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- Dana DXallabetta, 54 year old breast cancer survivor now without health insurance -
"Tax the very wealthy to make everybody healthy!"
- Vigilante, Sozadee, CA -
"This is a vote for one thing - are you for the insurance companies or for the American people?"
- Howard Dean -
"I think they should just shove it through and f*** the Republicans!"
- Dana Dallabetta -
Dana Dallabetta, a breast cancer survivor who was booted off her health insurance plan for missing one COBRA payment, speaks for the no-longer-so-silent majority of Americans who want major health care reform enacted NOW. More than 1,000 of these Americans are protesting in Washington, D.C. in front of the swanky Ritz Carlton hotel, where the group America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is holding its annual conference. These protesters are demonstrating against health insurance industry greed and unfair practices, and this blogger applauds their activism. Poll after poll after poll have shown that a majority of our citizens support significant health care reform and an end to insurance company practices of exclusion for pre-existing conditions and booting others off insurance plans because their treatment costs have become high. A lesser number, but a majority nonetheless, favor a public option to compete with insurance companies, whereby the federal government would provide health care at a lower and more competitive rate than is currently done by these greedy private insurers who comprise AHIP's membership. Of course, lying Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Representative John Boehner (R-OH) insist that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel otherwise. I don't know who these liars are talking to, to make a preposterous claim like that. They are clearly on the side of huge, for-profit insurance companies, and not looking out for the best interests of everyday citizens who are reeling under ever-jumping insurance costs and nearly 50 million (1 in every 6.5 of us!) who currently have NO health insurance coverage.
To be sure, the Senate bill which was passed that both McConnell, Boehner, and the rest of their conservative Republican cronies so vehemently oppose, and which must be voted on by the House, is indeed a very flawed bill. But it is a beginning, and the time to make this beginning is now. It will insure 30 million more people than are covered now, and that is a step in the proper direction. It will also provide some much needed and long overdue regulation over the greedy, loose-cannon insurance industry. Despite its flaws, this bill must pass, as a foot in the door to improvements and better legislation down the road. And that is what the protesters all believe.
Former Vermont Governor/DNC chair Howard Dean and AFL-CIO President Richard Trunlie got the crowd going with stirring speeches. Protesters were mass deputized and urged to make citizens' arrests of profiteering health insurance company CEOs within the conference. Inside the conference, a health insurance industry spokesman stated that they don't pay much attention to anti-industry bloggers or demonstrators. That's for damn sure, and the same holds true for our American public, who are used and abused and money-siphoned by these profiteers every day, and millions of others who are excluded from coverage. For this corrupt and bloated industry is obsessed with profit and cares for nothing else. They think nothing of spending $1 million per day on TV ads that lie and attempt to scare the public away from supporting regulation or a public option, even as they turn away millions of people so they can cherry-pick those who will be most profitable for them to cover. I applaud these demonstrators, for, unlike the teabaggers, these people actually know the score and understand how badly we are being ripped off by insurance companies and their conservative Republican defenders. These people, unlike the teabaggers, haven't been fed talking points by huge corporate interests. Their demonstration is informed and genuine.
Unlike last summer's phony, orchestrated teabagger protests, this time, it's for real!
10 comments:
The Republicans always seem to project "the American people" into most of their sentences, as if they are the ones hold sway with the population in general. Wrong.
Yeah, I'm getting sick of the very phrase. It's way overused by both sides, and it means nothing, as we are not monolithic and definitely not mostly Republican! I would much prefer to hear a warmer reference to "our fellow citizens" or something of that nature.
You are so right. Every other sentence is: the American people want or don't want...
In fact their projections are almost always wrong because if there is any one group that has lost with what the American people want it is the Republicans.
Finally it is about time Democrats started finding their balls. This HCR demonstration is just the beginning...I hope.
I'm with you all the way, MadMike! It's good to see labor showing some signs of lifge, too!
Too many Americans have been bankrupted by attempting to pay their medical bills for diseases such as cancer. This makes no sense to then say this is the "best medical care in the world" if only the wealthy can afford to have it.
It's time for all the talk to end and for Congress to finally take some action. What "The American people want", is to be able to afford to take their kids to the doctor without having to take out a second mortgage. "What the American people want", is for our supposed representatives to put our needs first instead of the needs of every lobbyist in DC. "What the American people want", is for government to work for the people instead of for the corporations. "What the American people want", is what all people want, a life as free as possible from want and fear. It's time for the Democrats to show that they care about "What the American people want".
Laci,
You are exactly right, and all that "best care in the world" nonsense is simply the colour of American complacency blended with protection for big corporations. Very ugly hypocrisy indeed!
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Mycue23,
Truer words were never written, and it's high time some of those blowhards in Congress started to earn their $174,000 paychecks!
While I would prefer a government run single-payer national health care system I'll run with what is in Congress now.
I've got to admit that its exceedingly funny and at the same time discouraging to hear the rich proclaim the phrase "best health care in the world" with a straight face that even a rock could tell is just self-serving propaganda.
The discouraging part comes from a NPR report I heard recently when they interviewed a self-employed electrician paying for his own health insurance but opposing the president's attempts of reform purely on ideological grounds, with what at least to me also held racist overtones.
Your first paragraph sums up my feelings perfectly, Beach.
As for that electrician, he, like so many who oppose Obama's plan, obviously has no trouble affording his own overpriced insurance, so it doesn't matter to him. Such people can't see beyond the end of their own nose, and many are indeed racists who hate Obama and want him to fail for that reason and that reason alone.
As much as I disagree with much of what it contains, PASS THE BILL NOW!
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