Imagine if you will a nightmarish situation in which you or a loved one get ill; and even though you are covered by an employer-based health insurance plan, a treatment that will prevent a lifetime disability or even save your life is withheld by the plan, because they call the treatment "experimental" or "medically unnecessary" -- even though your doctors say otherwise!
Now compound the terror that scenario dredges up, from within your most deep-seated instincts of self-preservation, with the prospect of your not being able to sue the health plan for making such a devastating decision. In other words, there would be no downside to the plan for their denial of even life-saving care (other than the public relations mess stirred up by all-too-infrequent articles like this); in fact, there would, of course, be a great financial incentive to simply deny your care, your life be damned.
The fact is, health insurance companies administering employer-based health plans -- the very private insurance plans covering most Americans, even under the health reform bills being considered by Congress -- have that "license to kill": It is contained in Section 514 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, ERISA -- little known to most Americans but very profitably exploited by health insurance companies, costing many people their life savings or even their lives (and shifting the costs of caring for those injured and abandoned by their plans onto state Medicaid rolls).
Click Here to View Health Care Reform: A Matter of Life and Death
Organizing for America is sponsoring a "Health Reform Video Challenge": "Create the best 30 second video you can that makes the case for passing health insurance reform in 2009. This is a complex and often personal issue, and there's way more angles to cover than anyone can squeeze into 30 seconds." The top 20 submissions (The deadline was at midnight, last night) will be voted on by the public and a panel of experts -- including celebrities, political experts, and OFA volunteers -- with the winning ad aired on national television (There is no money at stake in this "contest").
Promoting the president's plan -- an excellent, yet necessarily complex initiative, which unfortunately has left a lot of Americans confused -- in just half a minute was indeed a -- worthy -- challenge. I read further and found this very helpful: "President Obama's plan will accomplish three primary goals: Provide more security and stability for the insured; guarantee more quality, affordable choices for the uninsured; and lower the costs of health care for American families, businesses and government."
So I wrote a script, structured around these three themes: making health insurance "available, dependable, and affordable." I needed, in just 30 seconds, to present each one of those solutions as well as each one of the problems crying out for those solutions.
And what could make more of an impression than presenting the names and faces of those who were victims of our current health system? After all, this debate isn't just about politics or statistics; it's about the very real, life-and-death consequences of the status quo, compelling us to reform.
As I read the -- surprised and surprising -- reactions to Pres. Obama's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, I am reminded of something that happened ten years or so ago, when my father was still alive. I was complaining about one thing or another that then-Pres. Clinton had done. Dad, who had first voted for FDR and had years later become very embittered by Pres. Nixon -- in other words, he had seen and lived through the best and worst that our nation had to offer -- told me something I'll never forget:
"A leader can't control everything. He has to work with what he's got. So he can't make everything right overnight. And he'll make some mistakes, too; he's only human. But the thing to watch is the direction he's taking us. It might be slower than you'd like, but are things generally headed the right way or not? That's how you judge a leader."
In order to assist other progressive activists in moving health care reform -- including a public option -- forward, I have prepared a report entitled Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise: The Public Option as the Best Insurance of Health Care Coverage and Cost Control. As indicated by its Executive Summary (below), this report includes comprehensive (searchable) content, commentary, and hyperlinked references. You may download it in Microsoft Word format here ...
http://douglasdrenkow.com/docs/healthy.doc
If you have trouble downloading the file, I can e-mail it to you as an attachment (less than 1 MB in size).
I hope that by virtue of its thorough and comprehensive examination of the medical, economic, and political dimensions of our health care problems and proposed solutions, the information in this report will lead any reasonable person to conclude that of all the plans being considered by Congress with significant public support as well as any realistic chance of being passed, the public option is the best means of insuring health care coverage and cost control.
I just read this in the New York Times online, in a article titled, "Take Public Option 'Off the Table,' Snowe Says":
Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has said in recent interviews that he cannot get the committee to support a government-run health plan. Instead, he said, the committee is coalescing around a bill that would expand Medicaid coverage to several income brackets above the poverty level and require all American[s] to be insured through private plans or through the existing public plans of Medicare and Medicaid. Subsidies would be provided for those who could not afford medical insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/health/policy/14talkshows.html?th&emc=th
Unfortunately, the polls continue to show that public support for a new public option has been severely eroded ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302962.html
... after the "full frontal assault" by mobs incited in large part by the insurance industry fearing a nonprofit competitor. So this proposal to use the existing public insurance plans of Medicare and Medicaid to "fill the gaps" of coverage at first sounds intriguing. But there are several important requirements, in order to make that compromise do what a new public option would, in terms of controlling costs as well as filling gaps. Among those considerations, not stated by anyone in that article above, are the following.
