill it.

The struggle continues to manifest a huge partisan divide and it shouldn't be about politics, it should be about 46 million Americans going without health care .
Well that's part of it, the elephant in the room is money. Specifically insurance and pharmaceutical lobbys spending billions to buy influence in Washington. The GOP is leading the way to do whatever it takes to remove even a discussion of single payer and to pull any teeth from a public option plan.
It should be noted in the GOP, the usual suspects are the same obstructionist idiots that ignore the voices and the needs of the people but don't have any options or a better plan of their own.
These GOP meatheads are joined by a bunch of bought and paid for D.I.N.O.s also know as "blue dog democrats". Bought and paid for by the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbys this bunch of miscreants don't represent me and you and aren't worth the powder it would take to blow them all to hell but it would nice if the voters paid attention and next time around voted these political whores out of office. We may not see real change until we see campaign finance reform.

Obama doesn't seem to have a clue. He doesn't seem to have the details of a plan for people to get behind. He is still trying to compromise with the obstructionists and that is going nowhere.
Any real reform is going to have to start by pushing back against the bullies of the health industry lobby. There is no competition in the insurance industry to keep pricing in check and there is no bargaining with Big Pharma on the cost of medicine like they have in Canada or France, so we pay more than any other industrialized nation feeding a system fraught with waste and fraud.

Obama has said "if we don't control costs, not only will the health system continue to disintegrate, it will drag the whole economy down with it" and that leaves some people thinking he is willing to put more money into the existing profit bloated and broken system.
Yes, if we allow the health care system to disintegrate, it will drag the economy down as the statistics show. Health care costs have risen two times the rate of inflation. These rising costs are crippling businesses and the medical crises that arise contribute to half of all home foreclosures.

Part of the problem with the public option is the "mandate".
Just how stupid or disconnected from the general public are you if you don't realize people would buy insurance if they could afford it but to "mandate" coverage would be more of a strain on those people and to subsidize it would increase the deficit?
This would only serve the insurance industry by giving them a "captive market" to exploit.
You have to take profit out of the equation if you expect to control costs.
Why should we continue down this path that serves to feed the bottom line of profit driven corporations when what we really need is single payer?

Obama needs to stand strong and lead. The Dems need to get their collective shit together on this and forget the Repubs . The Repubs don't have a plan, a clue and more importantly the votes. Depending on which poll you look at one thing is clear, the American public is ready for health care reform that consists of a public plan. Most polls reflect between 65-75% in support.
HELLO, is anybody in Washington listening?
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Please check this out..
How To Contact Congress and Save Health Care In Two Easy Steps