Paul Ryan, Republicans Are Against HealthCare, It's That Easy

Never has a domestic political issue beckoned so brightly for decent Americans as the Republican Party's attack on healthcare.

Here is an issue on which the good guys can finally win.

Healthcare as an political issue should make Republicans anathema to the electorate to a degree that California Republicans became the Hate Party after promoting the infamous, racist Proposition 187 in 1994, (CNN).

Paul Ryan and the Republicans face similar political waters should Democrats and progressives competently push a pro-healthcare message and legislative agenda.

Republicans love the idea of healthcare for themselves. As for Americans, well, healthcare is an earned privilege and not a right, Republicans believe unanimously.

The religious right follows along with some version of Jesus is against Medicare for all and the health insurance industry is going to heaven.

One hopes every opportunity to extol the virtues of healthcare is seized upon by the Dem Party pols and progressives, particularly Wisconsinites disgusted by Scott Walker, Paul Ryan and what in past decades would see Republicans devastated by their perverse anti-healthcare commitment.

Bernie Sanders has been touting MediCare for All of course, sounding a sentiment widely shared among the population.

Will the corporatist, neo-libs get on board?

Scott Walker Blocks Federal Money for Healthcare in 'Crazy' Move

Scott Walker: "I care too much about the people of this state
not to empower them to control their own destiny."
(Stein. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Feb. 13, 2013) 

Update: Walker's Rubik Health Care Solution Cruel Update

'Major step backwards for working parents in Wisconsin seeking healthcare' as Ayn Rand devotee, Scott Walker, echoes Mitt Romney's "47 percent" crack

What do we expect from Scott Walker who blocked Wisconsin from receiving $810 million for funding for a labor-intensive [lots of jobs] project to improve and expand its rail road system?

We expect, in the words of Citizen Actions of Wisconsin's Robert Kraig: the same governor to block "billions of ObamaCare dollars that would have extended BadgerCare to over 170,000 additional Wisconsinites, created over 10,000 jobs, and saved the state millions."

Ideological opponents to Medicaid like Walker are counting on the corporate media to muddy the waters and pretend Walker really just loves health care, as Walker pretends to offer another health care plan in an announcement this week that he says allows people to 'choose.'

Walker made his announcement to the rightwing Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce group this week.

Even industry analysts critical of ObamaCare are shaking their heads at Walker.

Writes Scott Bauer in an AP piece picked up around the state, but buried inside local papers:

Gov. Scott Walker's plan to move more people off state Medicaid plans and onto private insurance through a federal marketplace won't result in cutting the number of uninsured Wisconsin residents in half as promised, an independent analyst said Thursday.

Walker's numbers are inflated because poor people near the poverty line won't be able to afford private health insurance that requires individuals to pay for annual deductibles and other cost-sharing expenses, Bob Laszewski, a Washington-based insurance industry consultant, told the Associated Press after reviewing the Republican governor's plan.

"To me this is crazy policy," said Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates and a frequent critic of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

"These exchange plans were never designed for Medicaid-eligible people. They're designed for middle-class people who can afford deductibles and co-pays," he said.

Walker is adopting the rightwing think tank High Deductible-Health Savings Accounts positions hatched in the late 1990s, and designed to phase out Medicaid and Medicare by ideologues opposed to the popular opinion that health care is a right.

Joe Tarr at Isthmus quotes advocates who work at getting healthcare for families, and are skeptical and often hostile to the motives of health insurance companies:

Jon Peacock, research director with the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, said that many of those plans will have very high deductibles and copays that will make it difficult for poor people to afford.

"Congress didn't intend for the exchanges to be servicing families just above the poverty level," Peacock said. "Even with the subsidies, the exchanges aren't affordable for many low-income families. And not all families will be eligible for the exchanges."

For instance, if people can get insurance through their employers -- even if they can't afford it -- they won't be eligible for the exchange. ...

Bobby Peterson, executive director of ABC for Health, said it looks like Walker is making a political calculation to set himself apart from other Republicans who might have hopes of higher office. "He's trying to distinguish himself from the Republican crowd," Peterson said.

Peterson joined numerous health care advocates and Democrats in condemning Walker's proposal.

"We think it's a major step backwards for coverage of low-income working parents in Wisconsin," Peacock said

Citizen Action's Kraig explains why Scott Walker's rejection of $12 billion in federal Medicaid money is crazy below:

Health Insurance Parasites

Update: Fight for the public option.

