Olbermann on the healthcare travesty
Spend 12 minutes listening to the best commentary I’ve heard on the healthcare mess, from MS-NBC’s Keith Olbermann.
He is the only other person I’ve heard advocating my viewpoint: that since compromise isn’t working anyway, since the right-wing nutters will call you a socialist no matter what you do, you may as well fight for what we really need, and then in the next elections call down the progressive forces to sweep out the GOP and BlueDog intransigents, along with the ever-more-loathsome Joe Lieberman. Letting the bill go down in flames and then bringing it back as a campaign tool is a far more sensible strategy to me than chipping and chipping away at the reforms until there’s nothing left other than total capitulation to the insurance industry. This bill embodies everything wrong about the legislative process: the influence of big lobbying and big campaign money, the people shut out from the beginning, even Sanders being forced to abandon the single-payer vote on a parliamentary procedure trick.
Like Olbermann, and like Howard Dean, if I were in the Senate, I’d be voting no until there are some crumbs in here for ordinary Americans. First Obama and Baucus rejected single-payer—what we really want and NEED—in favor of the very limited “public option.” Then they traded that away for extension of Medicare. Then they traded THAT away…for what? For the unreliable promise of a possible (not definite) yes vote from Lieberman!
Progressive Senators like Sanders and a few others need to tell Obama and Ried tht this bill is not one they can vote for. Let the bill grind to a halt! We can play this kind of hardball as well. When there’s nothing to vote for, it’s time to vote no.
I’ll be urging my own Senators to do so later today. Not in a petition but in a personal letter. When I’ve done the letter, I’ll post it here, and I give open permission to copy it in whole or in part to contact your own Senators.
I’m also going to ask MSNBC for a transcript of Olbermann’s remarks, and permission to post it.
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From the presidential candidates campaigning they have used health care as a tool to get into the white house and Obama knows that he has to get the best health care reform prepared for the senate which will help everyone in America because there are millions out there without insurance. This reform will step on Politian’s toes but and also hurt them in their wallets but something has to be done as they rich are getting richer from health insurance and the poorer are suffering without or going bankrupt paying for it themselves.
.-= insurance tips´s last blog ..
From the presidential candidates campaigning they have used health care as a tool to get into the white house and Obama knows that he has to get the best health care reform prepared for the senate which will help everyone in America because there are millions out there without insurance. This reform will step on Politian’s toes but and also hurt them in their wallets but something has to be done as they rich are getting richer from health insurance and the poorer are suffering without or going bankrupt paying for it themselves.
.-= insurance tips´s last blog ..
As promised…my letter to Senators Kerry and Kirk of Massachusetts. It’s very easy to cotact your Senator on this webpage: https://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=MA
Dear Senator Kerry:
As a constituent and a business owner, I am appalled at the way all meaningful reform has been stripped out of the health reform bill. It is time for Senators like yourself, who truly care about health care for all, to say, enough is enough. I urge you to withdraw from the 60-vote block until at the very least, a public option and Medicare for 55+ are returned to the bill. I’d rather this bill be withdrawn entirely and replaced with the Sanders-Weiner single-payer/Medicare for All. In its present form, this bill deserves to die, and progressive Democrats need to stand together to push for meaningful reform, and to pin the blame of any failure squarely on the intransigent Republican Party and it’s Blue Dog/Independent allies. Let’s vote them out in 2010, and come back when we can pass a bill that actually helps people. Even former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean no longer supports this bill.
If you would like to see a very trenchant analysis of this bill, I refer you to Keith Olberman”s commentary on MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/34455431#34455431
As promised…my letter to Senators Kerry and Kirk of Massachusetts. It’s very easy to cotact your Senator on this webpage: https://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=MA
Dear Senator Kerry:
As a constituent and a business owner, I am appalled at the way all meaningful reform has been stripped out of the health reform bill. It is time for Senators like yourself, who truly care about health care for all, to say, enough is enough. I urge you to withdraw from the 60-vote block until at the very least, a public option and Medicare for 55+ are returned to the bill. I’d rather this bill be withdrawn entirely and replaced with the Sanders-Weiner single-payer/Medicare for All. In its present form, this bill deserves to die, and progressive Democrats need to stand together to push for meaningful reform, and to pin the blame of any failure squarely on the intransigent Republican Party and it’s Blue Dog/Independent allies. Let’s vote them out in 2010, and come back when we can pass a bill that actually helps people. Even former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean no longer supports this bill.
If you would like to see a very trenchant analysis of this bill, I refer you to Keith Olberman”s commentary on MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/34455431#34455431