http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber08102009.html
Hit the Reset Button on Health Care In Defense of Disruption By RUSSELL MOKHIBER What do: Rush Limbaugh Barack Obama Newt Gingrich Nancy Pelosi PhRMA Families USA America’s Health Insurance Plans AARP Harry Reid Mitch McConnell and Fox News have in common? They are all freaked out by single payer. They have all bought the corporate line: The market has a central place in health insurance. In contrast, the majority of doctors. The majority of nurses. And the majority of the American people are not freaked out by single payer. To the contrary. They favor single payer. They all agree — the market has no place in health insurance. Single payer would eliminate the 1,300 private payers (insurance companies). And replace them with one public single payer. As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine puts it: Single payer is not only the best option. It’s the only option that will control costs and cover everyone. We’ve been making noise about single payer all year, beginning in May, when we asked Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) to invite one single payer advocate to testify at three days of hearings before the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Baucus refused, ordered us arrested, and charged us with “disruption of Congress.” We’ve been disrupting ever since — on Capitol Hill. And at town hall meetings around the country. And the right wing has taken a page from our playbook. They too have started disrupting the Democrats. Not because the Democrats are in bed with the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations (which they are.) But because they believe that Obamacare is back door single payer (which it surely isn’t — if it were, why would the insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry be supporting it?) The right wing has garnered more attention because they have bigger institutional megaphones — Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the mainstream media. Today, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, in an article in USA Today, called the right wing protests “un-American.” They are not “un-American” any more than we are “un-American.” The right wing is right to seek to defeat Obamacare — with non violent civil disobendience, if necessary. They are seeking to defeat Obamacare for their own right wing reasons (primarily because they fear creeping socialism.) We seek to defeat Obamacare because it’s a bailout of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. And it won’t deliver universal health care to the American people. Time to scrap Obamacare. And start from scratch. Russell Mokhiber is editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and founder of singlepayeraction.org ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
