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<P> </P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><B>by BAR executive editor Glen Ford</B></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>President Obama’s healthcare plan, now
vetted by the U.S. Supreme Court, is the spawn of Republican reactionaries,
“based on the principle that people should pay for their own bodily
maintenance.” It bears no resemblance to world-class healthcare systems,
“expanding the healthcare compact only for those who are destitute, while
turning everyone else into profit-centers for corporations.” Obama has locked in
the past, and put up a roadblock to the future – just as the right-wingers that
invented the “individual mandate” intended. </FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT color=#280099><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=4><B>Obama Bound for Mount
Rushmore?</B></FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><B>by BAR executive editor Glen Ford </B></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in" align=center><FONT
color=#2323dc>“<FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Obama has succeeded in passing
the Right’s program, created to stop what looked like the inevitable triumph of
a single-payer system.”</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>President Obama, as his aides will tell
anyone within hearing distance, wants to go down in history as one of the
“greats.” Most African Americans, purely for reasons of group affirmation, would
also love to see the First Black President beaming from Mount Rushmore (in the
Black Hills of South Dakota, no less!), alongside George and Thomas the Slave
Masters, Teddy the Arch Imperialist, and Lincoln the Emancipator.
</FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>Most of the U.S. corporate media – those
who make the first drafts of history acceptable to the ruling class – also want
Obama to have a shot at a place in the pantheon, since he has done some service
to the rulers. The U.S. Supreme Court’s vetting of Obama’s healthcare
legislation, according to the </FONT></FONT><FONT color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/health-care-ruling-may-secure-obamas-place-in-history.html?pagewanted=all"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2><I>New York
Times</I></FONT></FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT
size=2>, is a “personal reprieve…leaving intact his hopes of joining the ranks
of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan as presidents who
fundamentally altered the course of the country.” Obama has often compared
himself to all three, agreeing with Reagan that the Sixties was a decade plagued
by “excesses” – which, to Reagan’s mind, included Lyndon Johnson’s expansive
social legislation. </FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>As the </FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2><I>Times</I></FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2> tells it, Obama has nearly completed the
work of his predecessors. “Not just Roosevelt and Johnson, but Harry S. Truman,
Nixon and Mr. Clinton all tried and failed to move the country toward universal
health coverage.” Obama’s bill is historic because it “seeks to end the status
of the United States as the world’s only rich country with millions of
involuntarily uninsured citizens.”</FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in" align=center><FONT
color=#2323dc>“<FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Obamacare is, at best, a
detour, and more likely an historic setback to the movement for a truly national
health care policy.”</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>The </FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2><I>Times</I></FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2> resorts to crazily contorted wording to
convince us the Affordable Care Act is the next logical step in the civilizing
of the United States; that it bears some resemblance to universal health care as
practiced in the rest of the developed world – an outrageous distortion of fact
and history. Obamacare, like previous Republican healthcare schemes, is based on
the principle that people should pay for their own bodily
maintenance</FONT></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2><B>,
</B></FONT></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>and that “free
riders” must be forced into the private pool. It expands the healthcare compact
only for those who are destitute, while turning everyone else into
profit-centers for corporations. That’s not the direction universal healthcare
advocates have been trying to go, all these years. It is, at best, a detour, and
more likely an historic setback to the movement for a truly national health care
policy. </FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>The first U.S. entitlement programs
evolved from pension plans for Civil War veterans and their families. “By 1910,”
according to the </FONT></FONT><FONT color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/programs/economic-security-part-i/"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2>Social Welfare History
Project</FONT></FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT
size=2>, “Civil War veterans and their survivors enjoyed a program of
disability, survivors and old-age benefits similar in some ways to the later
Social Security programs.” In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into
law the Social Security Act, which also included provisions for unemployment
insurance. Harry Truman unsuccessfully proposed National Health Insurance,
starting in 1945. Lyndon Johnson introduced Medicare and Medicaid with his
Social Security Act of 1965. Ever since, the struggle has been to expand these
programs to the entire population, </FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2><I>as a matter of
right</I></FONT></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><FONT size=2> – as was
occurring globally even in formerly “Third World” places like
Taiwan.</FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in" align=center><FONT
color=#2323dc>“<FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Even in the last days of
President Reagan’s reactionary rule, the trajectory of American healthcare
sentiment was arching towards universal single-payer.”</I></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in">“<FONT face=Times><FONT
size=2><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">Entitlements” have been the bugaboo of the
Right since the New Deal. But even in the last days of President Reagan’s
reactionary rule, the trajectory of American healthcare sentiment was arching
towards universal single-payer – the world-class solution. The Heritage
Foundation, founded in the early Seventies by arch-reactionaries, saw the
handwriting on the wall – and took preemptive action </FONT><EM
class=western><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: normal">in
1989</SPAN></FONT></EM><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">. As </FONT><EM
class=western><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: normal">Chris Weigant wrote in the </SPAN></FONT></EM><FONT
color=#0000ff><U><A
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/the-individual-mandates-c_b_1386716.html?view=print&comm_ref=false"><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">Huffington Post</FONT></A></U></FONT><EM
class=western><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: normal">,
Heritage commissioned its Director of Domestic Policy Strategies, Stuart Butler,
to produce the Right’s own “Framework for Reform” of healthcare – one that kept
the profits locked in and diverted the public from single-payer healthcare as a
universal entitlement. Everyone would be pushed into the “market-based” –
for-profit – pool. Stuart wrote:</SPAN></FONT></EM></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><EM class=western>“</EM><FONT
face=Times><FONT size=2><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">This means that, while
government would take on the obligation to find ways of guaranteeing care for
those Americans unable to obtain protection in the market, perhaps because of
chronic health problems or lack of income, Americans with sufficient means would
no longer be able to be ‘free riders’ on society by avoiding sensible health
insurance expenditures and relying on others to pay for care in an emergency or
in retirement.”</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT face=Times><FONT
size=2><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">Republican Bob Dole ran for president on
an “individual mandate” health plan, the same concept Romney implemented in
Massachusetts. It’s also the Obama scheme, as Chris Weigant concluded in the
</FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Huffington Post</I></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif">: “The individual mandate which was included in
Obamacare is so close to what Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation initially
suggested that we can honestly say there is no appreciable difference between
the two.”</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT face=Times><FONT
size=2><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">If Obama belongs in a pantheon, it’s a
Republican one. He is not completing the healthcare project begun by FDR in
1935. Obama has, instead, succeeded in passing the </FONT><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Right’s</I></FONT><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif">
program, created to stop what looked like the inevitable triumph of a
single-payer system under which most insurance companies would go extinct. Just
three years ago, it seemed that the day had finally come for some form of
Medicare-for-all, which has long enjoyed the support of roughly two-thirds of
the public. Obama pulled a switch. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, a
stalwart of the Right who is young enough to keep his eye on the future, knew a
good deal for his side when he saw one, and signed off on it. He’s a lot smarter
than those deluded Lefties who want to send Obama to Mount
Rushmore.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0.06in; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT face=Times><FONT
size=2><FONT color=#280099><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>BAR executive
editor Glen Ford can be contacted at </I></FONT></FONT><FONT color=#0000ff><U><A
href="mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com"><FONT color=#280099><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com</I></FONT></FONT></A></U></FONT><FONT
color=#280099><FONT
face="Arial, sans-serif"><I>.</I></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>