November 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Last night, every Republican but one voted against the House of Representatives’ monumental healthcare reform package. Anh Joseph Cao has said he came to understand the need to vote to pass the sweeping healthcare reform program, after listening to the concerns of constituents desperate to find a way to secure reliable, affordable coverage for basic and/or emergency healthcare. A release on his website reads as follows…
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November 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
The Democrats celebrated a major legislative victory last night, when they passed historic health reform legislation. Only one Republican joined in passing the measure, despite a last-minute success in attaching a partial ban on federal funding for abortions. With that provision in the final bill, the near unanimous Republican no-vote was effectively a vote against [...]
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November 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
At 10:59 pm Saturday evening, a 15-minute vote was called. Members of the House were then to vote yea or nay by electronic device. By 11:01 pm, the vote was 197 to 184 and moving quickly. The vote tally will not be final until the Speaker drops the gavel to close the vote. By 11:03 pm, 36 Democrats had voted against the measure, making the special Saturday vote a case of high legislative drama.
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November 7, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pres. Obama has joined the push on Capitol Hill to pass healthcare reform. Last evening and this morning have brought a series of meetings with House leadership to orchestrate a majority vote to pass healthcare reform, possibly today. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) last night met with conservative Democrats and representatives from the [...]
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November 6, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 2 Comments
The radical fringe of the Republican party today gathered to hear Michelle Bachmann call for open rebellion against the government. Signs were held up in front of the US Capitol showing a Nazi mass grave and calling it “healthcare”. Other signs showed the president as an evil villain and calling for “hunting season” against moderate Republicans. The rally, which Rep. Bachmann called a “press conference”, is now being called the most visible admission the party is being taken over by a message of hate.
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November 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives have fought hard to make the public option, and therefore healthcare reform broadly, both less effective and more expensive. How and why they did so is puzzling: while claiming they wanted to contain costs, they went about attacking the most salient cost-cutting aspects of the plan.
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October 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Healthcare Reform :: Two Senate Democrats have pledged not to aid Republicans in blocking a full Senate vote in healthcare reform legislation. That moves the Democratic majority closer to the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster and bring the bill to a floor vote that will require only 50 votes plus one. This means the public option is now far mor likely to enter into the final legislation, as majorities in both houses support it.
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October 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Insurers campaign to kill healthcare may be helping renew support for the public option, as Congress prepares to vote. A shift in subsidies is driving a clean energy boom in the American west, and emissions legislation is likely to pass Congress this year. Financial regulatory reform will establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Immigration and gay-rights reform will likely wait till 2010.
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October 14, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The National Association of Free Clinics (NAFC) —online at freeclinics.us— is seeking donations to help fund a campaign of massive free health clinics around the country. The organization represents and supports a network of free health clinics of varying types around the country. But to help spur support for much-needed healthcare reform legislation, the organization wants to set up much-needed mass free clinic events in states where Democratic senators have not yet promised to stop a Republican filibuster.
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October 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign demonstrated an unprecedented level of achievement for organizing new voters and winning donations from lower-income voters, then mobilizing millions of supporters to fan out across the country and disseminate the campaign’s message of positive change. Republican opponents of healthcare reform are engaged in a high-stakes political gamble, banking on the [...]
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October 14, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) joined every Democrat on the Senate finance committee in passing healthcare reform through to the full Senate in a 14 to 9 vote. Snowe said before the vote that “when history calls, history calls”, indicating that her vote for passage was motivated by an awareness of the historical call to make [...]
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October 13, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The health insurance industry has released a sponsored “study” to show that if the Senate finance committee’s version of healthcare reform were to pass, they would explode costs over the next few years by as much as 40%. The report is being greeted with outrage, as the insurance firms, which stand to reap possibly hundreds of billions in new business from expanded coverage, appear to be trying to extort a strict universal mandate with harsh penalties for noncompliance.
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October 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Dick Armey is the latest Republican to use language of incitement to promote lies about Pres. Obama’s health reform agenda. Armey says proposed reforms are “ruthless” in their treatment of healthcare recipients. But just about the only truths in his comments are that there are in fact health reforms being proposed and that they have something to do with healthcare recipients.
