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Thousands Rally, Say We Can’t Wait for Health Care Reform |
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Coming from unions, community organizations and all walks of life, nearly 10,000 supporters of health care reform gathered on Capitol Hill today to send a strong message: We demand affordable, high-quality health care for all, and we aren’t waiting any longer.
Every corner of the Upper Senate Park on Capitol Hill was filled this afternoon with union members, health care advocates and community activists from scross the country, and they heard from not only members of Congress and union leaders, but also from nurses, small business owners, workers and parents who told compelling stories about why we need health care reform.
Like all of the speakers, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker expressed confidence that we can move from an unsustainable health care system to one that protects families and covers everyone:
Health care without cost control will not work. Health care without a quality public option to lower costs is totally unacceptable.
Many rally participants are spending this afternoon at town hall meetings and on Capitol Hill lobbying members of Congress for real health care reform. The rally and lobby day were sponsored by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO. In addition to the strong turnout of union members and community organizers, groups including Working America and Democracy for America brought tens of thousands of signatures they’ve collected from people across the country who say we’ve waited long enough for health care reform.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said despite determined opposition from the insurance companies that control our health care now, we have an opportunity to build on and improve our health care system:
Special interests and the health insurance industry will not hijack this process. We must have and we will have a strong public option.
Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson Schwartz said we need health care reform that controls costs to recover from today’s economic crisis:
This is such an important issue for all of us. It’s always been a moral responsibility, but it’s increasingly an economic imperative.
Other rally speakers included union leaders President Gerald McEntee of AFSCME and President Larry Cohen of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), members of the House and Senate, actress Edie Falco, former Gov. Howard Dean and leaders of a wide variety of grassroots organizations.
As New York Sen. Chuck Schumer noted, health care that covers everyone and includes a strong public option as a choice for consumers won’t be easy. It’s a fight that has been fought for decades against powerful interests. The strong national support for health care reform, though, is a sign that now is the time. Schumer pointed to the Capitol behind him and said:
We can’t do this alone. We need to do this together. We need all you to hold everybody in that building’s feet to the fire.
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Will the media cover this like it did the hundred or so teabaggers in front of the White House?
I’m afraid that the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson will trump this Health Care Reform rally and it will be relegated to a by-line story than a front page story. Oh well. Such is life. I’m pretty sure the Fox News Channel would not have covered this whatsoever.
Was there any mention of Single-Payer at all during the rally?
– An imaginary conversation with my family doctor on the difficulty of paying for national insurance –
Me: $1.2 million was the average income for top 1 percentile households — 2006 number. You must have made at least a couple of million last year, right? I mean you are a doctor – and you are with Columbia Presbyterian hospital.
Doctor Levine: “[Laughs].”
Me: You mean that the 15% of GDP that slipped out of the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners and into the buckets of top 1 percentile earners over the past few decades slipped right past you doctors?
Doctor Levine: “[Smiles ruefully].”
Me: Still, with the US having 135% other modern economies’ per capita GDP we should no trouble at all devoting 15% of GDP [.15 X 1.35 = .2025] to health care these days, right (note parallel with 15% of income shifting to pockets of folks who earn lots more than doctors)? Unless we have wildly gutted much of our workforce’s pay – with something like 30% of families living below the poverty line.
In real life the poverty line for a family of three — assuming they have to pay for their own health premiums – is about $45,000 (not the unreal $20,000 government calculation based on three times the price of an emergency diet of all things – family premiums alone exceed $12,000!). If you look at the Census, median family income is about $62,000 — leaving the real minimum needs line somewhere about 37 percentile – if nobody in that 37 percentile has paid health insurance. Knock off 7 points (guesstimate) for families with paid insurance on the top end (not those on the bottom with Medicaid) and we can reckon – it turns out very reliably — about 30% of American families’ incomes are below minimum needs without government helps like food stamps.
