Guaranteed Healthcare

Some patient stories just fill me with anger and shame.  This one -- from Iowa -- is one of those stories.  By now, we all know the plot.  Patient has insurance.  Patient gets sick.  Patient cannot afford to keep insurance or find insurance that will cover illness.  Patient goes without coverage.  Providers demand up-front payment for cancer care.  Patient calls on friends, family and community to help.  Patient grovels.  Cancer spreads.  Patient grovels.

Ah, the mid-western values.  This is Iowa.  My mom was born in Boone during the Great Depression.  Iowa is the place many think of when we think of those salt-of-the-earth, kind and hard-working Americans with traditional, perhaps even faith-based values.  A kind and gentle place with a no-nonsense work-ethic.  Iowa.  Fields of farmers' dreams and the stuff of mid-America at its finest.

So, why in Iowa should we allow Deb, (continued below)

For the last several days, the blogosphere has been awash with a single admonition. A single plea.

Stay in Line.

"Don't think for a moment that power concedes."

Stay in line.

In many states the wait to vote could extend through the day. Stay on line.

In many states minorities, first time voters, and even the elderly will encounter all manner of obstructions. Stay on line.

If an elderly person needs assistance, work together with the people around you to provide whatever help you can. But please, stay on line.

Please, no matter the hours, the weather, the heat, the need for a toilet, or a sip of water, please, stay in line.

I just voted. I waited. I stayed in line. I'm one of the lucy ones, my line was only about an hour and a half.  My friend, who votes in a different election district, got up at 4AM and was on his line at 5, the polls open in New York at 6AM, he voted right before 8AM.

We stayed on line and so must you. No matter what.

Vote like you life depends on it, because it does.

STAY ON LINE. STAY IN LINE. NO MATTER WHAT.

If you don't know where to vote, click this link, it will direct you to your polling station.

Why is John McCain hiding? Why is John McCain hiding Sarah Palin? Why is John McCain hiding his grotesque record from the American people?

This video ought to make it very clear.

He's going to tax your precious employer health benefits. And if that doesn't sit well with you, he'll give you a tax credit and send on your own into the merciless and unregulated individual insurance cesspool. Once in that toxic waste heap, "my friend", you'll be on your own.

Here's what Joe Biden had to say yesterday about healthcare in Missouri a very critical swing state. These voters will decide who will be the 44th President of the United States.

Did you see this yesterday on the news?  Did you hear about this yesterday? Do you think John McCain wants you to know anything about his healthcare "plan"?

Should we add knowledge, information, and an informed electorate, to the list we call casualty of the day?

 Before I address what Paul Krugman had to say this morning, I urge you to hear what Elizabeth Warren has to say about healthcare and bankruptcy.

This morning Paul Krugman writes about health care in the The New York Times

He asks: Can it happen here?

That he must ask such a question is chilling.

That we as a nation continue to have a discussion which revolves around the concept of whether a human being in pain is entitled to be relieved of his suffering is horrifying.

Mark my words.

Lacking any pretense of intellectual firepower, uneducated and untrained news readers pretending to be journalists will be among the biggest roadblocks this election cycle when it comes to healthcare reform.

The American people need to be educated, and relying on morons like this is truly frightening to contemplate.

 Well contemplate we must, because this is yet another bleak reality we face.

The pattern is eerily familiar.

Journalists Entertainers refused to ask the hard questions before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and I see the identical pattern playing out with healthcare.

Within a few short hours today, I witnessed two instances of newsreader/journalists attempting  to grapple with the subject of healthcare.

Both failed miserably.

Take a look at this interview from This Week with George Stephanopoulous.  Midway through  the interminable discussion, George gets around to asking John Kerry and the abomination Lindsay Graham about the differences between the Obama and McShame healthcare plans.

You'll notice if you watch the video, that the question is not  responded to by either Kerry or Graham.  Even worse, Stephanopoulos, not having the brain power of day old pancakes, doesn't return to it. Question asked, never answered--all is good in the world. And this passes for news.

By the way, sad to say, watching Kerry brought back the nightmare of 2004--a very good man, but, oh my God, not the world's finest communicator.

Preach it  President Obama.

At a town hall meeting on health care at Virginia High School, a 95-year-old voter gave Senator Obama our beloved Democratic nominee a maple walking stick.

Obama thanked the man, who’d carved the stick himself, and then, admiring his gift, said, “If members of Congress don’t pass my health care plan, I’ll whup them, I’ll whup them. That’s right, don’t mess with me, I’ll have my stick.”

Newsday is reporting that Obama has reaffirmed this historic pledge, and we will hold him to it. Healthcare negotiations will be broadcast to the American people via CSPAN, they will not be conducted under cover of darkness.

The American people will watch the sausage being made.

He stressed that he would have open discussions with the American people -- about 46 million have no health insurance -- vowing that negotiations over his health-care plan would be aired on cable TV's C-SPAN.

Watch the video, Obama means business.

Memo to Members of Congress:  Don't cross Barack Obama. The American people are watching you.

The juxaposition takes your breath away.

Item:

Barack Obama, an African-American, becomes the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party and will likely be the next President of the United States.

Item:

More grim information about the tragic realities of our broken healthcare system. In a new study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation we learn:

Race and place of residence can have a staggering impact on the course and quality of the medical treatment a patient receives, according to new research showing that blacks with diabetes or vascular disease are nearly five times more likely than whites to have a leg amputated and that women in Mississippi are far less likely to have mammograms than those in Maine.

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, communications specialist CNA/NNOC

What a great night of political speeches.  And it was wonderful to hear both the now-presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, and the presumed runner-up Senator Hillary Clinton cite healthcare as a major concern. (Whew, the titles alone require hip-boots for wading.)

But we need a little retooling...  Both said every American should have health insurance.  Wrong.  Every American should have health care.

The presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain has a more outwardly obvious, pro-corporation healthcare strategy.  He wants to make sure he keeps the old insurance giants thriving.

But what did Barack Obama say there towards the end of his speech?  That we'll look back on this moment as the turning point?  That we'll see this moment as the time and place in which we made sure every American had healthcare.  Right on, Senator Obama.  But now we're going to help you see what real change looks like for every American: single payer, universal health care. Everybody in, nobody out. This is the moment.

Robert Kuttner, one of the most prescient health care writers, lays out the very real problems with individual mandates in a must-read article that could not be more relevant to the national healthcare debates:

"Massachusetts' experience with health-care reform illustrates the problem of an individual mandate absent comprehensive reform: It makes a social failure the problem of the individual."

Healthcare’s the hot topic in Nevada...California...insurance industry profit reports...and everywhere!

First up, Marc Cooper writes at Off the Bus that the healthcare debate is getting hot in Nevada:

Obama also complained that his supporters were getting calls and fliers from Clinton supporters accusing his health care plan of leaving 15 million Americans uninsured. Obama brushed aside the charge and then proceeded to criticize President Clinton and Hillary Clinton for attempting health care reform "the wrong way" last decade. "They went behind closed doors to do it and allowed lobbyists the and health care industry to shape the plan and eventually kill it."