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October 7, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
One in 91 American children is now reported to be afflicted with autism spectrum disorder. A number of potential culprits has been suggested over the years, as autism figures have steadily risen, including vaccines, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, coal waste and radiation.
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October 5, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 2 Comments
Something seems very wrong with Max Baucus. The Democratic senator whose party placed him in the chairmanship of the Senate finance committee, charged by Pres. Obama with crafting legislation that could achieve the president’s stated goals, while bringing centrist Republicans on board, has become one of the chief proponents of the very arguments entrenched corporate-interest Republicans are making to try to kill the Democratic reforms.
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October 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The American people have to start taking back the process of healthcare provision from the dysfunctional private insurance industry. If private, not-for-profit healthcare insurance cooperatives can meet some of the standards of existing charitable health organizations, they may be able to launch a coordinated regional and even national network of institutions able to rival and compete with private for-profit insurers, without having to match the massive wealth insurers have amassed.
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September 28, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The vehement opposition being engineered by the Republican party against the market-oriented “public option” is proof the party does not favor market diversification or consumer choice, but rather rigged games that give huge payouts to specific interests. The Republicans’ argument is that private insurers should not diversify the plans they offer or have to compete in a more dynamic and diverse marketplace.
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September 24, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The legislature of the state of Massachusetts has voted to grant Gov. Deval Patrick (D) the power to appoint an interim replacement for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D). The move means the Democratic party will see its fragile 60-vote majority in the United States Senate restored, in time for crucial votes on healthcare reform this fall. Today, Gov. Patrick has named Paul Grattan Kirk, Jr. to the interim post.
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September 23, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
The President’s plan prohibits insurance companies from rescinding coverage that has already been purchased except in cases of fraud. In most states, insurance companies can cancel a policy if any medical condition was not listed on the application – even one not related to a current illness or one the patient didn’t even know about. A recent Congressional investigation found that over five years, three large insurance companies cancelled coverage for 20,000 people, saving them from paying $300 million in medical claims – $300 million that became either an obligation for the patient’s family or bad debt for doctors and hospitals.
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September 22, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell The healthcare reform debate has been steered so far largely by efforts from conservative political action groups and insurance company lobbying efforts to sow fear and confusion about the nature and the intended effects of reforms being proposed by Pres. Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Now, [...]
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September 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
This article began as a response to a very heated comment left by one user of the Open Salon network who seems to be a physician, based on some of his phrasing. The usefulness of the exchange is meaningful, because the commenter is a physician who is very afraid of some of the key elements of the proposed healthcare reform framework. (As a margin note: the AMA —the doctors’ biggest national association— favors the proposed reforms and says they will help both doctors and patients.)
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September 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Healthcare costs have doubled over the last ten years. The primary drivers of this unrestrained cost inflation are massive uninsurance and dysfunctional profit-making schemes for private health insurers. The ‘market’, so-called, is not really a market, because instead of lowering costs and increasing quality, it has driven costs up while reducing quality. This is what the currently proposed reforms seek to correct.
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September 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
At rallies around the country, an increasingly hateful tone, complete with visual and rhetorical references to racist slurs against Pres. Obama, has emerged. From hanging the president in effigy (a rhetorical ‘lynching’) to portraying him as an African tribal witch-doctor, a monkey or an old-time minstrel show performer, extremist elements have penetrated conservative rallies against proposed healthcare reforms.
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September 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The most aggressive argument Republicans are now making about healthcare reform is that it would allegedly “gut Medicare and Medicaid”, two government-administered health insurance programs that provide treatment coverage for the elderly and the poor, respectively. The irony that emerges from the incoherent oppose everything Obama wants strategy being used by Republicans, shadowy front groups paid for by individuals linked to the insurance lobby, and conservative PACs, is that they are actually now arguing in favor of ‘socialized medicine’.
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September 17, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Senate finance committee’s version of healthcare reform, the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, has finally been released, and while opposed by both the conservative base and Democratic progressives, is being praised for cost-effectiveness and for achieving important reform goals. The Congressional Budget Office says it would save $49 billion over 10 years and would not add to the federal deficit.
