If Liz were Queen

Helen Redmond for Counterpunch wrote this great article titled:  “I Prefer Single-Payer, But. . .”

Please go HERE to read the complete article and then DO SOMETHING!  Get in touch with your elected officials.  Talk to them.  Call MoveOn.  IT IS NOT TOO LATE.  That is THEIR story to discourage us.

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD.

IF WE CAN ELECT A BLACK MAN AS PRESIDENT OF THE USA, WE CAN PASS SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE REFORM AND ANYONE WHO SAYS IT’S NOT POSSIBLE IS EITHER A LIAR OR WRONG OR BOTH

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“. . . Only John Conyers single-payer legislation, HR 676, The United States National Health Care Act, fundamentally restructures health care, guarantees it to the entire population (the undocumented, too) and is fully funded. No other piece of legislation is as comprehensive.

How many Americans know about this amazing, life-transforming bill that delinks employment from insurance and abolishes the despised health insurance industry? Has there been a front page story or major magazine interview with Congressman Conyers? There’s been virtually no stories about labor’s support for HR 676, despite the fact it’s been endorsed by 554 union organizations in 49 states and by 130 Central Labor Councils.

But we heard plenty when Andy Stern, the president of the SEIU sat down with Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-mart to discuss solutions to the nation’s health care crisis. Those two are experts on providing health care to workers? What about the nurses and doctors who support single-payer and got dragged out of, and arrested in Max Baucus’s senate hearings in Washington, DC? If doctors and nurses had been arrested for any other political issue it would have been the lead story in every newspaper and online edition. Doctors and nurses never deliberately get arrested — that’s news!

. . . A New York Times poll in June found that 72 percent supported a government-administered insurance plan – like Medicare for everyone under the age of 65. That poll also reported 64 percent believed the federal government should guarantee coverage to the entire population, i.e. health care should be a human right.

Another interesting number: 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. This is in stark contrast to President Obama’s position of tepid, incremental reform. Obama asserts if he was starting from scratch he might favor SP, but we aren’t so he can’t. He wants to build on the existing system and not “disrupt” the employment-based provision of health care. As if employment-based health coverage isn’t being massively “disrupted” by the economic depression that has laid off millions of workers and forced them down into the ranks of the 50 million uninsured.

But what is truly disgusting is how the “progressive” left has caved so quickly and cravenly, given up the fight for single-payer and support for HR 676. They have become the indignant foot soldiers, apologists and spinmeisters for Obama’s piece of shit legislation. . .