As everyone gets back to work on Tuesday and awaits President Obama's national address on healthcare on Wednesday, seen by some as a "make-or-break moment in his young administration (Peter Baker NYT)," writer Corrente points out what should be axiomatic: Health insurance companies are parasites, a rogue industry.

Perhaps a more apt description is the grubworm: We are the grass and the worm is the health insurance industry:

Grubworms are the larvae of beetles, attacking the roots of turfgrasses and ornamental plants. Damage first appears as drought stress such as wilting and drooping. ... Grub populations also attract predatory mammals such as skunks, raccoons, opossums and moles that can hear the grub activity and dig into the turf in search of a meal- causing further damage to the turf.

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

"No More Mr. Nice Guy"
- Alice Cooper, 1973

Tyler Durden to President Obama

President Obama is floating the idea that next week's healthcare address to Congress may disappoint progressives seeking Obama's advocacy for healthcare reform that includes a public option as a right and a cost-control measure.

Look to cinema for a response:

We do your laundry, cook your food
and serve you dinner. We guard you
while you sleep. We drive your
ambulances. Do not fuck with us.
- Tyler Durden [Fight Club, 1998)

Ditch Drug War, Pay for Health Care

Crooks and Liars has links to sane proposals:

Esquire: Drug War Facts: America's prohibition of narcotics may be costing more lives than Mexico's — and nearly enough dollars for universal health care.

How Shameless Will GOP Be on Teddy and Healthcare

John R. Bohrer is appalled that the GOP wants to politicize the moral power of the services for Teddy Kennedy.

We all should be.

As the dying wish of Teddy is to see movement on expanding health care as a right, many are reacting with hope of America achieving this long-sought goal.

As Teddy spoke at RFK's service, quoting his brother:

'Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off.'

Surely a noble effort.

Via the Daily News:

The following is the eulogy for Robert Kennedy given by his brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy at the public memorial service held on June 8, 1968, at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:

On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.
We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters -- Joe and Kathleen and Jack -- he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses [sic] the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote: ‘What it really all adds up to is love -- not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it.’ And he continued, ‘Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off.’

That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:

‘There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that ‘all men are created equal.’

These men moved the world, and so can we all.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.’

That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

‘Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.’

McClatchy News: Healthcare Opposition Contrived

Update: Gov. Dean predicts healthcare legislation with public option signed in September.

Margaret Talev sets the record straight in Who's behind the attacks on a health care overhaul?

Writes Talev in McClatchy Newspapers:

Much of the money and strategy behind the so-called grassroots groups organizing opposition to the Democrats' health care plans comes from conservative political consultants, professional organizers and millionaires, some of whom hold financial stakes in the outcome.

Weeds

And not pot.

The online Salon magazine is publishing the most insightful work on these seemingly crazed protesters upset that health care reform might work.

This is not the work of a grassroots uprising; it's AstroTurf and corporate weeds.

See also Adele Stan at Alternet.

Our Crisis

As the corporate bought-and-paid-for Blue Dogs do their worst to ensure that health care reform is not universal, President Obama faces another problem: The economy and jobs are foremost on the public mind.

And the objective of providing universal care is akin to throwing a man falling from a building a steak dinner.

Health care needs to be done, if nothing else for the long-term fiscal health of the country, but the obvious threat to the project is that those who profit from making health care a commodity and product have a lot of money that can buy a lot of politicians.

Today's Republican Party and its Blue Dog allies have already proven that throwing the country into fiscal crisis is of no concern, and neither is health care costs.

As for the economy and jobs, Carl Ginsberg has a piece out in CounterPunch, Our Crisis, Their Gain, capturing the cause of the growing populist resentment.

There is no denying the inequitable manner in which the government is addressing the economic crisis. I have to believe that there is a political strategy in this, I just don't know what that would be.

Writes Ginsberg:

For some, joblessness is the antithesis of crisis. It is opportunity. People without work equates to competition for employment which means low wages which means enhanced profits. In case you haven’t noticed, the stock market is up. Bond sales by businesses were $570 billion in Q1, a record…. Net financial investment in Q1 was $340 billion, also a record. Go Go. ...

Back to your crisis: The banks are now aggressively pressing people who are delinquent on loans and mortgages in order to extract what they can, charge usurious interest and fees (thank you, Joe Biden), hound you --- to capitalize on your crisis. That is the business model Barack Obama invested in for all of us. Small wonder JP Morgan CEO James Dimon invited White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to visit with his board of directors.