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September 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Capitalism is “survival of the fittest”… capitalism is rooted in the idea of merit; everyone should be compensated according to his or her contribution (to the common good?)… capitalism is about the movement of capital; the more it moves, the richer everyone gets… capitalism is an upgraded feudalism, where the capitalist is an overseer of an abstract terrain made up of investments, not of arable lands… capitalism is democracy; the free spirit of an open society requires capitalism to support the liberties of individual citizens, and protect against government overreach… capitalism is virtue… or, capitalism is the absence of virtue…
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September 15, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
And based on a brand-new report from the Treasury Department, we can expect that about half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next ten years. If you’re under the age of 21 today, chances are more than half that you’ll find yourself uninsured at some point in that time. And more than one-third of Americans will go without coverage for longer than one year. I refuse to allow that future to happen. In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they’ll go without health insurance – not for one year, not for one month, not for one day.
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September 13, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The scope and variety of lies being told about the nature of proposed healthcare reforms in the United States are threatening to undermine the possibility for meaningful reforms that would save literally tens of thousands of lives each year. Those lies need to be dispelled, or reform will be delayed and more lives lost.
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September 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Rep. Charles Boustany, an experienced cardiologist who says he wants health insurance reform and to cut costs across the system, and who delivered the Republican response to Pres. Obama’s address on Wednesday, again misrepresented the president’s position on healthcare reform, saying Obama has not focused any attention on the doctor-patient relationship.
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September 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Obama went to Capitol Hill last night to talk tough to Congress and speak truth to the American people. He framed his speech in terms of a call for responsible, cooperative action to solve the nation’s healthcare crisis, saying: “The time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action… Now is the time to deliver on healthcare.” And he repeated: “Now is the time to deliver on healthcare.”
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September 10, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem for the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won’t pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.
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September 9, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Perhaps the single most important tool Republicans have used to spur opposition to plans for healthcare reform —moreso even than their misuse of the word “socialism”— is their claim to seniors that Obama is planning to take your Medicare away. Currently proposed reforms have inefficiency cuts, designed to make Medicare more cost-effective, but not one part of the proposed reforms would reduce anyone’s benefits or access to care.
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September 9, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Rep. Charles Boustany lied repeatedly in his official Republican response to Pres. Obama. The first major lie was his reiteration of the false claim that Obama is proposing a “government takeover” of healthcare that would “replace” healthcare American families already have. Not only has that never been proposed; Obama had just explained that the public option, if passed, would only apply to the uninsured.
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September 9, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has announced he will push ahead with major healthcare reform legislation next week, whether he has Republican support or not. The bill he will present to the Senate finance committee would assess fees from private insurers to help pay for extending care to the uninsured, but would not create a “public option” for buy-in health insurance. Baucus says a public option cannot win passage in the Senate.
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September 9, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) is presently preparing his “rebuttal” to Pres. Obama’s major policy address to a special joint session of Congress, on the issue of healthcare reform. Boustany is in some respects a moderate Republican, a physician who has worked in healthcare, healed actual people, and who believes in major health insurance reform. He is not emblematic of the mainstream of Republican elected officials, many of whom have vowed to “kill reform” no matter how many Republican ideas get worked in by Pres. Obama.
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September 9, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The Republican party is suffering a period of decline and isolation. Certain elements in its leadership seek an ideological “purification” of the party, ousting anyone who does not agree with a hardline right-wing philosophy of evangelical conservatism — often with a near messianic devotion to militarism or to Machiavellian manipulations as a means to an end.
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September 5, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
There is talk in Washington of replacing the ‘public option’ for health insurance, to be included on the health insurance exchange for affordable comprehensive coverage, with a ‘trigger option’. The concept would see the reforms go through without a government-backed low-cost public option for health insurance, but with the stipulation that if the private insurance firms fail to meet standards for affordable, high-quality comprehensive healthcare, in any given state or market, a public option would be implemented.
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September 4, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
In an interview with the McAlester News-Capital newspaper, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) —the senior senator from his state— strung together one lie after another, in an apparent effort to slander Pres. Obama and derail healthcare reform. There are no softer words for Inhofe’s incessant lies and fabrications. He has apparently pledged his time and energy to the hard labor of being an inveterate and unapologetic professional slanderer.
