The Pen on the Health Care Bill Charade

This health care bill that just got through the Congress is complete shit. Passing nothing would be better than passing this. The Medicare buy-in plan, while problematic, was a progressive clause in the bill. It’s also supported by 2/3 of the American public. Support for a public option, formerly at 75%, has been reduced to 56% by relentless reactionary propaganda.

I can’t agree that just because this bill isn’t shitty enough for Republicans (which is why they oppose it) that it’s a good thing. The Republicans will oppose any bill, even as meager, weak and worthless as this one. Any bill that the crooks in the medical industry are cheering over, you know it must be a shitpile. It’s sorry that every liberal and “progressive” in the Senate signed on to this outrage.

I like these guys at The Pen. They are the real deal. Real progressive Democrats, and frequently at war with their own corporate-controlled party as a result of their principles. Given the threats of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman to join Republicans in filibustering any decent bill, this was the inevitable end result. Hell, in that case then, just pass nothing at all! Better than this pile of shit.

I agree with The Pen that this pile is probably going to end up being one of the most hated pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. And the idiot Dems are probably going to pay for passing it, too. I guess the Dems and Obama just wanted to pass something. But this is worse than nothing. They’re fools if they think that they’re going to get any benefit out of this pile of crap. They’ll be lucky if they aren’t seriously hurt by it.

Dear Progressive Friends and Activists,

This week the entire East Coast was hit with a massive snow storm. But it was we compared to the relentless snow JOB coming out of the White House and Congress on the health care bill. The lies are flying so thick it will take a couple alerts to shovel them out all of our way. The most important thing is that we must speak out and declare the truth that “The Health Care Bill Is A Total Fraud On The American People”

The Shinola Stops Here Action Page: (including the latest “I’m A Democrat, And I’m A Republican” video)

Before anything else, for those have not been paying attention, we are not the right wingers. The Republicans won’t vote for the bill, but for the wrong reasons. For them it’s not vicious and exploitative of the people enough. They in fact secretly want it to pass, because they know it is destined to be the most despised piece of legislation in American political history, and woe unto any Democrat who votes for it in its present form.

Remember that we were the people who told you the truth about what was really going on, when we wrote over three months ago that Obama had no intention of letting a public option of any kind survive. We told you long before that the so-called “public option” was itself a sham, a misleading impersonation of real reform (which was and always will be single payer) that was never intended to be anything but a transitory process device to get weak-minded liberal saps to compromise their compromised, compromising position, until there was nothing left.

Did you believe us then? Believe us now…now that anything with even a remote chance of actually reducing our health care expenses (Medicare buy-in, prescription drug re-importation, even a feebly weak public option) has been systematically stripped out of the Senate Bill on direct orders from the White House, not that corrupt members of Congress needed any serious prodding from that end.

President Obama is out there right now laying it on thick with three primary promotional touts, all of which are such transparent bunko it is astounding that they even need to be debunked.

First, he says the Senate Bill is a good thing because it contains a so-called “bill of rights”, and isn’t that all we wanted anyway he says, to just curtail a certain laundry list of the most egregious medical insurance industry rip-offs. Second, he talks about how wonderful any bill that provides health care to 30 million new people must be. And third, he argues that the Senate bill must be something great, because he claims the insurance companies are strongly opposed to it.

As to the “bill of rights” spin job, how drop kick stupid do they think we are?

Wasn’t it just last May that they passed with great fanfare a so-called Credit Card Holder’s Bill of Rights. Oh yes, that’s exactly the same deceptive way they framed that one too. Didn’t we just fall for this same PR ruse? The worst credit card abuses would be stopped the sell job went. But in just the same way, any provision that would have ensured a real reduction in outrageously usurious credit card interest and charges (like a reasonable cap on interest rates) was rejected.

Instead, credit card companies have played every possible game to raise rates since, and just this week we heard that one of the worst offenders came out with a new card with, get this, an effective interest rate of 80%, all in full compliance with the shiny new bill of rights law. What a mean-spirited, cruel and pathetic trick to play on the American people. Are you starting to get it yet, folks??

Now, as to the 30 million new people the new bill will supposedly provide health care for. The bill will do absolutely NO such thing. Instead, it will force 30 million new people to provide health care for themselves, limited in their choices to an insurance kangaroo pit run by, for, and exclusively under the effective control of the very same rip-off insurance corporations we have now.

It is the functional equivalent of making people buy their own holiday gifts, at a premium inflated price to boot, and then bragging about giving them generous presents.

And what if some of those 30 million people can’t afford to pay the entire ransom of their new indentured health care? Well, then the rest of the American taxpayers are forced to make up the difference, giving the insurance companies a direct I.V. to suck the life blood out of the American treasury.

Finally there is the total con job that the drug and insurance companies are somehow now opposed to the bill that has nothing in it that wasn’t drafted to their own specifications. This of course all flies in the face of the way they have been caught in public celebrating what they themselves are calling their huge win.

In the first place, they are so greedy they would be crying foul if they only got 99.9 percent of that they wanted, instead of absolutely every bit of 100 percent. If this isn’t something straight out of Brer Rabbit, we don’t know what is. “Oh, please don’t throw us in the new insurance market,” they supposedly cry. Only we haven’t seen any ads run by them to try to now stop the Senate bill…have you?

So what do we learn from all this? The drug and insurance corporate interests (indeed all right wingers) keep screaming and shouting until they get what they what. And what are we supposed to do? Hold our tongues?

Trust that our political “representatives” really mean well, while they sell us further and further down the river? Or is it up the creek? Are we supposed to constantly compromise, and capitulate on top of that, and unilaterally surrender at the end of everything else, just so we can say that we passed “something” labeled as reform. Isn’t that precisely what led us to the place we are at now?