High noon for the public health care option--A call to action.

Only greed and stupidity stand in the way...

(Robert Reich is the former Secretary of Labor and an economist)

Robert Reich's Blog
The Public Option's Last Stand, and the Public's
August 17, 2009, 11:09AM

I would have preferred a single payer system like Medicare, but became convinced earlier this year that a public, Medicare-like optional plan was just about as much as was politically possible. Now the White House is stepping back even from the public option, with the President saying it's "not the entirety of health care reform," the White House spokesman saying the President could be "satisfied" without it, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying that a public insurance plan is "not the essential element."

Without a public, Medicare-like option, health care reform is a bandaid for a system in critical condition. There's no way to push private insurers to become more efficient and provide better value to Americans without being forced to compete with a public option. And there's no way to get overall health-care costs down without a public option that has the authority and scale to negotiate lower costs with pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, and other providers -- thereby opening the way for private insurers to do the same.

It's been clear from the start that the private insurers and other parts of the medical-industrial complex have hated the idea of the public option, for precisely these reasons. A public option would cut deeply into their current profits. That's why they've been willing to spend a fortune on lobbyists, threaten and intimidate legislators and ordinary Americans, and even rattle Obama's cage to the point where the Administration is about to give up on it.

The White House wonders why there hasn't been more support for universal health care coming from progressives, grass-roots Democrats, and Independents. I'll tell you why. It's because the White House has never made an explicit commitment to a public option.

Senator Kent Conrad's ersatz public option -- his regional "cooperatives" -- won't have the scale or authority to do what a public option would do. That's why some Republicans say they could buy it. What's Conrad's response? "The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," he tells "FOX News Sunday." Conrad is wrong. If Obama tells Senate Democrats he will not sign a healthcare reform bill without a public option, there will be enough votes in the United States Senate for a public option.

I urge you to make it absolutely clear to everyone you know, everyone who cares about universal health care and what it will mean to our country, that the bill must contain a real public option. Tell that to your representatives in Congress. Tell that to the White House. If you are receiving piles of emails from the Obama email system asking you to click in favor of health care, do not do so unless or until you know it has a clear public option. Do not send money unless or until the White House makes clear its support for a public option.

This isn't just Obama's test. It's our test.

Killer squid was a good beginning

for the month of August, but it seems to have died away.  God, what I wouldn't give for a humongous UFO flap to take the media's attention off the laughable yet ominous town hall "protests"...

Or if the Mars Rover could find clear evidence of alien artifacts on the Red Planet.  (In that case, perhaps somebody could start up an engaging conspiracy theory about how NASA got Hollywood to fake the Martian probes and all the photographs...)

Oh.  An inspiration.

Lefties should start showing up at the townhall meeting loudly demanding that the government release all the information about the treaty that the U.S. Government has made with the Grays (you know, the little gray aliens with the huge insectoid eyes...). 

At the very least, it would be interesting to see how many of the "birthers" and the "deathers" would chime in...

R.

P.S. Let me reassure you.  There are no little grey aliens.  Actually, the aliens resemble blonde Swedes & are dressed in shining white robes. 

P.P.S. Or maybe George Soros could rent a fleet of unmarked black helicopters to hover in the vicinity of the town hall meetings...

P.P.P.S. Oh, well, I guess the possibilities are manifold.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Odd blog traffic...

Nobody visits my blog--since anybody who might be inclined to read it already gets the postings in the form of the rants and ravings I send out via e-mail (I can cc the material to the blog without any of the addressees information showing up on the blog post)

But just for the heck of it I checked the traffic stats and for some unknown reason there were 12 visits in late July by party or parties unknown--from Brazil. 

Naturally, my first reaction is free-floating paranoia.  But probably somebody idly curious en passant. 

R.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Glass half-full observation on health care reform...

Leading Senators & Obama himself have made noises during the past day or two suggesting that they are waffling on the public option in health care & there are some (appropriately) alarmist headlines in Huffington Post & Raw Story. 

I'm okay with the alarmism in the headlines--everybody needs to stay vigilant--but I suspect that the backtracking on the public option is more apparent than real.  I think that perhaps the White House and its allies are trying to ratchet down the some of the violence-prone stupidity coming from the tea bagger types by allowing the public option to go discreetly unmentioned--for the time being. 

Come September, although victory is far from assured. I'm pretty sure the public option  will be on the table.   

R.

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Out in the sticks...

Lead story in the Sunday Austin-American Statesman today:  TENSION AT THE TACO TRUCK.  It's a riveting story about the escalating conflict between licensed and unlicensed taco vendors. 

I know a Sunday in August is apt to be a slow news day, but, really, this makes a body feel provincial. 

How can I jeer at New Yorkers for being parochial, or Oregonians for being rustic if my hometown paper can't come with anything more significant?

(Even Kokomo, Ind. has the occasional UFO sighting...)

R.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/