Guaranteed Healthcare

Before I go through my own personal list, we should all kneel in front of Senator Kennedy. 

Though the healthcare reform plan he is working on, is far from the ideal single payer plan many of us believe is the only solution to our national catastrophe, Senator Kennedy will force healthcare reform to the top of the legislative agenda, and God bless him for that.

But, now is the time to get it right, even if we need to take a bit more time.

To Senator Kennedy or anyone working with him, I'll echo the words of John McCain's failed VP candidate.  Thanks but no thanks on any version of Romneycare.  It's a failure in Massachusetts and it's a non-starter for the American people.

This is a good day for single payer.

Two champions, Kathy Dahlkemper from the 3rd CD in Pennsylvania and Eric Massa from the 29th CD in New York, won seats in the 111th Congress.

I think it's fair to say that we hope and expect Kathy and Eric will become co-sponsors of HR 676 as soon as they are sworn into office.

During the pre-election bus tour of Northeast swing states in which I was privileged to participate, we swung through the Massa and Dahlkemper districts.

Ms. Dahlkemper scored a huge upset  against the incumbent Representative Phil English in the socially conservative and traditionally Repuglican northwestern corner of Pennsylvania.

Mr. English, a lifelong resident of Erie, has held the Third District seat since 1995 and is a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Good bye  Good riddance Phil English. Go find yourself a job on K Street.

Ms. Dahlkemper, a co-owner of a family landscaping business, boasted that she was “not a career politician,” and she tied Mr. English to President Bush’s economic policies. Welcome to the movement for guaranteed and affordable healthcare.  We hope you will stand shoulder to shoulder with John Conyers on HR 676.

The bus tour also took us the the 29th Congressional district in New York. It was a good night for Eric Massa, another single payer supporter,  another co-sponsor of HR 676, a veteran and war hero, who took down Randy Kuhl. 

For the last several days, the blogosphere has been awash with a single admonition. A single plea.

Stay in Line.

"Don't think for a moment that power concedes."

Stay in line.

In many states the wait to vote could extend through the day. Stay on line.

In many states minorities, first time voters, and even the elderly will encounter all manner of obstructions. Stay on line.

If an elderly person needs assistance, work together with the people around you to provide whatever help you can. But please, stay on line.

Please, no matter the hours, the weather, the heat, the need for a toilet, or a sip of water, please, stay in line.

I just voted. I waited. I stayed in line. I'm one of the lucy ones, my line was only about an hour and a half.  My friend, who votes in a different election district, got up at 4AM and was on his line at 5, the polls open in New York at 6AM, he voted right before 8AM.

We stayed on line and so must you. No matter what.

Vote like you life depends on it, because it does.

STAY ON LINE. STAY IN LINE. NO MATTER WHAT.

If you don't know where to vote, click this link, it will direct you to your polling station.

There are several healthcare horror stories which should cause Americans across the nation to lose their collective appetites.

Today you'll read about a stranger, tomorrow the collpase of the U.S. healthcare system  will have landed on  you or someone you love. Make no mistake, it's only a matter of time before you, yes, you, will be face-to-face with our wrecked healthcare system.

How's this for catastrophe?  Americans, make that insured Americans forgoing cancer care because of the cost.  Yup, this is what's being reported in USA Today.  You pay for junk insurance. You forgo so many of lifes small pleasure to be able to pony up month after month. You assume if you need it, it will be there for you. Think again.

Study: Many cancer patients forgoing care because of cost

At a time when they're already fighting for their lives, more cancer patients are now struggling to pay for their medicines.

One in eight people with advanced cancer turned down recommended care because of the cost, according to a new analysis from Thomson Reuters, which provides news and business information. Among patients with incomes under $40,000, one in four in advanced stages of the disease refused treatment.

And it's only going to get worse. Much worse.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that employees will see vastly higher out-of-pocket costs as employers attempt, in the face of shrply escaling costs to maintain some semblance of junk insurance. You'll be paying more, lots more.

As companies head into open-enrollment season, when they let employees pick their plans for next year, many firms say they are reluctant to boost health-care premiums too sharply at a time when wages are stagnant. Instead, workers can expect to pay significantly more for such out-of-pocket items as deductibles, co-payments and other fees.

Employees' charges next year are expected to jump 10.1% from 2008, to an average of $1,880, according to a recent projection by Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm. By contrast, health-care premiums are expected to rise 7.8%, after posting double-digit percentage gains in four of the last five years. In 2008, out-of-pocket costs also increased 10.1%.

. . .

