[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] The "Affordable" Care Act:

[ewj at pigsqq.org]

It's not a matter of left and right it's about wilbur and orville.


Message: 4
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:40:39 -0500
From: "David Johnson" <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: [OccupyCU] The "Affordable" Care Act: TheThe "Affordable"
Care Act: Best Illustration Yet of Why We Need a New Major Political
Party
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by Michael Fleshman


TV, radio, and newspapers are always telling us that the Democrats and
Republicans in Congress are sworn enemies. There are locked in a battle tot
he death. They despise each other, and they have fundamentally different
ideas about where they want to take the country.


It's a lie.


The truth is, they agree on just about everything, especially when it comes
to the big ticket items. They only pretend to disagree. It's all an act.
They're faking the whole goddamn thing.


They don't pretend very well--the act is very crude and easy to see through
--but they are very consistent and they religiously stick to the script.
Only a few members of Congress ever speak the truth about what's really
going on. 1 What's more, major media play along and report all the noisy
theatre and windbag rhetoric as if it were an honest debate about real
alternatives.


Worst of all, a lot of voters pretend to believe the lies peddled by their
own parties. Many "conservatives" pretend to buy the free-market ideology
that they get from the Republicans, and "liberals" pretend they're dumb
enough to believe the lies they hear from the Democrats.


But when it comes time for Congress to vote on legislation and for the
President to sign it, suddenly the D's and R's come together. They always
manage to come up with something nice and juicy for the big banks and
corporations and the speculators and the war profiteers. Republican or
Democrat, they always seem to make sure that the people who are already
very rich get even richer. And who gets screwed in the process? The vast
majority of Americans--the people who do the work and pay the taxes.


For a list of examples of how this evil practice has worked over the years,
see the footnote at the end of this article. 2 But for the best example of
all, take the Affordable Care Act.


On this issue of healthcare "reform," what do the Republicans say they
want? To de-fund the ACA and stick with the old health insurance system,
which has been very profitable for the big insurance companies for decades.
What do the Democrats say they want? A new system under which people who
have no money get squeezed for an average of $328 a month by a private,
for-profit insurance company for a health insurance plan they can't afford.
(Full disclosure: I do not have health insurance coverage of any kind.
Neither of my two jobs offers coverage and I don't have any disposable
income, to speak of. I cannot possibly afford a private insurance policy
that costs $328 a month or anywhere close to it.)


If these financially strapped people refuse to sign up for one of the plans
on offer, they'll get nailed for a tax penalty by the IRS. If they can't
scrounge the money to pay the penalty by April 15, they will undoubtedly go
into debt to the government. More debt! More bills they can't pay! And all
to support a new system that will probably be even more profitable for the
big insurance companies than the old system was.


No matter which of the two major parties "wins" this "fight," the big
insurance companies will be the real winners. They will remain very rich or
get even richer. Their top directors and shareholders will continue making
money hand over fist, as usual, or they'll also rake in billions of dollars
in new profits. And millions of Americans who are already struggling will
get even poorer.


That's a pretty weird outcome for a country that's supposedly based on
democracy and majority rule, isn't it? But wait. It gets weirder. Because
you almost never hear about the best option of all--a Single-Payer national
health insurance plan. The U.S. government, under this plan, would be the
"single payer" for all health insurance claims, while most physicians and
hospitals would remain in the private sector. The plan is often called
"Medicare for All" because it would simply extend the very successful
Medicare system, which now exists for older people, to everyone.


Under Single-Payer, the high cost of healthcare would disappear because the
profiteers--the big insurance companies--would be phased out over a period
of 10 to 15 years. And why shouldn't they be phased out? Their tremendous
greed is what caused the healthcare crisis in the first place.


But the Democrats and Republicans in Congress made damn good and sure that
Single-Payer did not get any traction, or even a mention. In May 2009, the
Senate Finance Committee held a hearing where 16 groups had been invited to
testify about proposals for managing health insurance in the United States.
Not one of the 16 would be testifying about Single-Payer.


Luckily, in the gallery were eight people of conscience who made sure that
the audience watching the hearings on C-SPAN and the reporters in the
hearing room got an earful about Single-Payer. Russell Mokhiber of Single
Payer Action, Katie Robbins of HealthcareNOW!, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Kevin
Zeese and several others literally stood up for a truly rational and fair
national health plan. As the hearings began, they stood up, one after
another, and forcefully made their case for Single-Payer before being
arrested.


This is how desperate things have become. This is what the two major
parties have done to the highest deliberative body in our supposedly free
country. The Senate wouldn't even allow the best idea to get a hearing!
Even if a reasonable person can have doubts about Single-Payer, is it
therefore right to keep it from even being discussed? Is it fair? Is it
honest? Is it democratic?


Naturally, blaming the two major parties for this state of affairs is not
the same thing as blaming all their members in Congress. There are a
precious few individual exceptions, a handful of honest, courageous people.
Dennis Kucinich really was sincere when he said he was dedicated to a
public, not-for-profit health insurance system for this country. He was one
of the last hold-outs standing up to the stupendous vote-buying power of
the big insurance companies. The very fact that he held out--when most of
his colleagues were busy selling out--shows that he was sincere. But during
the winter of 2010, as the vote on the ACA approached, Obama and the rest
of the Democratic Party leadership all piled on Kucinich and bullied him
into voting Yes. They thus destroyed one of the few good people they had
left.


