Robert Reich explains the “public option” re health insurance reform.

In this video at Bill Moyers' Journal, Bill Moyers and and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich rolled up their sleeves to discuss Barack Obama's objectives regarding national health care reform, including the (potentially feasible) "public option" and (not unlikely option of) "single payor." The bottom line: Barack Obama has an uphill struggle against some extremely powerful (monied) interests, including the private insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other profit-driven corporations that have each hired fleets of lobbyists yelling "socialism." At the 14-minute mark, listen to Reich describe how the financial sector has "pulled the wool over the eyes" of the Obama Administration. He warns that the lobbyists are enormously powerful, and that we need Obama and average citizens to start standing up to the lobbyists. As things are, nothing has fundamentally changed regarding the financial system, other than the financial sector's new ability to paper over its scandalous practices and its ever-increasing massive transfer of wealth from America's middle class to the financial sector. In 1980, the top 1% of the country took home 9% of the total national income. By 2007, the top 1% was taking home 21% of the national purchasing power. Reich explains that the middle class has been drained of financial and government power. What has happened is that "capitalism has swallowed democracy." Reich explains that when the government fails to set boundaries, we have the law of the jungle, and we then have super-capitalism, which is capitalism without democracy. The culprits were the lobbyists who made sure that there was no effective regulation of the financial sector.

Continue ReadingRobert Reich explains the “public option” re health insurance reform.

Held Hostage by Health Care

A physician friend of mine sent me a link to a piece written by Dr. Marcia Angell about why Congress should consider a single-payer system and suggestions as to how it could be implemented. Dr. Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. I can only hope that, even though she was not invited to speak in front of Congress, Pres. Obama and the Congress see her words and incorporate this into their discussion.

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Post-script to bureaucracy, now-found documents and health insurance. . .

For those of you who waded through my post of last week about my day trekking through the federal bureaucracy on a quest for documents, I have two things to add. First, thanks for taking the time to wade. Second, I got an update from my friend. Remember those records…

Continue ReadingPost-script to bureaucracy, now-found documents and health insurance. . .

Health insurance without the bureaucracy

People living in small rural villages in Uganda have found a practical solution to a problem which the greatest minds and vast resources of the United States seem unable to confront, let alone solve: how to make basic health care available and affordable. There's no national health insurance and people…

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Bloggers: Welcome to the downside of journalism!

A few days ago, I was at the Memphis Convention Center waiting for Dennis Kucinich to enter a large room to begin his press conference.  The reporter sitting in front of me noticed that I was wearing credentials bearing the word “press,” credentials granted by the National Conference for Media Reform.

She asked me about “Dangerous Intersection.”  I told her that it is a blog created in March 2006.  I mentioned that we have a dozen participating authors and that we get about 1100 unique visitors each day. 

She asked, “Would you have ever believed back in March that you would be sitting here covering a press conference of a person running for President of the United States?”   It didn’t cross my mind back then. This blogging experience has taken lots of unexpected twists and turns.  I jokingly told her that she was making me nervous by making the press conference seem more important–and reminding me that I am merely a citizen journalist.  

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(Here I am in Memphis, Citizen Journalist.  The bottom of my badge reads “Press.”)

One of the main points stressed throughout the Media Reform Conference, however, was that journalism is changing rapidly.  Corporate media is struggling (often because its corporate owners are muzzling its reporters) and citizen journalists are stepping into the void.  Though the citizen journalists range in quality, they do include many highly qualified reporters who are having lots of fun contributing to the public discourse.  Prior to this movement, most of these people …

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Continue ReadingBloggers: Welcome to the downside of journalism!