Sounds like a quarter of the country must be earning less than the minimum wage or something equally crazy, right? Nearly a quarter of the workforce is earning less than the minimum wage – if we are talking about Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 minimum wage of $10/hr [$1.60/hr adjusted] – back when average income was half today’s. (FYI, tech improvement, like how much better today’s Timex is, generally not counted in inflation estimates.)
Doctor Levine: “How did this happen; why can’t we straighten it out?”
We can straighten it out — any time we wish – doesn’t happen anywhere else in the first-world. Institute the same labor market structure that is in place in about every last modern economy (and many not so modern like Argentina and Indonesia): sector-wide labor agreements – wherein everybody with the same job description in the same locale works under the same collectively bargained terms with all the different firms – legislation required. [Note: check out French-Canadian “lite” version.]
Medical Doctor (not psychiatrist) Levine: What is holding back our big wig progressives from pushing such badly needed, obviously efficacious labor market changes?
Me: Something I call “pack check.” Males instinctively check in with what everybody else is thinking on any economic or political – or metaphorical “hunting pack” — issue. And as long as they stay fix-focused on what everybody else is thinking it can seem impossible to them make any headway in an entirely new policy direction: so many different people require so many different approaches – and whom did we ever convert with our most reasonable (we thought) arguments in the past. Impostavazoo!
Sociobiology time – my lay opinion anyway: chasing wild pigs (what human males evolved doing) required a kind of perfect awareness of what every other hunting pack member was doing (pigs, as anyone who owns one can tell you, are not stupid) – once a crucial survival mechanism. Without awareness of the need to break free from this innate focus-on-everybody-else focus, at least for short breaks, all the economic male geeks in all the world may never attempt any new solution to the uniquely lop-side bargaining power ruining the American labor market – nor anything else – no matter how obviously practical, no matter how desperately (!) needed.
Human males are not so much pig headed as we are “pig-chase” headed.
Doctor Levine: “[Makes excuse; finally escapes].”
on the difficulty of paying for national insurance –
Me: $1.2 million is the average income for top 1 percentile households — 2006 figure. You must have made at least a couple of million last year, right? I mean you are a doctor – and you are with Columbia Presbyterian?
Doctor Levine: “[Laughs].”
Me: You mean that the 15% of GDP that slipped out of the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners into the buckets of top 1 percentile earners over the past few decades slipped right past you doctors?
Doctor Levine: “[Smiles ruefully].”
Me: Still, with 135% other modern economies’ per capita GDP America should no trouble at all devoting 15% of GDP [.15 X 1.35 = .2025] to health care these days, right (note parallel 15% of income shifting to pockets of folks who make lots more than doctors)? Unless we have wildly gutted much of our workforce’s pay – something like 30% of families living below the poverty line.
In real life the poverty line for a family of three — assuming they have to pay for their own health premiums – is about $45,000 (not the unreal $20,000 government calculation based on three times the price of an emergency diet – family premiums exceed $12,000!). If you look at the Census, median family income is about $62,000 — leaving the real minimum needs line at about 37 percentile – if nobody in that 37 percentile had paid health. Knock off 7 points (guesstimate) for families on the top end of the 37 percentile with paid insurance (not those on the bottom with Medicaid) and we can reckon – it turns out very reliably — about 30% of American families below minimum needs without government helps like food stamps.
Sounds like a quarter of the country must be earning less than the minimum wage or something equally crazy, right? Nearly a quarter of the workforce is earning less than the minimum wage – if we are talking Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 minimum wage of $10/hr [$1.60/hr adjusted] – back when average income was half today’s. (FYI, tech improvement, like how much better today’s Timex is, generally not counted in inflation numbers.)
Doctor Levine: “How did this happen; why can’t we straighten it out?”
We can straighten it out — any time we want to – doesn’t happen anywhere else in the first-world: institute the same labor market structure that is in place in about every last modern economy (and many not so modern like Argentina and Indonesia): sector-wide labor agreements – where everybody with the same job description in the same locale works under the same collective bargained terms with all the different firms – legislation required. [Note: check out French-Canadian “lite” version.]