CLICK HERE FOR SUMMARIES & AN INDEX TO THE CLIPS.
On Thursday, September 3, Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee group calling upon the 13 million Americans who supported Barack Obama for president, and Health Care for America NOW!, the national grassroots advocacy group, organized "Congressional Send-Off Rallies" nationwide, including in historic "Cornfield Park," in downtown Los Angeles, where reporting for OpEdNews, I videotaped the event. I have edited and posted video clips at YouTube (Click on the link above or in the bullet points below to view the clips).
Love him or loathe him, Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy was an undeniably great public figure. But his greatness did not spring from who he was -- the surviving one of four, larger-than-life brothers of a powerful American family -- but from what he did -- champion the rights of all Americans, including those not born to such wealth and privilege.
CLICK HERE for links to the video clips I have posted at YouTube.
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
Mr. President, as you celebrate a most momentous year in your life and in the life of our nation, please know that you, your lovely family, and our wonderful nation are in our prayers, now and always.
Doug & Frances Drenkow
If I had any doubts, I don't anymore: The (political) ground just shifted under our feet. The best comment I heard this morning was on MSNBC: David Shuster said that Arlen Specter didn't leave the Republican Party; the Republican Party left Arlen Specter ... and a whole lot of other moderates, in Pennsylvania and nationwide. Now we've GOT to make some real, positive change (as by getting Franken sworn-in in MN) so that the people at large get some benefit from all this, in those key areas Obama keeps pounding away at: healthcare, education, and energy. Those things have been left undone for far too long. The only way we can survive and thrive as a nation is by working on all three (and then some) together, in an integrated, "holistic" approach: It takes a nation to build a nation!
Yes, we can!
This is indeed a historic election, and for reasons more significant than its being the longest and costliest in U.S. history. Underlying it all is the almost palpable sense that after decades of abuse, we -- the people of the United States -- are reasserting our fundamental right to power. The pendulum, which swung to the Right -- and shifted the balance of wealth and power to the top -- with the election of Ronald Reagan, has begun to swing in a more liberating direction.
The current financial crisis is indeed grave, having resulted in the nation's largest bank failure (Washington Mutual) and taken down the nation's largest insurance company (AIG) and mortgage holders (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) as well as three of the top investment houses (Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., and Merrill Lynch) and threatening countless more failures both here and abroad -- in particular, there are hundreds of trillions of dollars tied up in bad securities in the interconnected international finance system; and most disturbingly, no one knows how much they are really worth, since no one wants to buy them. The credit system has frozen up; and without free-flowing credit, businesses go out of business.
Because this crisis is threatening the existence of banks and businesses it is threatening the life savings and jobs of millions of people in the United States and abroad. It is not an exaggeration for this to be called by so many the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
And the causes of the current problem are much the same as those of the Great Depression. As my late father had been saying since the Reagan administration, as more and more of the New Deal safeguards set up under FDR and the Democratic Congress in the '30s were being torn down, we ran more and more risk of having a big financial collapse, as he lived through, in desperate conditions, during the Depression. So it's worth our while to look back briefly and see what worked and what went terribly wrong.
A Reflection on 9/11/08 (as cross-posted in OpEdNews.com) ...
The Historic Election of 2008
"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms."The first is freedom of speech and expression. ..."The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. ..."The third is freedom from want. ..."The fourth is freedom from fear."
Those Four Freedoms were enshrined in the State of the Union speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1941, just months before Pearl Harbor, the most devastating attack on America to that date. Today, seven years after another horrific shock to our collective system, we are embroiled in an election that the entire world recognizes is of truly historic proportions -- and not just because of the amount of pigment in one candidate's skin, or even the centuries of slavery and discrimination with which his race has been burdened. Simply put, the election of 2008 is no less than an epic contest between hope and fear: hope that can set us free, and fear that can be -- and is -- exploited to keep us divided and to some degree conquered, by powers-that-be both foreign and domestic.
Government, Though Imperfect,Is Not the Enemy. It Is Us!
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."-- Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
Surely unrecognizable to Abraham Lincoln -- who gave his all to preserve the federal government of the United States -- the Republican Party today has as its bottom line the mantra that government is part of the problem, not part of the solution. But government, of course, even as imperfect as it is, is the one and only body constituted for we citizens to secure our liberties, as by reigning in those who would -- intentionally or inadvertently -- oppress us.