Had President Obama taken our trillions and set up what William Greider calls for in the current Nation magazine, a development fund for long-term capital investment, or what Mike Davis has described, a national debt bank to relieve excessive consumer and mortgage debt, your government would be addressing your crisis. But of course there’s plenty of time for that.

Health Care and Obama

It looks like the rightwing's strategy of throwing our government into a fiscal crisis is working in halting universal care. The fact that the GOP threw the economy into a meltdown was just icing.

For now, it appears likely we will have to settle for some version of expanded health care coverage over universal healthcare.

Some reactions on expanding healthcare.

From Salon, What is Obama selling? The president is belatedly pitching his healthcare reform plan to the public. But if he wants to win, he has to define it

From ThinkProgress:
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, and Nate Carlile:

Health Care
The Right's Delay And Kill Strategy
Throughout his campaign for the White House, after his election victory, and as soon as he assumed office, President Obama made it clear that reforming the health care system would be at the top of his agenda. Reiterating that sentiment, Obama said recently that health care is his "highest legislative priority over the next month." And the American public agrees. A recent Gallup poll found that nearly 60 percent of Americans said they favor Congress passing major health care reform this year. And while the relevant committees in the House and Senate are hard at work on legislation, Republicans and conservatives, in and out of power, are doing everything they can to stand in the way of major reform. The right is taking its lead from GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who authored a memo laying out a rhetorical strategy for conservatives to demonize Obama's proposal. Luntz recently admitted that he is urging Republicans to attack reform as a "government takeover" regardless of what the actual legislation says. But Republicans (and some Democrats) have added another obstructionist tactic: delay. As White House budget director Peter Orszag said last Sunday, "The typical Washington bureaucratic game of -- 'if you don’t have a better alternative, just delay in the hope that that kills something' is partly what's playing out here." "There are those who are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try to kill this," he said. Orszag is right: Opponents of reform in Congress are proposing amendments that would maintain the status quo and have resorted to a delay-and-kill strategy.

HOLD AND DELAY: Building on Luntz's plan, Senate Republicans made every attempt to delay the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee's reform measure by offering nonsensical amendments, eliminating affordability measures for middle class families, offering non-starter alternatives, arguing that the
committee should terminate hearings, and fear-mongering over the measure that eventually passed. Former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card argued yesterday that health care reform needs to be slowed down, calling it "contrived haste." "Let's do it
smart, not fast," Card said. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne reported that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), one of the few GOP senators negotiating reform, is "under immense pressure from Republican colleagues not to deal at all." A memo written by veteran GOP consultant Alex Castellanos is being circulated among Republican leaders insisting that it is "crucial for Republicans to slow down what it calls 'the Obama experiment with our health.'" RNC Chairman Michael Steele delivered a speech yesterday that was "based, almost word for word," on the Castellanos memo.'

GO FOR THE KILL': While some conservatives want to delay reform to weaken the bill, most simply want to kill it outright. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said that the GOP should hold the line until the August recess so members of Congress can go home and hear from their "outraged" constituents. "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," he said. It "could be" Obama's "Waterloo," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich concurred. "I think that's a good way to put it," Steele said in response to DeMint. (Steele also called Obama's reform efforts "risky experimentation" despite his own confusion of the issue. "I don't do policy," he explained.) The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, a key architect of obstructing reform in the early 1990s, wrote yesterday that Republicans should simply end the reform movement altogether. "With Obamacare on the ropes, there will be a temptation for opponents to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear constructive, or at least responsible. ... My advice, for what it's worth: Resist the temptation. This is no time to pull punches. Go for the kill." MEDIA TAKE THE GOP'S BAIT: In a speech on health care yesterday, Obama struck back at DeMint's comment that defeating reform will "break him." "This isn't about me. This isn't about politics," Obama said. "It is about a health care system that is breaking American families, breaking America's businesses and breaking America's economy." However, many mainstream media figures appear to be letting the GOP's rhetoric sink in to their coverage of the debate, as the Washington Post observed yesterday: "Cable news programs repeatedly declare the president's health care program is teetering or embattled despite a week in which Obama's proposals were endorsed by the doctor and nurses associations and committees in both legislative chambers passed major bills." Indeed, as Media Matters noted, three House and Senate committees have passed reform bills and the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association have endorsed Democrats' reform efforts. Yet, the media narrative still caters to Republican talking points. "Is his plan in serious peril?" CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked last Friday. CNN's Jessica Yellin asserted that "the White House is feeling really nervous right now. I mean, they know that this thing is a mess." "The conventional wisdom here is that [Obama is] on the ropes here on health care," NBC's David Gregory claimed. Yet, in a candid acknowledgment, NBC's Chuck Todd conceded the media has "created this drama."

