Guaranteed Healthcare

Are the Presidential candidates limiting their healthcare reform options to giving up or selling out?  We'll take a look in today's Guaranteed healthcare update.

If today’s Washington Post is to be believed, Democratic Presidential Candidates are having internal debates about healthcare reform that can be summed up as: give up or sell out.  The sell out option—ripping up the safety net and letting every patient fend for themselves—seems to be losing so far. Instead, leading candidates are giving up, and choosing Mitt Romney-style plans that won't solve the problem but will increase the role of the same private insurers who Michael Moore dimed out in Sicko.  Grrrr.  When did unworkable proposals become the “pragmatic” option?  Time for health care advocates to start pressuring candidates for real proposals. Elsewhere, the San Francisco Chronicle compares the U.S. health care systems with single-payer systems around the world.  Hint: the U.S. doesn’t look too good    

In the same paper, Deborah Burger, RN, President of the National Nurses Organizing Committee & California Nurses Association, piles on with an op-ed about the ugly reality of waiting lines for treatment…in America, while author Ken Terry looks at how American employers are being disingenuous in their attempts to avoid the healthcare mess.

 The healthcare blogosphere is loving Michael Moore’s smackdown of CNN, and is going Reagan-esque with demands to tear down the tottering symbols of the decrepit private health insurers.   In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell is trying to protect the profits of private insurance companies…and, of course, finds he isn’t left with enough money to tackle serious healthcare reform.  Coincidence or cautionary tale? 

And finally, Tom Tomorrow dissects standard conservative responses to healthcare reform.