Obama-Care Round Up

by: masslib

Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 16:11:28 PM EDT

The black agenda report answers the question I've been asking myself all day.  Why aren't those of us who oppose Obama-Care on the Left being heard?:

The “public option” has that magic word “public” in it, and that's reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.

That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.

What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama's left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama's way or the Republicans' way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.

The Daily Howler takes down psuedo-liberal angst over those who question Obama's health care plan:

The progressive world has been badly served by the long reign of people like Meyerson. This morning, his attention span jumps all about, although he returns to health care at the end of his column. This is what the gentleman types. We would say that what he types helps explain the current problem:

MEYERSON: [T]he big picture here, of which the resistance to reforming health care is just one element, is our growing inability to meet our national challenges....

But act on behalf of the nation as a whole, even if it means goring Wall Street's or Wal-Mart's oxen? Perish the thought. Pass a health-reform bill that will cover 45 million uninsured Americans and slow the ruinous growth of health-care spending? Not if somebody, somewhere, actually has to pay higher taxes. Hey, we're America—the can't-do nation.

But will the (as yet unwritten) health-reform bill really “slow the ruinous growth of health-care spending?” More specifically, does anyone even know what Meyerson means by that lofty statement? Is Meyerson saying that this as-yet unwritten bill will slow the rise in insurance premiums? Does he mean that it will slow the rise of overall societal spending? Of federal health care spending? All three? And by the way: If Meyerson is such a fiery progressive, why is he accepting the baseline? As he dreams of “slowing the growth,” he thereby accepts the ludicrous situation in which our society spends twice as much per person on health care as other developed nations. Meyerson’s work is very unclear—and frankly, it doesn’t seem all that “progressive.” But then, his class of liberal pseudo-intellectual has served you quite badly for decades.

And, PNHP doctors ask after Obama forces us to buy private, for-profit health insurance, will he next demand a Ford Pinto in every garage:

Illness and medical bills contribute to 62 percent of personal bankruptcies — a 50 percent increase since 2001. And three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had insurance, at least when they first got sick.

Coverage that families bought in good faith failed to protect them. Some were bankrupted by co-payments, deductibles, and loopholes. Others got too sick to work, leaving them unemployed and uninsured. 

Now Congress plans to make it a federal offence not to purchase such faulty insurance.

All three are great reads and will give readers a better understanding of liberal opposition to Obama-Care.