Going the Wrong Way
I highly recommend you read the Washington Post Op-Ed by Howard Dean about the sham being pushed now as “healthcare reform.” I’m not going to quote from it because that’s being done all over the place this morning. What I am going to do is point something out.
Howard Dean, as the DNC Chairman, is the architect of the “50 state strategy” and has his fingerprints all over the big dem wins in the Congressional and Senatorial races of 2006 and 2008. Dr,. Dean, MD, is well aware of what people were looking for as far as healthcare reform goes, and he fielded a lot of candidates who told voters that they shared these views. The President, as a matter of fact, claimed to have a lot of these goals HIMSELF, and ran largely on the vision of Dr. Dean when he was running for President.
I didn’t believe him, since his voting record told me that he would actually govern as a corporatist insider, but I had hopes early on that I was wrong. Then it started; bank bailouts that Chimpy would smile about, a refusal to address the issue of human rights for gay American citizens, half-promises regarding Iraq, and a policy worthy of the moronic monkey himself for Afghanistan.
Oh, and healthcare. After all that talk about nobody should lose everything they have because they get sick, and older Americans shouldn’t be forced to choose between medical insurance and food…. the President, as usual, has now completely capitulated to the corporate ownership of the Government. Healthcare “reform” as offered up presently might as well have been written by health insurer whore LIEberman-the insurers get to continue to discriminate based on age and illness, they don’t get any caps on their rates, they keep their antitrust status, healthcare remains in the worst possible place it can be-on the employer, which is killing American competition-and there is no publicly-run competition to encourage the murderous bastards who run health insurance companies to change their ways.
Dr. Dean is right. This is a steaming pile. No wonder he wouldn’t vote for it.
Oh, and guess who I absolutely will not vote for in 2012?
Tags: healthcare reform, Howard Dean, lies, obama
December 17th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I think Dean is right. I don’t know if I’m quite ready to scrap the whole thing and start over, but that’s probably the only solution. A few quiet amendments here and there will probably be the only way to chip away at the HMOs’ stranglehold. I don’t know if Single Payer or the Public Option could be done as amendments, but some parts of the reform agenda could be done that way. That, plus the reconciliation process when necessary.
The only missing ingredient is spines and cajones for the Democrats. Come to think of it, forget the above paragraph.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
“Oh, and guess who I absolutely will not vote for in 2012?”
That makes two of us. In fact, I don’t think the man could get elected to dog catcher, anywhere, right now. And the sad fact is, there was nobody better to choose from out of the last pack. I was a Hillary supporter who ended up voting for Obama. Won’t be burned again.
And yes, we need to scrap whatever it is that they’re trying to pass off as healthcare reform at this point. I think we’ll be worse off if it passes than if it doesn’t. For one thing, if any Republicans or blue dogs vote for it you know it’s not in our best interests, but will benefit insurance and pharma, and maybe as an added bonus, make Obama look bad. That would be the only reasons any of them would support it.