That truth has come down through history to our challenging modern times, when corporations exert more control over the lives of ordinary individuals than any government ever did at the time of our revolution. There is nothing inherently evil about a corporation; it is, of course, a truly remarkable creation for turning a profit. But by the same token, there is nothing inherently benevolent about a corporation; it exists in law for the enrichment of its shareholders, not necessarily the benefit of society at large. It is, thus, a legitimate and vital role of government to regulate the commerce of corporations, so that the rights of all are protected.
Indeed, even the security of corporations themselves is enhanced by prudent government action. The severe financial crisis we are experiencing today is a direct result of the deregulation -- not the regulation -- of business in recent years. New Deal reforms saved the banking system -- and thus American capitalism itself -- during the Great Depression; it will take likewise wise and far-reaching action by our government to quell the current crisis and restore confidence in our historically debt-ridden public and private sectors.
For the GOP to continually attack government as the enemy is tantamount to attacking whatever we as a people can and must do together in order to survive and thrive, as it has necessarily been since the dawn of civilization.
"[T]hat the strong may not oppress the weak."-- From The Code of Hammurabi
Obama: Uniting Our States
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."-- Abraham Lincoln, Paraphrasing Jesus Christ
This year, as four years ago, the electoral map of the United States is eerily reminiscent of the Free State / Slave State map of the Civil War. Moreover, that pattern of Blue States and Red States is repeated throughout the country as "blue counties" and "red counties" -- the former more urban, the latter more rural, the swing votes mainly in the suburban and exurban regions.
That divide seems at times to be as unbreachable as it is untenable: No nation can long survive as a nation if its people are permanently balkanized along lines of race, creed, religion, or any other difference. Looking at it another way -- and that is how a democracy is supposed to function, isn't it? -- it is easy to tell a nation's enemies from its allies: Your foes want to divide you; your friends want to unite you.
"[T]he end of the U.S. as united states"-- The Stated Goal of Usama bin Laden
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."-- Benjamin Franklin
Most remarkable to me in the current election -- and emblematic of why this is indeed a historic contest for the spirit of America -- is that when Sen. Barack Obama's poll numbers go up, that divide between Red States and Blue States becomes more "violet": Such swing states as Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida break up the monolith of Red States with patches of blue, representing millions of Americans responding to the senator's inspiring calls for unity and hope, appealing to the better angels of our nature.
But when Sen. John McCain's poll numbers go up, those newly Blue States return to the big Red block, as he and his ruthless running mate play politics with personalities, while calling for more of the same economic and foreign policies that under the current administration have led our nation to the brink of economic and military ruin. And none of that would have been possible without the support of Republican lawmakers, 90% of the time including the hypocritically self-proclaimed "maverick" McCain.
"Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action."-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Reject Fear, Embrace Hope!
"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."-- President Harry S. Truman
Fear comes easy. Vincent Price, master horror moviemaker, said fear is the most primal emotion. In contrast, hope takes courage. Whether it is taking your first steps alone as an infant, saying wedding vows with your spouse, putting your confidence in others on the job, volunteering with a church or other group in your community, or supporting candidates and initiatives -- yes, by our government -- that will restore our nation to greatness, putting your faith in something that entails real risks as well as potential rewards takes not only courage but also sound judgment.
And it takes cooperation between great numbers of us "little people" to stand up as necessary to the powers-that-be, both foreign and domestic, who profit by purveying terror and other forms of fear or hatred and other forms of divisiveness.
"The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough."-- President Andrew Jackson
The greatest things this nation has ever accomplished -- from winning world wars and establishing Social Security and Medicare to putting men on the moon -- have come about only through teamwork: popular movements supporting and led by bold, bright leaders.
Likewise, the greatest things this nation will next achieve -- re-establishing stability in the financial markets, restoring equity to our tax system and fiscal responsibility to our budgets, fixing the broken health care system, inventing new Green technologies and American jobs to counter Global Warming, and yes, even bringing justice to those who actually did attack us seven years ago today and who are still undoubtedly plotting against us in regions where Bush and McCain have not concentrated our forces -- will require vast efforts and inevitably some sacrifices from our citizenry as well as intelligent, ethical, effective action from our leaders.
America has succeeded. America can succeed. And America will succeed, but only if we work with each other, not against ourselves, through the much-maligned auspices of the government of the United States -- the duly constituted power of the people.
"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.' Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America."-- Sen. Barack Obama, From "The Audacity of Hope," His Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