Lauralee Schiraga, a nurse from Brewster, Mass., says she was surprised when she was billed $250 last month for a breast biopsy that had been done to check on a suspicious mass. Around the same time, she got another $250 charge, this time for an endoscopy ordered by her doctor after she had digestive problems. She called her health insurer and was told the bills were her co-payments for the out-patient procedures.

There's an interesting article in Politico which makes the case for a possible 60 seat filibuster proof Democratic Senate.  An unthinkable dream only a few short weeks ago, is now being discussed as the electoral landscape looks increasingly dire for the thoroughly discredited Republican Party. Should this happen, such a miraculous turn of events, would be further fallout of the economic catastrophe Mr. Bush created and now bequeathes to his successor.

Certainly, a sixty seat Democratic Senate, would also be the ultimate referendum on the last eight years of the worst and most corrupt administration in the history of our nation. Finally, a neutered and defanged Republican Party. 

If this happens, will we see great progressive legislation? Will we see at the top of the list, universal, affordable and guaranteed healthcare reform? Will such historic legislation move with lightening speed through the House and the Senate and be signed into law by President Obama? 

Many analysts believe the financial crisis will worsen dramatically (despite the bailout of Wall Street) between now and January 20th. The collapse of the U.S. healthcare system seems poised to be the next shoe to drop in the pyramid scheme legacy of the Bush Administration.

As Rose Ann DeMoro states in The Nation, "If only the federal government could be mobilized so quickly to solve the nation's healthcare crisis."  Perhaps the repercussions from the bailout, and a 60 seat Senate will give us an unprecedented historic opportunity to enact sweeping healthcare reform.

What must single-payer activists do between now and then, to prepare for a possible 60 seat Democratic Senate? 

The meltdown of the U.S. economy has Americans deciding between milk and medicine. We won't get a second chance to make healthcare the top domestic priority of the Obama Administration.

President Obama will of necessity, hit the ground running. His economic team has some mess to deal with. 

Will we too be ready? 

A government takeover? 

The collapse of the U.S. financial system may present single-payer advocates with a strategic advantage.

What until recently was only whispered about behind closed doors--a government takeover of the U.S. healthcare system is now being openly discussed.

Two new studies The New York Times is reporting on today are causing renewed new alarm that the United States is facing another perfect storm, the full meltdown of the healthcare system. One study is from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the other from the Center for Studying Health System Change.

Two studies released Wednesday morning provide further evidence of the toll health care is increasingly placing on working families, even for those who have health insurance. And as employees are paying more medical expenses out of their own pockets, they are having a harder time coming up with the money.

The studies, by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Center for Studying Health System Change, were completed earlier this year before the financial markets reached their current state of crisis. But policy analysts say the findings underscore the mounting additional strain that medical care is placing on working Americans.

The video you've just watched is an American tragedy.

A citizen of the richest country on the planet, evidently an immigrant from Spain, asking John McPalin why she was compelled to bring her ill relative, a "so-called uninsurable", home to Spain to die?

And McPalin's rambling, disjointed and utterly pathetic response.

The traditional media didn't see fit to make these chilling remarks public.  You should do yourself a favor and look at the man  shameless con artist who hopes he can lie and three card monte his way into becoming the 44th President of the United States.

Why is John McCain hiding? Why is John McCain hiding Sarah Palin? Why is John McCain hiding his grotesque record from the American people?

This video ought to make it very clear.

He's going to tax your precious employer health benefits. And if that doesn't sit well with you, he'll give you a tax credit and send on your own into the merciless and unregulated individual insurance cesspool. Once in that toxic waste heap, "my friend", you'll be on your own.

Here's what Joe Biden had to say yesterday about healthcare in Missouri a very critical swing state. These voters will decide who will be the 44th President of the United States.

Did you see this yesterday on the news?  Did you hear about this yesterday? Do you think John McCain wants you to know anything about his healthcare "plan"?

Should we add knowledge, information, and an informed electorate, to the list we call casualty of the day?

Would someone wake me when it's over?

You can't make this stuff up.

John Goodman, the architect of McMoron's healthcare "plan" had this to say today regarding the news that Texas leads the nation in the number of uninsured.

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

I (that's me, nyceve) have nothing to add except. . .

God help us.

 Today we celebrate Obama-Biden

On November 5th, 2008, the fight  for the heart and soul of America, and the re-education of team Obama-Biden begins in earnest.

Our vice presidential nominee may be the Chairman of the Foreign Relation Committee, but he doesn't have a clue about healthcare reform.

To make the plan less prone to attack from those who fear "socialized" medicine, Biden said, "I don't want a whole new bureaucracy."