Must View Web ad from careyoukeep.com via Time's Karen Tumulty and Sen. Ron Wyden

[flpoljunkie]

FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2009 AT 10:16 AM

Another Look at the Health Care System

Posted by Karen Tumulty

I spent some time with Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Jim Cooper this morning discussing their health care plan and the state of the health care reform drive on Capitol Hill (which I will have more to say about on TIME.com).In the course of our conversation, Senator Wyden showed me this web ad, which I thought you might find pretty funny, no matter what side of the issue you are on:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/03/13/another-look-at-the-health-care-system/

[justinaforjustice]

1. This Ad is Just A Funny Diversion.

As long as the Wyden-Cooper health care plan does not provide for a single payer system with the government as the payer, it is a dangerous diversion which would "protect" only private insurance companies.

Single-payer is the only truly portable health care solution. Wyden-Cooper would force everyone to buy insurance from a private insurer, which is exactly the unacceptable (and frequently unaffordable) alternative we have now. Under Wyden-Cooper, the private insurance companies would still be free to increase their profits by denying claim payments to those who need them. The costs of the insurance companies claim-denying bureaucracies would remain the same. There would be no over-all reduction in national health-care costs at all. This is not a solution, it is another scam.

The national media is fond of repeating Democratic Senator Baccus's words that "America is not ready for single-payer health care." Nonsense, we are all clamoring for it. It is American private insurance companies -- and the media and politicians they have bought and paid for-- that are not ready for single-payer insurance because it will mean that they can no longer gorge consumers, employers and the medical professions in their thirst for ever-increasing profits.

Medicare works fine for our seniors. Its administrative costs are a third lower than private insurance costs. Medicare for all would save money and work equally well for all of the rest of us.

We cannot allow our Congress to continue to represent the interests of private insurance companies rather than the majority of the American people. We must demand that they pass a single-payer, national health care now. Every other industrialized country -- and many developing countries -- in the world have national health care. Americans deserve no less.

[flpoljunkie]

2. We need to keep it simple--Medicare for all. But, is it possible at this point?

I doubt it.

[justinaforjustice]

3. Of Course It's Possible.

Of course it is possible to give Medicare to everyone -- it is much, much cheaper than our current anti-human system. The overhead costs of Medicare are one third of that now paid by private insurance companies, which does not even include the billions in over-head that our medical professionals have to pay to try to make the insurance companies pay their patients' claims.

Then, take a look at the U.S. budget: 32% of our budget goes for military spending, and that is only the portion we know about. Reducing our military spending by one third would still allow us to spend more than most of the rest of the world combined and fund, not only Medicare, but university educations for most of our children. Under the Bush administration, between 2001 and 204, the Pentagon lost over 1 trillion dollars that it cannot account for. In effect, by ending corrupt no-bid contracts and curtailing waste and extravagant weapons designed for the conventional wars we no longer fight, we could afford Medicare quite easily.

We are being told that "we" cannot afford Medicare by those private insurance companies who don't want it "afforded". They don't want to lose their huge profit margins. This is the same nonsense that the Bush administration tried to claim when they advocated privatizing social security to give more profits to stock brokers. Our federal Social Security program is well-funded and will be for the foreseeable future. It is the corporate Republicans who want to endlessly increase their profits who don't want to "afford" Medicare or Social Security.

The national media, owned by the big corporations, continually repeats the same, erroneous propaganda to make us back off our demand for Medicare for all. Every other industrialized country in the world can afford to provide health care for their citizens; is it really likely that the U.S. can't do the same?

[justinaforjustice]

4. Duplicate Deleted