Medical Doctor (not psychiatrist) Levine: What is holding back our big wig progressives from pushing such badly needed, obviously efficacious labor market changes?
Me: Something I call “pack check.” Males instinctively check in with what everybody else is thinking on any economic or political – or metaphorical “hunting pack” — issue. And as long as they stay fix-focused on what everybody else is thinking it can seem impossible to them make any headway in any entirely new policy direction: so many different people require so many different approaches – and who ever was converted by our most reasonable (we thought) arguments in the past. Impostavazoo!
Sociobiology time – my lay opinion anyway: chasing wild pigs (what human males evolved doing) required a kind of perfect awareness of what every other hunting pack member was doing (pigs, as anyone who owns one can tell you, are not stupid). Without awareness of the need to break free from this innate focus-on-everybody-else focus at least for short breaks, all the economic male geeks in all the world may never consider any significantly new solution to the lop-side bargaining power in the American labor market – or anything else – no matter how obviously practical, no matter how desperately (!) needed.
Human males are not so much pig headed as we are “pig-chase” headed.
Doctor Levine: “[Makes excuse; finally escapes].”
FOR THE DATA LINKS IN THIS MESSAGE GO TO:
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2009/06/imaginary-conversation-with-my-family.html
No Healthcare Reform Equals No Senate Job
It mystifies this writer that many Senate Democrats have failed to understand that killing the “public option” compromise position being pushed by the Obama will mean the end of their Senate careers. Politics has changed dramatically in the last few years and many Senate incumbents seem to have missed the size and intensity of the paradigm shift.
It is no accident that the Republican Party is in electoral meltdown. The Republican leadership is still stuck in the politics of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Unfortunately, the Democrats in power have not embraced the public sea change in attitudes completely. They do not understand that the Democratic wave does not threaten their hold on power. It does!
The Democratic shift is not based on partisan identity divorced from real changes in government policy. The Democratic election wins in 2006 and 2008 were strong rejections of both the Republican Right and the current unfair status quo in government policy.
If Democrats do nothing to reform the rigged economic system and fail to give American workers a fair shake, they are going to get replaced either in a primary or general election. If Democrats fail to protect civil liberties, they will be defeated. If Democrats start unnecessary wars, they will go down along with the already defeated Senate Republicans.
Of course, this is not good news for the Republican Right. The public is rejecting Republican Right politics and Republican-lite politics.
Americans want real and meaningful reforms. Nothing less will do. Democrats who want to do the bidding of large corporations like the health insurance industry are going to get their backsides handed to them in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Senators from both major political parties better get with the program!
The public supports meaningful healthcare reform by huge margins. Depending on the wording and specific proposals, the public supports reform by percentile figures ranging from the mid-60’s to high 80’s. What the polls are missing is the intensity of this support.
Everyone is talking about healthcare. Even the majority of my highly partisan Republican friends are supporting universal government healthcare. Some are complaining that Obama’s plan does not go far enough and want single-payer universal healthcare like HR 676. More than a few have left the Republican Party over the healthcare issue.
Democratic activists in every state are actively looking to recruit primary challengers to Senators and House members who oppose significant parts of the Obama agenda. On the healthcare issue, this sentiment is so intense that even if Obama abandoned the “public option” compromise, he would lose the support of these activists. Democratic incumbents can be defeated in Democratic primaries and will be if they abandon the “public option” compromise.
Healthcare as currently organized is killing Americans! It is killing American jobs and businesses. It is grossly inefficient and unfair. Americans have been waiting for over 60 years for fundamental reform and will not wait another year without holding officeholders responsible.
We are going to cost Senators their jobs if they block healthcare reform. This is a promise!
Corporate money can buy TV ads and slick mailers. It worked in the pre-Internet past. It will not work today. Obama is in the White House as proof. If Obama can win the White House largely thanks to the Internet, think what we can do around an issue that starts with around 2/3rds public support and Obama on our side.
