THE DEMISE OF UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE

Obama in 2003 before the AFL/CIO: “I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. 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 is meant when we say everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to the White House: The health care industry (insurance, hospitals, pharmaceuticals and health care professionals) paid for a considerable portion of his record-breaking campaign budget. Ever since that 2003 speech, he has steadily and consistently backed away from a Universal Single-Payer health care plan for America. Now, thinking forward, he is concerned more with the damage he could suffer if the powerful lobbies were to tag him a “big spend' Democrat advocating “socialized medicine” and ruin his chances for a 2nd term. Obama failed to mention in the 2003 speech that in addition to taking back the White House and Congress, we would need to take back power from the major health industry corporations.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Obama used to support a single-payer health care plan but flip-flopped on the issue Nicholas Ballasy, 8/04/09 – CNN News.com. “I can remember when Obama agreed with me,” said Conyers, referencing Obama’s past support of a single-payer health care system at a recent National Press Club luncheon. In reference to why Obama changed his mind about single-payer, Conyers said: “I'm just guessing now, because we haven't talked about it, but it's because of the Rahm Emanuel factor. Which is, to quote him: “look, we want success and we're willing to make a deal about anything to win in the off-year elections and to get our president reelected the next time he comes up. But I don't want anything that's stamped ‘reform’ and let it go at that.” Conyers said that the approach President Obama is taking now will not achieve its objective of holding down health-care costs and it will not cover everybody. It will not take away the misery of hundreds of thousands of people: the tragedy of people having to go into bankruptcy, of not being able to eat or pay rent, or even to get their pharmaceutical prescriptions.”

NOW THE HEALTH CARE THIEVES MEET INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE
“During his presidential campaign, Obama lashed out at the influence of the drug companies in Washington and criticized their chief lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a former Louisiana congressman. Now, writes the LA Times on 8/0409, Tauzin has secured an agreement that the Administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policies that Obama criticized on the campaign trail. Tauzin has now morphed into the President's partner - invited to the White House repeatedly in recent months along with chief executives of Abbott Laboratories, Merck, and Pfizer”. Ken Randall WSWS 8/05/09. The health care lobby spent $133 million in the 2nd Quarter of 2009 alone to gain this kind of access, more than any other sector. Not to be left behind, the lobby has given Chairman Rangell of the House Ways and Means Committee $1.6 million, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucas got $1.5 million, and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley $2 million. The lobby invested $170 million in Washington politicians in the past 2 years while scoring a 428 percent (over the past 7 years) increase in profits to reach a net profit of $23 billion in 2007. Now that's smart investing !

OBAMA AT WATERLOO
Senator Jim DeMint: “If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him”. Bill Moyers 7/25/09 Truthout: “The Republican Right is moving in to mortally wound the Obama Presidency early in his term, as they did to the Clintons in 1993.” William Kristol, one of their propagandists back then, urged his party to block any health care plan for fear that Democrats would be seen as “the generous protector of middle class interests”. Now he's telling the GOP to 'go for the kill - drive a stake through its heart”. The Wall Street Journal describes “a string of Republican victories plucked from the Senate Finance committee by drug company lobbyists including: (1) no cost cutting steps, (2) no cheaper drugs from Canada, (3) no direct Federal government negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to lower Medicare drug prices and from the Senate Health Committee (4) a monopoly for the biotech industry against competition from generic drugs for 12 years.

This hijacking of any resemblance to a Universal Single Payer Plan now makes the partisan debate over costs so warped and distorted as to be meaningless as well as inscrutable. “Opponents of reform have hoodwinked much of the public into believing that investments in America's national health care system will wind up costing individuals more than they'd gain from the effort. The CBO now estimates the costs of “reform'to be $611 billion over ten years. Compare this $61 billion per year to the one-time $700 billion bailout of our most insolvent banks. The bigger question now is whether we can afford not to fix the health care system. We are now spending 17% ($7,290 per family) of our economic output on health care compared with 5% in 1960 and this cost has seriously undermined our entire economy and our competitiveness as a nation. Other industrialized countries only spend $2,964 per family). Joshua Holland, Alternet 7/29/08.

DOES THE PUBLIC REALLY WANT MAJOR REFORM
Critics of the Obama public option have had little difficulty distorting public opinion to fit their prejudices: On Meet The Press 7/19/09, Michele Norris of NPR stated that “90% of those who voted in 2008 actually have health insurance and three quarters of them are satisfied with what they got”. Norris' figure fails to include the 50 million without insurance. We learn on Fox News that “nobody really understands the urgency of health care reform and that the American people are beginning to distrust that urgency, that rush into legislation”: Alexis Glick, Fox Business Network 7/21/09. The Wall Street Journal editorial writer Paul Gigot claims “that Obama is making the same mistake that he made on the stimulus package – he's governing from the left. That's why you see these extraordinary costs and extraordinary taxes”.

The Pew Research Center reports that 71% feel we need 'fundamental changes' or want our health system to be 'completely rebuilt'. Anthony Dimaggio, Counterpunch 07/29/09. The American public has actually supported a national health care initiative for many years. A Gallup Poll in 2007 found 64% agreed that it is “the responsibility of the Federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage”. In July 2009, the Washington Post/ABC News poll reported that 72% felt that Obama was placing the right amount of attention on health care or needed to focus even more attention on the issue.

HR 676 – THE SINGLE PAYER OPTION
John Conyer's HR 676. the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, is no longer even mentioned on the television news shows nor is it seriously discussed in Congress. President Obama predicted in 2003 that such a plan would be enacted by the Democrats once Congress and the White House were under Democratic control. Now that these things have come to pass, he says that Single Payer is not 'practical'. Once the Congress has sold its votes to the health care lobby, and once our President has decided that his chances of re-election are more important than the health of the nation, I must agree, Single Payer is no longer 'practical'.

RALPH NADER GETS THE LAST WORD
“About 100,000 lives are lost through hospital negligence per year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. This vast tragedy is hardly going to get worse under universal government health insurance that assembles data patterns to reduce waste, enhance quality, and transparency. By contrast, the secretive big health insurers who make more money the more they deny claims, ignore their loss prevention duties. In 1950, when President Truman sent a universal health insurance bill to Congress, the American Medical Association (AMA) launched a massive counterattack. The AMA claimed that government health insurance would lead to rationing of health care, higher prices, diminished choices, and more bureaucracy. The AMA beat both Truman and the unions that were backing the legislation, using the phrase “Socialized Medicine”. Fifty years later, 'corporatized medicine' has produced all these same consequences, along with stripping away the medical profession's independence. Today, the irony is that the corporate supremacists are accusing reformers in Washington of what they themselves have produced throughout the country: Rationing, higher prices, less choice, and mounds of paperwork and corporate red tape. Plus, fifty million people without any health insurance at all.”