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September 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 6 Comments
With a profound philosophical rift emerging in the nation’s chief opposition party, intolerance and programmatic lack of empathy are becoming the hallmarks of a troubled Republican minority. Party strategists are now worrying that, whatever the benefit might be for “building the base”, a more hard-line, less flexible, less inclusive vision of Republicanism will hurt the party’s chances in national elections.
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September 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has told a town hall meeting that he doesn’t need to read legislation on healthcare reform or to know any details of what’s in it, he will oppose it out of hand. Astonishingly, the senator told the citizens gathered that “I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways”. He didn’t say “let them die” about people in need of medical care who are uninsured, but the sentiment just might be there.
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August 31, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, has announced he will work with lawmakers to arrange for an interim appointment to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, until the special election, now scheduled for 19 January 2010, allows voters to choose a senator to complete the last three years of his current 6-year term. The announcement paves the way for negotiations with state lawmakers about how to appoint a “caretaker”, and who should get the appointment.
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August 31, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Deval Patrick, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, is now “coming out strongly in favor of the idea” of naming an interim replacement for the late Sen. Kennedy, at Sen. Kennedy’s request, to avoid leaving his state with a vacancy in the Senate for several months, as reported by the New York Times. After initial skepticism, there are now reports suggesting state lawmakers may be leaning toward supporting such a move.
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August 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama and Sen. Orrin Hatch, two men whose views differ in countless ways, but who became, each in his time, close and trusted friends to Sen. Ted Kennedy, should meet privately, then with Congressional leaders, to hammer out workable reform to extend healthcare coverage to all Americans, and honor the life’s work of the late senator. After an initial agreement to commit firmly to weeding out obstructionists and working toward virtuous compromise, Hatch and Obama should gather together a panel of key senators to establish a commitment to passing reform that extends coverage to all Americans.
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August 28, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
While Republicans have been celebrating the rhetorical chaos seen at some town hall meeting events to discuss comprehensive healthcare reform, it is conservative “blue dog” Democrats who have been holding up passage of the reforms outlined by Pres. Obama and fashioned by Congressional leaders. Now, a study from the non-profit Center for Public Integrity finds that the Blue Dog coalition’s members have been taking more financial contributions from the healthcare industry than any other group.
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August 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Edward Moore Kennedy, United States senator for 46 years, has died from the effects of brain cancer, aged 77. Only two senators served longer, Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond. The fourth of Joseph Kennedy’s sons, Sen. Kennedy entered the nation’s upper house of Congress in 1962, after a special election to replace his brother John, who had become president two years earlier. He devoted his career in the Senate to voting rights, civil rights, education and to the cause of achieving universal healthcare in the United States.
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August 26, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
This video shows an emotional introduction by Caroline Kennedy, along with a video tribute to the life and work of Sen. Ted Kennedy, followed by a rousing speech by the senator himself, who spoke before an adoring audience of Democratic delegates.
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August 26, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
In this video, Sen. Ted Kennedy speaks about his personal connection to and passion for the issue of reforming healthcare in the United States so that people at an economic disadvantage are not forced to suffer preventable complications and death due to inadequate available coverage and/or treatment.
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August 23, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Life expectancy in the United States is 78.11 years, 50th in the world, behind the Wallis and Futuna Islands and just ahead of Guadeloupe. Canada is 8th, at 81.23 years; France is 9th, at 80.98; Sweden is 10th, at 80.86. Despite Canada’s “socialized” healthcare system, the average Canadian can expect to live more than three years longer than the average American.
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August 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Has the Republican party lost its way? Has it entered a long period of wandering in the wilderness, in the absence of fresh thinkers and new ideas? How could a single political entity, with all three branches of the American government firmly in its grasp and in ideological unison, just a few short years ago, be so cast aside by the tides of democratic process and public sentiment? The short answer: a lack of genuine services to offer the people who decide who fills the positions of power in the people’s government.
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August 20, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), popularly known as the “Lion of the Senate”, who has served 47 years in the upper house of the US Congress, is battling an aggressive brain cancer, and has been relegated to a long absence, even as the nation debates the issue that has most consumed his efforts as a legislator. Healthcare reform has been Ted Kennedy’s primordial concern throughout his time in the Senate, and it has never been closer, but at a time he is needed on Capitol Hill, he is sidelined by gravely ill health.
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