A conference on healthcare will be held in Boston on February 26:
"The Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009: Impact & Opportunity in the Obama Plan"
This is clearly part of a well-oiled effort by the healthco lobby to steamroller acceptance of the “Obama Plan”, which will increase subsidies, taxes, mandates, intrusion into our personal lives, industry regulation, and the total national cost of healthcare.
The Obama Plan will still leave many without insurance, and many who think they are insured will still be forced into bankruptcy by unpayable medical bills.
And it will discourage employers from providing healthcare coverage, because each employee can have a different “portable” insurance policy, with different benefits and carriers---an administrative nightmare.
But it will increase revenues and profits for the healthcos, so, obviously, it's what we must have.
After all, the healthcos have succeeded in making Medicare For All “politically impossible”, even though it is favored by clear majorities of both citizens and physicians.
The healthcos have done so by diverting a small part of the $3 billion per day their customers pay them into a potent stream of money they use to buy or frighten off most politicians (legally, one assumes). So, where does the healthco lobby get the money it uses to persuade or threaten politicians to act against the expressed desires and interests of healthcare policy holders? Why, from those very same policy holders. Is that nefarious, or what?
Joe Biden was at least honest about his position. When asked why he did not favor Medicare For All, he said: "Look, I'm not crazy---I don't want to be eaten alive by Harry and Louise." Thus, he publicly admitted that he lets the healthcare lobby dictate his stand, because he fears its clout. A true Profile in Cowardice.
In the hoo-ha about Daschle’s withdrawal, NPR mentioned today, as kind of an “oh, by the way,” that Daschle has been receiving “speaking fees” from health insurers.
Perhaps Obama will select a replacement for Daschle from the list of speakers the healthcos hire for their conferences.
Just don't expect the new Secretary of HHS, or Biden, to reflect the desires of the electorate. Or Obama to do so either, unless a great mass of us shouts out to make very clear that we want single payer healthcare and must have it. Although even President Obama must bow to healthco clout, he will do what he knows in his heart is right---but only if we make him do it.
The best alternative to “The Obama Plan” is HR 676; see “A Second Opinion”, by Dr. Arnold Relman, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Neither he nor anyone else will be on the Healthcare Summit platform on February 26 to state the case for Medicare For All. The healthcos wouldn’t like that.
Sure, "The Obama Plan" for healthcare is a travesty, but money talks, and the healthcos have the money, don't they? Enough to have four healthco lobbyists for every person in Congress, running around Washington with satchels full of cash they dispense to compliant politicians. Those they can't buy, they scare.
But more than 90 members of the House are standing up to them, signing on as co-sponsors of HR 676, Medicare For All. Meaning there is still hope for healthcare change we can believe in.
`
Comments