[Dialogue] {Disarmed} Re: {Disarmed} Re: {Spam?} Spong the Poliical Wonk

[Charles or Doris Hahn]

Hello All!

Let's forget the Hillary plan, neither attacking it or
defending it.  That time is far behind us.  All the
stitistical data as well as mountains of anecdotal
evidence points to the failure of our current system.
Forty eight million with no health insurance---18,000
die annually because they cannot get adequate care. 
Our nation would explode in outrage if that many
Americans died in Iraq each year. WE are way down the
list in life expectancy and way up the list in infant
mortality.  We all know this.  We all must be focusing
on what kind of plan we want to create today.  We need
a comprehensive universal single payer health care
plan.  Basically that is saying Medicare for all, but
not the now discredited Medicare, Part D. This Part D
plan is a farce designed to funnel hundreds of
millions of frderal tax dollars annually into the
coffers of the pharmaceutical and health insurance
industries.  We want a plan that will cover all
citizens just like Medicare covers our Elder citizens
today except that it would include all needed
prescription drugs.

I suggest reading two small books, AS SICK AS IT GETS,
by Rudolph Mueller M.D. and BLEEDING THE PATIENT: the
Consquences of Corporate Health Care,  by David
Hammelstein M.D., Steffie Woolhandler M.D., M.P.H. and
Ida Hellander M.D. 

It is time to insist that our politicians get serious
about comprehensive Universal Health Care.  If other
industrial countries can do it, so can we.

Perhaps you can tell I am passionate about this idea. 
Upon retirement from pastoral ministry, I was the
Administrator of the Indigent Health Care Program of
Bastrop County, Texas for seven years.  We helped a
lot of people, but hundreds more fell through the
cracks with no place to turn.  Now I am working with a
group called HCHP, Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health
Plan, pushing for a comprehensive universal single
payer helth plan for Indian, and we work with a group
called Physicians for a National Health Plan , working
for the same thing nationally.

Please forgive the length of this,  but do not give up
on Health Care for All, A Right, not a Privilege.

Charles Hahn

--- David Walters <walters at alaweb.com> wrote:

> It is embarrassing to know that I live in the only
> industrial nation that does not provide each of its
> citizen’s full access to comprehensive health
> care. Even more embarrassing is listen to the
> current  campaign and listen as health care comes
> up. 
> 
>  
> 
> During the debate over the so-called Hillarycare
> Plan, I bought a copy of her plan. Every time
> someone came on TV and quoted a page number claiming
> something as in the plan I would reach for my copy.
> Each time I would read the entire page and even the
> pages before and after the page cited and each time
> I failed to find anything approaching what they had
> said was in the plan. One thing I could never find
> was a mention of criminal sanctions for anyone who
> might try to seek care outside of the proposed
> system 
> 
> I suppose it is easy for someone who invested his
> adult life to drink the AMA Kool-Aid of the
> physician -dominated-hospital-insurance
> company-controlled-health-care system oppose any
> attempt by Hillary or Ira Magaziner or John Edwards
> or anyone else to transform the health care system
> in our nation so that all of out citizens can
> participate. 
>  
> It is also interesting to read that words of some
> one who educated in and earned a comfortable living
> in our present system to posit such silly
> reductionistic statements in defense of a system to
> which he owes so much. But is also disheartening to
> hear such psycho-babbling from a colleague who
> should know better. It certainly does not become one
> who obviously knows what it means to act globally
> and live locally to offer rightwing republican spin
> to put down those who seek an alternative to our
> present system.
>  
> 
> It is embarrassing to know that I live in the only
> industrial nation that does not provide each of its
> citizen’s full access to comprehensive health
> care. 
>  
> 
> David Walters 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
>   Spong quote:
>   Her health care failure in the first Clinton
> administration still draws fire, but the fact is
> that when one places each individual proposal of
> that health care plan before the public, it receives
> majority approval. It is only when these proposals
> are packaged together that people have problems.
> That probably means that she was right, but too
> early.
> 
> 
>   This statement, I think, ignores portions of the
> Hillary/Ira Magaziner plan that proposed significant
> penalties  for anyone seeking care outside her
> proposed health care system, and for any health care
> provider (fines and jail) who treated patients
> outside the government prescribed schedules, and for
> seeking care from a physician of ones choice, rather
> than the one assigned to you by the government.  I
> am unaware of these provisions being endorsed by any
> public opinion polls.  Do you think she, or any of
> our congressional delegates would subject themselves
> to these restrictions?  Certainly the proposals of
> universal coverage, and care paid for with tax
> dollars (someone else's), fare well in public
> opinion polls.
> 
>   The fact is, in most countries that have
> government paid health care, a second level  exists,
> where people who do not want to wait, who want to
> see the doctor of their choice, who are willing to
> pay for private care, and want to go outside the
> government system, can do so, or, they can come to
> the US where they know they can get good, but
> expensive, care.
> 
>   I think our health care system is far too
> expensive and too many people recieve sub-standard
> care because of this expense.  I do not have a grand
> plan to solve the problem, but, I think Hillary's
> and Ira's plan would have been a disaster if
> implemented.
> 
>   Two factors that have added to health care costs,
> commercial managed care (Bill Frist's fortune), and
> litigation (John Edward's fortune) need reform to
> help control costs.
> 
>   See report on Hillary's current position.
> 
>   Don Elliott
> 
> 
>   Then first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, holding a
> copy of the Clinton health-care plan, kicks off a
> three-state sales campaign during a visit to the
> Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in this Oct.
> 28, 1993 file photo. When it comes to health care
> reform, Clinton lives by the old adage, "burned
> once, twice shy." As first lady in the early 1990s,
> she tried to reshape the nation's health care system
> - an audacious effort that collapsed under its own
> complexity, Republican opposition, and the Clinton's
> unwillingness to seek compromise with lawmakers. (AP
> Photo/Joe Marquette,
> File)getElement('galleryimage_0').innerHTML = ' 
>   Then first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, holding a
> copy of the Clinton health-care plan, kicks off a
> three-state sales campaign during a visit to the
> Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in this Oct.
> 28, 1993 file photo. When it comes to health care
> reform, Clinton lives by the old adage, "burned
> once, twice shy." As first lady in the early 1990s,
> she tried to reshape the nation's health care system
> - an audacious effort that collapsed under its own
> complexity, Republican opposition, and the Clinton's
> unwillingness to seek compromise with lawmakers. (AP
> Photo/Joe Marquette, File)'; >
_______________________________________________
> Dialogue mailing list
> Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
>
http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net
>