Alan L. Maki
The United States is the wealthiest country in the world. This wealth created by working people is being squandered on fighting two wars, financing the Israeli killing machine and funding over 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil protecting Wall Street's interests--- instead, what we need is a public health care system of 800 primary community public health care centers serving as the base for over 30,000 neighborhood health care centers spread out across the United States providing free health care for all Americans which would create around ten-million new, good-paying jobs. Even a dumb donkey should be able to comprehend the benefits from peace.
How is the WAR ECONOMY working for you?
Alan L. Maki
I don't think the details will take care of themselves. In fact, during the 1930's, the advocates of social and economic reform with a great deal of help from Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, often drew up their own very detailed legislation and then had the more left, progressive and liberal members of congress present it... almost every piece of New Deal legislation that was passed went through this process. It is largely because we, as a healthcare reform movement/s, didn't have an adequate piece of legislation for people to rally around that Obama and the Democrats got away with passing their "health insurance industry bailout and profit maximization act."
Alan L. Maki
This piecemeal approach to healthcare reform will never work... Canadians never would have got health care reform unless Tommy Douglas and his socialist party (the CCF now the NDP) would have placed socialized health care in front of the Canadian people. Tommy Douglas continued to insist that what was needed was full-blown socialized health care and as a result of their struggles the powers that be caved and and a compromise was reached.
To be honest, I really resent this advocacy of a piecemeal approach to health care reform because when working people are asked, given ALL options, they always chose socialized health care... usually the example they give of what they want is VA. Make no mistake, VA is socialized health care; the very best socialized health care system in the world. And the Indian Health Service is even more socialized and if it was not severely under-funded because of institutionalized racism it would be the very best socialized health care system in the world. I constantly hear from people things like, "Socialized health care will never fly in the United States." Well, this is an outright lie. If the organizations involved in health care reform would be honest enough and not intimidated by the remnants of McCarthyism we could achieved a united movement for a public (socialized) health care system. I don't see one single person being provided health care through VA or the Indian Health Service turning down health care from either program because they are socialized health care.
As for our own National Public Healthcare Service that few people are even aware of its existence even though their tax-dollars fund this socialized health service, too, providing many needed services people have come to take for granted... I have yet to hear one single person or politician calling for shutting it down.
The logical position for all organizations involved in working towards health care reform to take would be to call for the expansion of these three excellent socialized health care programs to cover everyone.
What we need to put in front of the American people is draft legislation to accomplish this.
Alan L. Maki
First of all, people have not been given ALL the options in order to freely discuss this healthcare reform issue in the proverbial "public square." Until socialized healthcare--- public healthcare--- is placed on the table right alongside everything else no meaningful discussion has taken place.
I wrote the single-payer universal health care resolution based upon the Canadian health care model which 72% of the delegates to the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party's State Convention passed and I intentionally left out "affordable health care" because no one should have to pay one single penny for healthcare.
In order to get support for this resolution... it was defeated three times at state conventions, I traveled to all 87 counties in Minnesota and presented ALL options to anyone willing to listen... the favored choice in every single county was "no-fee/no-premium, comprehensive, all-inclusive universal public health care; publicly financed, publicly administered and publicly delivered.
Single-payer always came in second to a public healthcare system.
At the time, I was a member of the MN DFL State Central Committee... the well-heeled members of the "Summit Hill Club" who control the MN DFL through manipulation called me every dirty name in the book and I think they even invented a few I hadn't heard before... immediately after passage of this resolution by this overwhelming majority of grassroots delegates, Amy "Republican Lite" Klobuchar went stomping out of the convention straight to the media announcing that she would never support this resolution because she favored "affordable health care."
We are not playing a game with words here... "affordable" means something completely different from either single-payer or socialized health care.
If words mean nothing then just call for "VA for all."
Is there a reason advocates of healthcare reform have not banded together in unity around "VA for all?" You bet there is because some people are deathly opposed to socialized health care. But, the divisions are no more extreme than on any other political issue or piece of legislation.
Time and time again the American people have demonstrated strong and overwhelming support for their public institutions why not give the American people the democratic choice of public health care?
Yes, I notice no use of the terms right, left, blue, red, center and this is part of the problem because historically the only time any significant social progress in this country has been made is when liberals, progressives and the left come together in huge coalitions to press for change... the right will never be part of any movement for single-payer or public health care and we don't need them.
In fact, we got this "health insurance bailout and profit maximization act" from the Democrats because Barack Obama walked across the aisle seeking support for healthcare reform from a bunch of Republicans when he should have walked out into the streets of this country appealing to those who elected him believing he was for real change and told them to stay in the streets until Congress passed single-payer universal health care based upon the Canadian model.
As I am sure you must know, Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pull over the same kind of crap when Social Security was being considered (and originally socialized health care was part of this New Deal package of reforms); but, when FDR tried this, Minnesota's socialist governor Floyd Olson and the Communist Party's Earl Browder went out into the streets and for weeks on end made national radio appeals to the American people not to put up with this "reaching out across the aisle for bi-partisan unity" because they understood what was going to happen... people would end up with nothing. The American Medical Association and the National Association of Manufacturers together with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce screamed, "The Bolsheviks are coming, the Bolsheviks are coming" the minute they heard that socialized healthcare was being considered. Frances Perkins was pilloried to no end as a "Communist fellow traveler" by these big-business elements who accused her of trying to implement the program Marx outlined in the Communist Manifesto to which she had the courage to respond, "I would rather see these things as part of government programs helping people rather than remaining mere words on the pages of a pamphlet." Where do we find those with the courage of Floyd Olson, Earl Browder and Frances Perkins today in this battle for health care reform?
Here we are celebrating Social Security's 75th birthday and we still don't have socialized health care to go along with it.
Come on, really, do you expect any politicians trying to run a scam on the American people to cut the Social Security program to support any kind of meaningful healthcare reform unless faced with a huge and massive movement of the people threatening not to re-elect them and to turn towards building some kind of labor-based peoples' party similar to what the Canadians have with the New Democratic Party?
Just like we have no "details" about what this health care reform should look like; we don't have any details about what kind of movement will win these reforms.
I hardly think that people who are scrounging to find the money for their next mortgage payment or heating bill are going to welcome one more bill consisting of "affordable health care."
See, no details; dare I ask what you consider "affordable" for a family of four? Certainly you must have a ballpark figure in mind... let's hear it.
