Health Care on Site Map subfolders
By Roger Cohen: Some of my summer in France was spent
listening to indignant outbursts about U.S. health care reform.
The tone: “You must be kidding! What’s there to debate if 46.3
million Americans have no health insurance?” [
Get Real on Health Care By ROGER COHEN, New York
Times, September 13, 2009]
"
A Primer on Comparing Health Plans" By David M.
Herszenhorn
Texas health care - States
rights - How ya doing? Pres Obama
Health Care Address 9-9-09
1min 48min
I love Obama's civility ... , his desire to work with his
enemies, it's positively Christ-like. ... But we don't need
that guy now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, there are some
people who are never going to like you. ... You're not going to
win them over. Stand up for the 70% of Americans who aren't
crazy. And speaking of that 70% ... when are we going to
actually show up in all this?
Bill Maher
Maureen
Dowd wrote: The American president got the Nobel for the
mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral
leadership. However, Obama (who, as Robert Draper wrote,
has read and reread Shakespeare’s tragedies) does not want his
fatal flaw to be that he compromises so much that his ideals
get blurred out of recognition. The common ground is not
always the high ground.
Moreover, the search for common ground is bad for
bargaining. It informs the other side that what you most desire
is the deal — that you will never acknowledge the finality of
the difference, and never be satisfied with the integrity of
opposition. There is a reason that ‘uncompromising’ applies to
one who fit to hear, and has the faculties to hear, the
confession of his subjects.
F.D.R. asked to be judged by the enemies he had made. But what
of a president who strives to keep everyone in some vague
middle ground of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, without ever
offending anyone?
Obama’s legislative career offers cautionary tales about the
toll of constant consensus building. In Springfield, he
compromised so much on a health care reform bill that in the
end, it merely led to a study. In Washington, he compromised so
much with Senate Republicans on a bill to require all nuclear
plant owners to notify state and local authorities about
radioactive leaks that it simply devolved into a bill offering
guidance to regulators, and even that ultimately died.
Now the air is full of complaints that Obama has been too
cautious on health care and too timid re-regulating the
banks. Dowd says, "The president should remember, though,
that when you’re cooking up a more perfect Union, sometimes
you’ve got to break some eggs."
Obama Threatens Insurers’ Anti-Trust Exemption -
First sign of a fighter ?
Public Plan - MediCare, NY Rep Weiner, Lewin
Group Moyers: We need a
fighter
8min 5min
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.: And then there is the insured
working person who discovers, with surprise, that health
insurance is a for-profit industry, that the industry term
for payment is “medical loss” and that the process of
extracting payment for a dire health condition can turn into a
bizarre game of “catch
me if you can.” September 14, 2009, New York TimesO
Letter to Congressional Representative -
Subject: Urging your support in favor of President
Obamas's Health Care Plan including the Public Option.
Dear [Congressional Representative]
I urge your support in favor of the "public option" in
President Obama's health care proposals.
I believe the insurance industry has gained too much
leverage so that like the financial industry, it is no longer
serving the best interest of the people, or the country, but is
profiteering. For example, from 1993 to 2007 the ratio of
outgoing claim payments to incoming premium receipts has
dropped from 95 cents on the dollar to 80 cents. Small
business and individuals like myself have no affordable options
than to go uninsured.
I think the question need not be ideological, but a question of
what works. If the question were ideological, we'd have
to say the free market failed us in the banking and financial
industries, and is also failing us in the Drug and Health
Insurance industries where the concentration of market power is
too great.
Most disappointing is to see Insurance money buying influence
in congress, and Insurance money funding disinformation that
scares old people, and to see the intentional organized
disruption of congressional community meetings during the
recess. Manipulating the fears of poor and ignorant
voters is a totalitarian tactic rather than a democratic
one. Representative government is intended to
separate these extremist from those like yourself charged with
creating competition, as is found in the delivery of services
to Medicare clientele.
I urge you to put the best interest of the consumer above
out-of-state corporate interest by supporting nothing less than
the "public option" for my family here in [your state].
Sincerely,
[Name, Address]
Former Insurance Exec - Wendell
Potter
Oberman ReElection Warning to All
7min 14min
"American
health care system is dysfunctional at the core."
David Brooks, New York Times
"After the needless death of his father, the author, a business
executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care
industry that for years has delivered poor service and
irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system,
he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its
current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated
will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing
problem."
“How
American Health Care Killed My Father”. David Goldhill,
The
Atlantic, September 2000
Map: North vs South HPV Vaccination
Rates
South Carolina 3rd Worst - Opposing Reform
3min
3min
Howard Dean VA Government Health
Care
What End-of-Life provisions are in Health Care Bill
7min 4min
Medal of Freedom - Steven Hawkins Health
Care Former Struggle over
National Medical Care
2min 10min
One of 47 Million - God Forgive
2min
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