Feingold Pushing Health Care Coverage

Update: Jonathan Cohn - Early Word on the House Bill: So Far, So Good

If national health care's fate were to be decided by Wisconsin's Congressional delegation alone, it would be sailing to President Obama's desk, the GOP and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) be damned.

Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) and Rep. Steve Kagan (D-Green Bay) are long-time champions of guaranteed health care.

And in the Senate, Senator Russ Feingold is likewise a true-blue advocate. Check out Russ' blog if you have not read it which seems to be e-mailing daily health care postings.

Obama Pushing Forward on Health Care

One thing Obama will not back off from is Health Care.

Most readers here would like to see single payer on the table, but getting anything from this Congress is like pulling teeth, though congressional leaders have set the end of June as a deadline for getting reform through.

From Obama's e-mail message on health care:

The chance to finally reform our nation's health care system is here. While Congress moves rapidly to produce a detailed plan, I have made it clear that real reform must uphold three core principles -- it must reduce costs, guarantee choice, and ensure quality care for every American.

As we know, challenging the status quo will not be easy. Its defenders will claim our goals are too big, that we should once again settle for half measures and empty talk. Left unanswered, these voices of doubt might yet again derail the comprehensive reform we so badly need. That's where you come in.When our opponents spread fear and confusion about the changes we seek, your support for these core principles will show clarity and resolve. When the lobbyists for the status quo tell Congress to hold back, your personal story will give them the courage to press forward.

Join my call: Ask Congress to pass real health care reform in 2009.

After adding your name, please consider sharing your personal story about the importance of health care reform in your life and the lives of those you love.I will be personally reviewing many of these signatures and stories. If you speak up now, your voice will make a difference.http://my.barackobama.com/HealthCareOrganizing

American families are watching their premiums rise four times faster than their wages. Spiraling health care costs are shackling America's businesses, curtailing job growth and slowing the economy at the worst possible time. This has got to change.I know personal stories can drive that change, because I know how my mother's experience continues to drive me. She passed away from ovarian cancer a little over a decade ago. And in the last weeks of her life, when she was coming to grips with her own mortality and showing extraordinary courage just to get through each day, she was spending too much time worrying about whether her health insurance would cover her bills. She deserved better. Every American deserves better. And that's why I will not rest until the dream of health care reform is finally achieved in the United States of America.Please add your name to join my call. Then share your personal story about why you too will not rest until this job is done.
http://my.barackobama.com/HealthCareOrganizing

Last November, the American people sent Washington a clear mandate for change. But when the polls close, the true work of citizenship begins. That's what Organizing for America is all about. Now, in these crucial moments, your voice once again has extraordinary power. I'm counting on you to use it.

Swiftboating Healthcare

Among one of very bad things that the GOP hates Obama for is healthcare reform to guarantee that every American will have access to what is perceived by the vast majority of the world as a human right.

Not surprisingly the GOP and its allies are out to swiftboat Obama's initiative that is planned to get through Congress by June 31.

Obama is fighting back, with the same innovations that knocked back the GOP in the 2008 campaign. The GOP is going to find out very quickly 2009 is 1993.

Medicare needs this for to halt the costs of healthcare; America needs this and so does the administration that needs to repair some bridges with the people who put him into office very fast.

From the Obama Organizing for America:

We knew healthcare reform would face fierce opposition -- and it's begun.

As we speak, the same people behind the notorious 'swiftboat' ads of 2004 are already pumping millions of dollars into deceptive television ads.

Their plan is simple: torpedo healthcare reform before it sees the light of day by scaring the public and distorting the President's approach.

We need the resources to take them head on with an urgent, grassroots campaign to pass real healthcare reform in 2009.When the swiftboaters flood the airwaves with distortions, we'll flood the streets with volunteers armed with facts. When they send lobbyists to tell Congress to back down, we'll send millions of calls, letters, and stories from real Americans asking them to stand up.

Please donate $5 or more by midnight Sunday to fight back against these phony attacks and take our message of reform to the American people.

