America wants single payer healthcare

"And what do we know so far about what middle class Americans can expect from the legislation being privately crafted?

First, no matter what percentage of your take home pay it takes, you will be legally required to buy private health insurance. Second, if all you can afford is a policy that leaves you financially exposed to bankruptcy and foreclosure, then you will still be legally required to purchase that private insurance product. Third, should you fail to buy a policy, you will pay a fine.

Like it so far? Feeling free and protected? Like the choices so far? It gets better.

The private, for-profit insurance industry has made concessions we are asked to celebrate. First, they'll issue every one of us a policy provided every one of us is legally forced to buy coverage. Second, they stop discriminating against women because they have uteruses and child-bearing capacity, provided we all have to buy their product. And third, and this was a real coup according to our leaders, the insurance companies, medical equipment folks and providers will slow the rate of increase in charging for their products to charge just a bit less in terms of percentages of overall costs than they had planned to do and as is predicted. Laughable concessions sold as real compromise." -- Donna Smith

If this is true, then I wonder why Obama even bothered to make a stink about addressing healthcare reform this year. Sure, it was part of his campaign, but such a paltry change would be more a slap in the face of the american people who need this healthcare reform so badly than if he hadn't bothered to do anything at all. Because a faux reform will only mean it'll be that much longer before we can expect anything of substance to happen.

Don't bother if you can't do it right, Obama. I can kinda understand if you've taken on too much to do this first year and as a result are too distracted by sending more soldiers into countries we illegally invaded. That would weigh on my mind, too. But don't give the american people short shift by--again!-- letting the people who got us into our current health care joke of a system lead the way and make the decisions on how they're supposedly going to fix that.

The american people want a single payer healthcare system. Nothing half or a quarter thereof.

"There are 50 million people without insurance in this country. That's equivalent to 24 state populations. If we had 24 states where nobody had insurance they would be out in the streets raising all kinds of hell," said Phil Campbell, spokesman for the group Montanans for Single-Payer and the former political director of the Montana Education Association before it merged with the Montana Federation of teachers. "We're just frustrated with Baucus because all the players are at the table, all the insurance companies and other folks, except advocates for single-payer. We think it's the solution to the problem. It's a system that will pay for itself rather than figure out how we're going to pay for the system."

With some polls showing approximately 60 percent of Americans in support of single-payer health insurance, advocates say Congress is excluding the majority of Americans from a critical national debate. Single-payer supporters say politicians are unfairly criticizing the idea as politically unfeasible without even having an open and public dialogue on its merits.

Read the rest of this excellent article by John S. Adams here.