The Congress is back in session and doing the dirty work for the Medical Industrial Complex.

mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,
lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M,
conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M, boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M, j wilson 800K
were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.
(Source: OpenSecrets.org)

Co-Author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of a Recent Harvard Study on Annual Deaths of America’s Uninsured, says the lack of coverage can be tied to about 45,000 deaths a year in the United States. The only way to affordably cover all Americans is through a Medicare-for-All, Single-Payer System. A Single-Payer System would generate $300-$400 billion in administrative savings annually, enough to cover all of the uninsured, and to plug the gaps in coverage for Americans with only partial coverage. Obviously, Medicare-for-all is anathema to the insurance industry. What politicians are doing is saving insurance industry profits, by sacrificing American lives.

12 Million Americans were denied health care coverage by the Medical Industrial Complex because they had a pre-existing medical condition. 12K Americans are denied insurance coverage everyday by a for-profit Insurance bureaucrat. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)

Medical malpractice lawsuits are a hot topic but, are they? Tort Reform is such a “Red Herring” and is easily disproved. A 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.

bush(43) economic speech writer david frum, at least, is willing to admit the idea about selling insurance across state lines is a crock:

New Jersey health policies cost more in large part because New Jersey hospitals and doctors charge more. If I buy a cheaper Kentucky policy that reimburses my providers at Kentucky rates, leaving me to pay the balance, how much good does that do me? And if the Kentucky policy is made to pay New Jersey rates, there vanishes my low Kentucky price.

These are some of the easily refuted arguments bought and paid for by the Medical Industrial Complex to derail any chance of their criminally massive profits being reduced.

Follow the Money: Link

Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!

(Toll Free # House and Senate)
1-866-338-1015 _____ 1-866-220-0044
1-800-473-6711 _____ 1-866-311-3405

Sign Single-Payer Petition: Link

Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.

SEMPER FI!

I’ll correct that–don’t insult pond scum with the comparison.

and i say this as someone who thinks, as a matter of healthcare reform policy, that a bad po is worse, much worse than no po (and i think all the pos now in play look bad). ymmv.

p.s. pow wow, we could use your help in eli’s thread on the reconciliation process — thanks (as always!)

If Harry Reid, et al, don’t force a cloture vote so the public can see who votes with the GOP, that means the party leadership want to protect those who would vote against cloture from citizen action.

Absolutely bang-on, selise – your point and Jane’s, both.

Baucus’s transparently bad faith excuse for keeping a public option out of the Senate Finance Committee bill (which has been his unstated objective for months now) is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What Max Baucus just explicitly did with his No! votes on the public option amendments, and with his accompanying incredible explanations for those votes, mirrors what he’s been doing for Obama, the Emanuel Brothers, fellow corporatist Democrats, and private industry throughout this fraudulent process: Baucus today deliberately provided cover for those in Congress and the White House opposed to what Baucus professes to support (a cost-saving public option), which Baucus is instead clearly actually attempting to prevent by trying to keep it out of a final bill.

Thus, Baucus just helped a bipartisan public-option filibuster to succeed – before it even began – by, he hopes (and expects), obviating the need for Senators to launch an actual on-the-record filibuster against that provision, on the Senate floor.

Further exposing the deceit in Baucus’s claimed 60-votes-for-cloture objective is the fact that the preemptively-successful bipartisan filibuster of the public option, that Baucus just ensured his committee supported, will simply be substituted for with different filibusters, using the excuse of other provisions of the merged Senate bill. Because, as has become too obvious for words, the sole purpose of Congressional Republicans at this point is to prevent a final vote on any health insurance reform legislation for which a Democratic President (or Party) could claim credit, regardless of its content.

So Baucus, to use selise’s word, just tried to protect every Republican, and particularly every wayward Democrat, who would be exposed and held accountable on the public record for their support of filibusters aimed at preventing the Senate from moving health insurance legislation containing a public option, at least – first to the floor for debate, after months of committee work, and then, after ample floor debate and amendment, to a final simple majority vote, without the reconciliation process.

All this while Baucus continues to profess to be in favor of a critical cost-cutting public insurance option which he, however, voted against (acting on the courage of your convictions is for other, lesser beings); the failure of which will likely not convince one Republican vote to change to support moving the question/ending the guaranteed filibuster-to-come on this legislation, regardless of its final content. As a result, those Democrats who oppose what Baucus (like Obama) claims to support, if Reid follows the lead of Baucus, may avoid acccountability for their opposition to even a figurehead public option – accountability that Lincoln and Conrad were unable to avoid in committee thanks to Rockefeller and Schumer, despite the best efforts of Baucus.

Considering that Baucus has been successfully lying to the American public for months, with impunity, he obviously assumes that he can keep right on doing it, penalty-free, with the full (backroom) support of Harry Reid and Barack Obama, aided by the helpful obfuscation of conglomerate profit-dedicated corporate media subsidiaries, and their obedient employees.