Health Care

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By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/letstatesdoit

The health insurance bill currently under consideration in Congress would forbid states from providing their residents with healthcare. An amendment correcting that problem was passed in committee last July and then quietly removed. A new campaign is asking the Democrats who voted for that amendment to withhold their votes on the bill until it is reinstated.

Kathlyn Stone has done what I should have done and collected my recent postings on state level single-payer healthcare on her blog.

The question isn’t if a state will enact true health care reform before Congress, but which state and when.

By David Swanson

California keeps passing bills for state single-payer healthcare, but Ahhhnold won't sign em, and Jerry Brown who wants to be governor doesn't seem to want it badly enough to make a commitment on healthcare. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is encouraged that their current governor has said he probably will sign a single-payer healthcare bill, and the legislature just might pass one. But Minnesota has an angle neither of these other states can claim: a serious candidate for governor who is the state's leading advocate for single-payer.

By David Swanson

I've been writing about various states just beginning campaigns for single-payer healthcare. Pennsylvania is on the cusp of completing one.

They claim to have the best legislation, which will provide everyone with healthcare, pay for it, and in fact save people and businesses money, as well as getting around the federal restrictions Congressman Dennis Kucinich has attempted unsuccessfully thus far to waive for states. In Pennsylvania they have Democratic and Republican cosponsors. Imagine that in Washington, D.C.! And they have a governor ready to sign the bill into law.

By David Swanson

Maryland's state senate has scheduled a hearing on a single-payer healthcare bill for March 10th. California's legislature has passed a single-payer bill three times. Single-payer healthcare bills are advancing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New Mexico. I recently wrote about two state legislator candidates, Marcus Brandon in North Carolina and Byron DeLear in Missouri, who plan to introduce state single-payer bills immediately upon being elected.

Now, let me tell you about Colorado. Mark Mehringer is a candidate for the Colorado State House from District 7 (Denver). His website at http://votemark2010.com has an issues page and a video on the home page that both put a Medicare-for-All healthcare solution at the top of his agenda.

By David Swanson

Canada did not create a civilized healthcare system nationally until its provinces led the way. Clearly Congress is dragging behind the states in our country, and it is through state successes that we will eventually compel the U.S. government to provide our people with this basic human right.

By David Swanson

What the liberal activist world is doing for healthcare bears a striking similarity to what Christianists do for billionaires. Supporting tax breaks for the richest three-percent of Americans because you hate gay people or women or blacks or sex does not at first look much like supporting a "public option" for three percent of the poorest of Americans.

But both shape national policy around a supposedly national program that in reality will benefit only some small percentage of people. Feel free to quibble over the number, but Obama promised the insurance companies in a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009, that it would be under 5 percent. Let's be generous and call it four, a "public option" for four percent of us.

By David Swanson

A bill to create single-payer healthcare in California has passed that state's senate for the third time now. Californians just need to persuade a governor to sign it. Single-payer healthcare bills are advancing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and a growing list of states, including New Mexico, where State Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a long-time supporter of single-payer healthcare, is running for Lieutenant Governor.

By David Swanson

Does the United States Constitution allow Congress to force people to purchase a product (health insurance) from a private corporation, and fine them or tax them if they refuse? The answer is a matter of debate, but there is little dispute that such an act of Congress would be unprecedented.

Sheldon Laskin, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Baltimore Law School who has argued that the Constitution forbids such a move, describes the new and dangerous can of worms it would open up:

By David Swanson

When someone you've always considered over-rated and unhelpful does something right, and when someone you've had disagreements with points it out, it's worth noting. So here is a link to David Sirota on Howard Dean.

Sirota even gets right that Dean has progressed over the years. But what I think is worth preserving from recent memories is that Dean helped exclude single-payer from the debate. He limited the range of options to the point where very little room was left to negotiate before a bill became clearly more damaging than nothing at all.

To Dean's credit, when the room to negotiate ran out, he said the only sensible thing there is to say, but what most members of congress and most astroturf groups will not say: Vote No! Even the groups that have pushed for single-payer have yet to say Vote No on the insurance corporation bailout bill.

Thank Dean for finding his spine. Thank Sirota for pointing it out.

By David Swanson

Congressman Weiner has agreed with Nancy Pelosi not to have a floor vote on his Medicare for All bill. A press release from Congressmen Kucinich and Conyers opposing it helped tip the scale. But Weiner did not ask Pelosi to include in her bill the Kucinich Amendment to allow states to create single-payer. Pelosi made clear that President Obama opposes that, and used the bogus excuse that providing everyone with comprehensive free healthcare would deprive them of the right to pay ever increasing rates for uncertain health "insurance."

By David Swanson

Word is that the full House will vote on national single-payer Medicare for All on Friday. This vote is a cover for the removal of an amendment that was in the House "healthcare" bill until Pelosi stripped it out. That amendment would have made it easier for states to enact single-payer, and still would if a conference committee is persuaded to reinstate it.

By David Swanson

Imagine public elections in which 2 percent are allowed to vote and Diebold gets to nominate the candidates. Or public parks with guest lists of 2 percent of the public, and private prisons for anyone else who tries to enter. Or how about public schools serving 2 percent of children with fully televised lessons broken up by commercials promoting illiteracy? Welcome to the world of the robust public option.

This week on CounterSpin: Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we've supposedly seen the comeback of the public option, in some form or another. We're also told that Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass a bill. Is any of this right? And what about a true public health system like single-payer? Author and activist David Swanson will join us to try and untangle these story lines.

Also on the show: Progressives and others interested in truly universal healthcare, as in healthcare that would cover everyone, have been more or less prodded in recent months to give up the idea of a single payer system -- dismissed as it's been for years by a corporate press corps as not politically viable -- and to get behind the public option, presented as single payer's less ideal but more achievable variant. But does public option as it's now presented have anything at all to do with healthcare that covers everyone? We'll talk with Bruce Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report, about that.

LINKS:

David Swanson
Black Agenda Report

By David Swanson

Lies, damn lies, and promises from Democrats. An amendment allowing states to create state-level single-payer healthcare has been stripped out of the House healthcare bill, after having passed in committee back in July by a vote of 27 to 19. And rumor has it that a vote on national single-payer that was promised in July in exchange for skipping a committee vote on it will now be denied.

First, the state single-payer amendment.

By David Swanson

The absence of a civilized healthcare system in the United States, almost alone among wealthy nations, results in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year. But if something is to be done soon to save lives it is not going to be done in Washington, D.C. It is going to be done in Sacramento, Harrisburg, Columbus, Springfield, Augusta, Denver. And then it's going to be blocked by lawsuits from health insurance corporations and preemptive language in federal legislation.

By David Swanson, BlackCommentator