Working Life

The problem with Chuck Schumer’s criticism of the focus on health care is that he doesn’t really focus on the main problem. Not surprising because a man who never saw a Wall Street check he didn’t like wouldn’t understand.

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I hate to sound churlish but a short observation: does it bother anyone else that the celebration by liberals/progressives, all in tune with the White House messaging machine, about the 7 million-plus who enrolled so far in the Affordable Care Act system sort of ignores the fact that 30 million people still have no coverage, people who would have been covered if we had pushed for a single-payer “Medicare for All” system, not a system that is a windfall for insurance companies? Just wondering.

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I don’t mind disagreeing with opponents on the merits of one proposal versus another. But, I have very little tolerance for just lying about the facts or, at best, muddling the truth about the reality. And, so, it is with healthcare: the continuing myth, promoted by both the political and media jabbering low-minds, that the president and his former Secretary of State both made the same mistake on health care–they opted for something too “complex” “inflexible”, “secretive” or “socialistic”, or a combination of all of the aforementioned descriptions.

It’s utter nonsense. They did make the same mistake–but it had nothing to do with complexity. It was entirely their immoral unwillingness to confront two powerful industries that have relentlessly killed hundreds of thousands of people, either by bankrupting those people or literally denying them care.

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The lowering of expectations. The willingness to let people wallow in poverty and be bankrupted by big corporations because of the lack of courage in political leaders. That is what I would argue is the conclusion from the president’s minimum wage rhetoric, which is pretty much health care all over again.

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Why does Kathleen Sebelius still have a job? And why aren’t progressive demanding she be fired?

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Here is a good example of making sure the frame of a discussion is pretty narrow. And, in this case, it’s an omission that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

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It’s an ingrained fact that health care costs in the U.S. are outrageous and economically foolish — even if the drug companies and insurance industry maggots are are happy to keep raking in billions on the backs of sick or dying people…all in a day’s work. And so the way in which the media, and others, are greeting the new health care programs coming on-line should be viewed in context.

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Of all the surrenders to corporate power health care has got to rank right up at the top of the list. Obamacare’s failures come down to an unwillingness to consign the insurance industry to the trash heap of history and a deal which guaranteed the drug companies billions of dollars in profits. Which makes the news about slowing health care costs even more infuriating.

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   A few months ago, I spent 5-6 hours interviewing Paul Krugman for Playboy magazine. It’s now on-line here. He speaks candidly–surprise–about the economic misdeeds of Wall Street, the foolishness of the current austerity obsession and focus on the non-existent debt crisis, and a whole range of topics including his view that the Obama Administration […]

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   A good friend of mine often contends that we would have been a lot better off if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, grouping that whole swath of states south of the Mason-Dixon line into their own little country. Perhaps. But, it also seems like actual elected leaders of the country pine for […]

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