[NOTE: I SEEM TO HAVE CUT AND PASTED A "DOUBLE-VISION" VERSION ABOVE -- COULD SOMEONE THERE PUT UP THIS CORRECT VERSION IN IT'S PLACE?
]
– An imaginary conversation with my family doctor on the difficulty of paying for national insurance –
Me: $1.2 million is the average income for top 1 percentile households (2006 figure). You must have made at least a couple of million last year, right? I mean you are a doctor – and you are with Columbia Presbyterian hospital.
Doctor Levine: “[Laughs].”
Me: You mean that the 15% of GDP that slipped out of the pockets of bottom 90 percentile earners and into the buckets of top 1 percentile earners over the past few decades slipped right past you doctors?
Doctor Levine: “[Smiles ruefully].”
Me: Still, with the US having 135% of the per capita GDP of comparable modern economies we should no trouble devoting 15% of GDP [.15 X 1.35 = .2025] to health care, right (note parallel with 15% of income shifted to pockets of folks who earn lots more than doctors)? Unless we have too deeply gutted much of our workforce’s pay – with something like 30% of families living below the poverty line.
In real life the poverty line for a family of three — assuming they have to pay their own health premiums – is about $45,000 (not the unreal $20,000 government calculation based on three times the price of an emergency diet – premiums alone exceed $12,000!). If you look at the Census, median family income is about $62,000. The real minimum needs line would hover somewhere around 37 percentile – if we didn’t count families with paid health insurance. Knock off 7 points (guesstimate) for families on the top end with paid insurance (not those on the bottom with Medicaid) and we can reckon – it turns out very reliably — about 30% of American families’ incomes are below minimum needs without government helps like food stamps.
Sounds like a quarter of the country must be earning less than the minimum wage or something equally crazy, right? Nearly a quarter of the workforce is earning less than the minimum wage – if we are talking about Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 minimum wage of $10/hr [$1.60/hr adjusted] – back when average income was half today’s. (FYI, tech improvement, like how much better today’s Timex is, generally not counted in inflation estimates.)
Doctor Levine: “How can something like this happen; why can’t we straighten it out?”
We can straighten out our labor market any time we wish – nothing like this happens anywhere else in the first-world. Simply institute the same labor market structure in place in virtually every modern economy (and many not so modern like Argentina and Indonesia): sector-wide labor agreements – wherein everybody with the same job description within the same locale works under identical collectively bargained terms with all the different firms – legislation required. [Note: check out French-Canadian “lite” version.]
Medical Doctor (not psychiatrist) Levine: What is holding back our big wig progressives from pushing – or at least mentioning out loud – such apparently badly needed and promisingly efficacious labor market changes?
Me: Something I call “pack check.” Males instinctively check in with what everybody else is thinking on any economic or political – or metaphorical “hunting pack” — issue. And as long as they stay fix-focused on what everybody else is thinking it can seem impossible to them to make headway in an entirely new policy direction: so many different people require so many different approaches – and whom did we ever convert before with our most reasonable (we thought) arguments. Impostavazoo!
Sociobiology time – my lay opinion anyway: chasing wild pigs (what human males evolved doing) required a kind of perfect awareness of what every other hunting pack member was doing (pigs, as anyone who owns one can tell you, are not stupid) – was an essential survival mechanism. Without awareness of the need to break free from this innate focus-on-everybody-else’s-focus, at least for short breaks, all the economic male geeks in all the world may never initiate any new solution to the uniquely lop-side bargaining power ruining the American labor market – nor anything else – no matter how obviously practical, no matter how desperately (!) needed.
Human males are not so much pig headed as we are “pig-chase” headed.
Doctor Levine: “[Makes excuse; finally escapes].”
FOR THE DATA LINKS IN THIS MESSAGE GO TO:
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2009/06/imaginary-conversation-with-my-family.html