America is not Ready for Self Government

US health care costs are 17% of GNP, while European programs run at less than 10%. Uninsured medical costs lead to many deaths, bankruptcies and foreclosures. These factors have contributed to a massive national debt and a deep recession.
With the military, the USA is essentially borrowing money to kill people. Americans hate the poor and the foreigners. Such bigotry and racism is expensive and unsustainable.
The elongated battle on health care indicates the Americans are not ready for self-government.

The Steep Climb Upwards

Night and day we hear about the glories of the US for-profit medical system. Somehow, it sustains the virtues of democracy, thrift and competition. It is a bulwark to protect us from the contamination by European Socialism, Fascism and Communism. Furthermore, it shields us from the tentacles of the ever-expanding government bureaucratic monster.
This line of defense has delayed progress for over 100 years. It took a Great Depression to inspire the passage of Social Security. The assassination of JFK tweaked enough emotion to get Civil Rights and Medicare.
A proper single payer system is years away. Financial reform will take more time and the military/industrial Complex will probably outlast the country. Decline and decay are more comfortable than reform.

Reconciliation is the Only Option

"If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate," Boehner and Cantor wrote.
Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation? As the President has noted recently, Democrats continue to hold large majorities in the House and Senate, which means they can attempt to pass a health care bill at any time through the reconciliation process. Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people.
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Robert Gibbs responded for the President
"The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He's open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing."
By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post

May I suggest an alternative?
If we must pass a universal health plan by reconciliation, we might join the other industrial nations in single payer. H.R. 676 seems to be a reasonable start. It may be administered through the existing Medicare framework.
To bring costs into line with the European experience, I suggest an across-the-board reduction of forty percent for the health industry. This would include all premiums, fees, salaries, charges, prices and rentals.
Coverage of the new plan should include all US citizens resident in the country. No citizen should be denied health care.
Legislators who voted against health care reform should be tried for involuntary manslaughter of victims who died lacking proper health coverage.

Outside Agitators in Israel

As an Israeli, I share in the same gene pool with Palestinians and Syrians. So, most racist aspersions have no basis from within our little group. Our members have an intimate knowledge of one another physically and culturally. As in every family, we know which buttons to push and when.
The kibitzers who pontificate about our situation give a new meaning to the phrase outside agitators. They have their own fish to fry and never hesitate to drop them into the boiling oil. Invariably, they risk conflagration.
I refuse to rehash Israeli history since the King David Hotel tragedy, but I will point to a recent glaring example. For $24 per month I enjoy complete health care. It is a natural right we take for granted, as it recognizes the bonds of citizenship between Arab and Jew. We can not think of a situation where we would deny health care to a fellow citizen.
This criterion alone ejects Americans from any discussion of human rights and common decency.

Citizens Can Salvage Single Payer from Health Care Mess

The health insurance industry, Big Pharma and other special interests have overplayed a pat hand. They have bribed every official in sight to the point the so-called health reform has the public by the short hairs. The bill promotes extortion with fines and punishments for those who don't comply with government dictates. This illustrates the disease of corporate communism, which has infested the entire nation. If the citizen has a brain, he realizes he has no say in health care delivery.

The situation has come to a head in Massachusetts. If Coakley loses, the health care bills now before the Congress collapse without the 60th vote in the Senate. Horrified by this eventuality, the special interests have moved their funds and support to the Coakley campaign. They have ordered their lick-spittle President to rush to Massachusetts to pull their fat from the fire.

Win or lose in Massachusetts, the citizens have an excellent window of opportunity. With both parties totally discredited and shamed beyond belief, any bill worth passing deserves a reconciliation effort to overcome a filibuster. Fifty-one votes should be enough to make H.R. 676 single payer the law of the land. Let every incumbent learn the 2010 election could unseat him and send him to prison.

Such a realization is good for the character.

American Values and the Art of the Possible

$636 billion for annual military spending was approved by the U.S. Senate over the weekend, with little more than a hiccup of debate from Republican "conservatives," not a peep from the Democrats, and even less coverage from the corporate mainstream media.

But $850 billion for 10 years of what is ostensibly meant to be health care reform for the health and welfare of American citizens --- all while reducing the budget deficit by $132 billion over that period, according to the CBO? "A budget buster!," shout the phony "conservatives" in the same Senate.

Anyway, there's your "American Values," in a two-part nutshell, from today's Republicans and the Democrats and corporate media who enable their madness as if it weren't so. Brad Freidman, Brad Blog

The Death of Upward Mobility

Bill Moyers, Doubleday

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to our triumphant reactionaries' campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing -- while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and those who carry out the laws.