How could real, honest, intelligent people overcome the gun-toting racists who are shouting down any discussion of health care? Simple.
“Make me do it” was the advice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to reformers when faced with legislation he desired but did not have the votes for in Congress. Mr. Obama is not exerting that plea for people power. Were he to do that, he would be encouraging daily public hearings in the Senate and the House on the bureaucratic waste, greed, overbilling, collusion, and fraud that many in the corporate world have inflicted with their costly, pay or die health care industry.[…]
It is up to the people of our country to “make him do it” whether this year or next. A mere one million immediate calls to members of Congress by one million assertive citizens will start sobering up these legislators who think they can get away with another sale of our public trust.
The Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121. The full Medicare, single payer bill (backed by nearly ninety legislators) is H.R. 676. The go-to citizen group for your sustained engagement is singlepayeraction.org. The rest is up to you, the majority, who want to put the people first.
To be fair, Barack Obama does not support a single payer plan, he has always advocated a public option. It might have been a good negotiating position to offer a single payer alternative to make the public option more attractive as a compromise, but as long as the public option is successfully passed I wouldn't question his political skills.
Posted by: Mike Goldman on August 15, 2009 9:52 PMhttp://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/12/barack-obama/obama-has-praised-single-payer-plans-past/
First, at several town halls this year, Obama has been asked by single-payer supporters why he doesn't propose a single-payer system. Obama's consistent answer has been that if he were designing a health care system "from scratch," he would go with a single payer system. So that certainly indicates philosophical support for the idea, even if Obama has also consistently concluded that single-payer is not politically feasible.Posted by: Chuck Dupree on August 16, 2009 4:32 AMBut there's also the matter of a YouTube video from June 2003, when Obama was a state senator in Illinois and a longshot candidate for the U.S. Senate. Back then, he plainly indicated he supported a single-payer system.
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program," Obama said. "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."
Amen brother, we need to take back the country. The majority of the people want universal health care and we shouldn't consider settling for anything less. The for profit insurance thing just plain and simple doesn't work and failing to get rid of it will leave us with crap. It is too important to compromise with the SOB's on, it is literally killing us all, it is pure unadulterated crap. It is about making a few people obscenely wealthy at the expense of everyone else. It is also about racism and prejudice, screw em.
Posted by: knowdoubt on August 16, 2009 7:26 AMI'm going to modestly propose that it's too soon to say whether or not Obama is another FDR. I would suggest that at this point in his presidency, FDR was not the FDR we think of today. I do think Obama is a master politcian, as was FDR. (Or Lincoln, for that matter.) Master politicians don't automatically rise to the level of "statesmen", but it is, I think, a prerequisite.
(BTW, I don't consider "politician" a dirty word. We've allowed that to be debased until it's synonymous with electioneer.)
Posted by: Roddy McCorley on August 16, 2009 1:08 PM