A few Republicans are probably just as sincere about their own
beliefs--"free" markets, "free" trade, limited government, and so on. Most
Republicans, however, don't believe any such thing. Any candid observer can
see that, because their actions speak much louder than their words. If they
really did believe their own P.R., they'd fight "big government" by
opposing the biggest, costliest armed forces in the world. They'd support
an international free market in labor, allowing workers to cross
international borders as easily as corporations do. And they'd be honest
about their assessment of Obamacare and give up the ludicrous charge that
it's "socialism."

The Affordable Care Act is not, as the Republicans pretend to believe, a
government take-over of the health insurance industry. It's a health
insurance industry take-over of the government. It's not socialism. It's
fascism.

It's very instructive to look at how the insurance companies reacted when
the ACA was passed. I cannot find a transcript or audio of the interview I
heard on NPR the morning after Congress passed the Act, but I do recall the
NPR reporter suggesting that this legislation represented a "windfall" for
the insurance industry. Did the industry spokesperson respond indignantly
and complain about how much money the big insurance companies stood to lose
from the enactment of the ACA? No, not at all. She calmly went into an
explanation of how the ACA was going to work. And she certainly did not
deny that the Act was going to lead to windfall profits for insurance
companies.

The name Liz Fowler hasn't come up much in the few days since October 1,
but that name draws over 20,000 hits on Google and 14,000 on Bing, mostly
in stories from 2010 and 2012. Take, for instance, a story by progressive
stalwart Bill Moyers (with copious quotes from the man who brought us the
Edward Snowden revelations on the NSA, Glenn Greenwald; see
http://billmoyers.com/2012/12/13/washington%E2%80%99s-revolving-door-is-hazardous-to-our-health/).
The story notes that Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee (yes, the same committee at whose hearings the "Baucus 8" caused
such a ruckus and got arrested for it), is a big fan of Fowler's. "After
Obamacare passed," Moyers writes, "Senator Baucus himself, one of the
biggest recipients in Congress of campaign cash from the health care
industry, boasted that the architect of the legislation was none other than
Liz Fowler." Moyers also informs us that Fowler once worked for WellPoint,
the largest health insuran
ce compa
ny in America. She then had her brief but momentous stint working for the
Obama administration. Where does she work now? Johnson & Johnson.

All this chicanery cries out for action. Yes, we have to keep digging on
important issues like health insurance in America, in order to separate the
truth from the propaganda. But there comes a time when you have to take
action.

The time has come, it seems to me, to go beyond merely "speaking truth to
power." The time has come to simply take the power away from the people who
have abused it. This can be done legally, constitutionally, and
non-violently. People who support the Medicare for All idea must run for
public office. They only need to speak truth not to the powerful, but to
the voters.

The voters have gotten so used to being lied to that, at first, they will
blow the raspberries and wave these new candidates away. But after awhile
they'll begin to see that these candidates are really telling the truth.
Finally, some of those voters will say to themselves: Hey, what have I got
to lose? I think I'll vote for one of those Single-Payer advocates. Soon
the idea will catch on. Hey, you can vote for a decent, honorable person
instead of a scoundrel. And you have a shot at sweeping the scoundrel out
of office in the process!

It can work. It does mean actually competing with the Democrats and
Republicans--not cozying up to them. It means conflict. But, once again:
it's legal, it's constitutional, and it's non-violent. And it's probably
the only thing that's going to work. We must give it a serious try as soon
as possible.

1 Senator Dick Durbin must have startled quite a few of his colleagues when
he said, "Frankly, the banks run this place."

2 Some of the instances of give-aways to the big corporations and the
upper-bracket "earners" include:

--Barack Obama's refusal to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich sunset
late in 2010, when he still had a chance to get it passed while the
Democrats ostensibly controlled Congress. (See click here) Naturally Obama
could have let taxes go up on the wealthy and negotiated for preventing
them from going up on middle-income taxpayers, but he chose not to do that.
If the Democrats--including, of course, the President--can't deliver on one
of their progressive promises even when they have the opportunity to do so,
then it's pretty clear there's no meaningful difference between the two
major parties. And, once again, take note who the real winners were: the
fat cats. They did just as well with a Democrat in the White House as they
did with a Republican.

--The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. The bill was passed by
Congress and signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton, and overturned the
Glass-Steagall separation of investment and commercial banking that had
worked so well since it was established by Congress in 1933. The FSMA led
to a giddy celebration among the Wall Street bankers--and to the Crash of
2008 a few years later.
--The Obama campaign's promise to end the Iraq war in 16 months. May 2010
came and went seemingly without a soul even whispering about the Democratic
President's obvious failure to do anything to end the occupation of Iraq.
Instead, Obama & Co. kept the war going until the end of 2011, exactly as
the Republican George W. Bush had arranged, and no doubt pleasing the
contractors and mercenaries who got another year-and-a-half to do business
in that ruined country.
--The big bank bail-out of 2008. Congress at first rejected the Bush
administration's proposal to gift-wrap $700 billion and send it to the very
Wall Street bankers who had caused the crisis. (It's interesting to note
that more Democrats than Republicans in the House voted with a Republican
President on the bill. Party lines? What party lines? See
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/04/business/fi-bailout4 ) But within
minutes of the vote in the House being announced, the market took a
nose-dive and ended the day almost 800 points down. Suddenly both parties
got the message. Within a few days the Senate passed, in effect, another
version of the bill that the House had already rejected (which may not even
have been constitutional, since appropriations bills are supposed to start
in the House, not in the Senate; see Article I, Section 7 of the
Constitution) and the House dutifully passed it in short order. You've
hardly ever had a better example of the tail wagging the dog--th
e tail b
eing the Wall Street gang and the dog being their loyal puppies in the U.S.
Congress.
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