The swiftboaters are once again trying to sell the American people short. As during the election, we deserve a serious conversation -- not fear-mongering and deceit. You and I see the importance of healthcare reform every day. We can't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to face one of America's greatest challenges head on.

Passing real healthcare reform will be the toughest, most important challenge we've faced together since electing Barack Obama President.

But it's also a big reason we fought so hard to get here. I know that by working together, and speaking with one, determined voice, we can prevail over the cynics and defenders of the status quo. America's families are counting on us to do just that.

'Democrat Socialist Party,' Says Official RNC Resolution

Update: Obama, Congressional Leaders Vow Passage of Health Care by June 31, GOP will call it socialist though it will be anything but socialist.

Just read this from Ed Kilgore at the Democratic Strategist:

Like a lot of non-Rush-Limbaugh listeners, when I first heard that a large faction of Republican National Committee members was pushing for a formal resolution calling on GOPers to start referring to the Democratic Party as the 'Democrat Socialist Party,' I thought it was a puerile joke that the adults in the Republican Party would quash.

Apparently not. According to sources speaking to Politico's Roger Simon, the Republican National Committee will approve the resolution at a special meeting of the RNC called for that very purpose.

These guys really are grade-schoolers. You might think after getting the U.S. into this mess that the GOP might offer serious solutions. You would be wrong.

Health Care

Why does every other developed nation have universal healthcare, asks Joe Conason.

NFL QB Hits Crohn's Disease

There's a great story by Jason Wilde about Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback David Garrard who has Crohn's disease in the State Journal this morning. [Jacksonville's playing the Pack this week.]

Crohn's disease is a mysterious, chronic inflammatory disease of the digestive or gastrointestinal tract, with symptoms ranging from the severe to the mild.

"I go in every year and have a wonderful colonoscopy," (Garrard) said Wednesday, during a conference call with Wisconsin reporters as he prepared for Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers. "That's very exciting."

Writes Wilde:

Garrard stars in a TV public service announcement that often airs during NFL games and has a Web site, Crohnsinthezone.com, that tracks his stats and raises $10,000 for every touchdown he scores, running or passing.
'I think I've been blessed with this disease so that I can put the word out on it. Not a lot of people know about Crohn's Disease or what it does or what it is or how many people are affected by it,' Garrard said. 'Over 500,000 people in America are affected by it, (and) a lot of them are kids -- that's who really get sick with it the most. Anything that I can do to try and get the word out, I really feel like that's what I've been called to do and I'm going to do that.'

I know somebody who has Crohn's Disease. No kind of fun for her, but she does get to see the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital and Clinic's colorful gastroenterologist, Mark Reichelderfer, MD, the brilliant and whacky doctor whom she loves.

One wonders what could be achieved if we took the money that we spend on the bullshit Iraq War in one month and use it to research Crohn's. Let's hope president-elect Obama radically changes the course of scientific research.

At least for now we have people like Garrard and Reichelderfer on the case who work with humor and determination that is truly inspiring.

McCain's Retrograde Health Care Plans Comes to Light

McCain Secretly Plans Tax On The Middle Class says The Hill

"So let me get this straight," Obama said. "He wants to run health care like they've been running Wall Street. Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's a good idea."

In Light of the GM Closings

Update: McCain-Bush Big Oil Giveaway Cost 2,600 Janesville Jobs

G.M. Closing 4 Plants in Shift From Trucks Toward Cars reads the NYT headline.

Do you think that the government picking up employee health care costs and gearing our economy into a sustainable-energy, alternative-fuel realm are good ideas now?

Dick Cheney and George Bush has their way, and it's not working.

A common market for health in Europe

From The Independent:

British patients may soon have the right to be treated anywhere in EU.

Europe stands on the brink of a historic decision to open its borders to medical tourism, casting a dramatic spotlight on the performance of the UK's health system against that of neighbouring countries.

Cancer treatment, heart surgery and hip replacements could be available, in certain circumstances, to UK citizens in any of the EU's 27 countries. Under the plans, they would have the right to seek treatment anywhere which offered quicker access to care than was available on the NHS, with the NHS picking up the bill.

Citizens of other EU countries would have a corresponding right to come to the UK for treatment. Patients would have to be referred by a doctor and demonstrate they faced an "undue" delay for treatment in their own country.

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American College of Physicians Endorse Single-Payer

Those crazy socialists!

American College of Physicians Endorse Single-Payer
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