Hats off to the Corporate PR Firms….

Healthcare “reform” could go either way:

1.) It could provide free or affordable heathcare to all citizens

Or

2.) It could increase the profits of the health insurance and drug companies

The devil is in the details. And right now, it’s looking like corporate lobbyists are succeeding in modifying the legislation their way. This should be no surprise – anyone who has followed politics for the past 30 years knows that most legislation is written by the lobbyists.

But this time should have been different. People are actually interested in their healthcare and these townhall meetings should have been an opportunity to educate your fellow citizens and to hold your legislator’s feet to the fire.

Should have. But instead, thanks to the Astroturf townhall meeting disruptor operation, legitimate anger about selling out healthcare is now conflated with batshit crazy questions about the government euthanizing Grandma.

Controlling the debate and moving the discussion FAR to the right. It’s their specialty.

all twisted, I don't see lobbyist winning, I see M$M giving the birthers and lobbyist
more play on the media than anything else.

If the M$M can only report on actual news instead of drama none of this would make
it to the news media.

A Rancid Deal with Big Pharma
By William Greider
August 6, 2009

So now we know why the president wants everyone to make nice in the healthcare debate. His White House has cut a deal with Big Pharma that smells like the same old rotten politics that candidate Obama regularly denounced and promised to end. The drug industry agrees to deliver $80 billion in future savings and the president promises the government will not use its awesome purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices.

Wow. This is roughly the same deal that George W. Bush cut with the drug makers when he was legislating Medicare's new coverage of drug purchases. It is the same bargain that Democrats in Congress universally condemned as wasteful and corrupt. The deal does not smell any better now that a Democratic president is embracing it.

In effect, Obama wants to give away one of the principal objectives of strong reform. The details were spelled out in today's New York Times and revealed by Big Pharma's top-dog lobbyist, Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman who leads the industry association. Tauzin called it a "rock-solid deal," and the White House did not dispute as much. But that is not the last word.

People who believe in real healthcare reform should not be nice about this. They must rise up and rebel against our popular new president's outrageous concession. They must demand that Congress declare the private deal-making null and void. If Congress lacks the nerve to do this, then this exercise in reform begins to look more and more like previous attempts that were eviscerated by the clout of the corporate interests.

...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/greider

how this panes out.

...my mind boggles when confronted w/the common opinion that the reality of corporate power's all encompassing influence is merely a "conspiracy theory" cobbled up by those who seek simple explanations to complex issues.

Thanks

:hi:

...as proposed by John Edwards and championed by Howard Dean,

the Public Option that would "open the door for Single Payer",

the Public Option that would be the death knell for the For Profit Health Insurance Industry,

the Public Option supported by 72% of ALL Americans,

THAT Public Option is dead...dead...DEAD.

It was killed by The Democratic Party who replaced by something they call a "Public Option",
but isn't really available to "The Public". The devices the Democratic Party that restrict enrollment in the "Public Option" are so severe that the CBO estimated that LESS than 10 Million people will be enrolled by 2019.




"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

like a birther at town hall meetings or demonstrations, then let's fucking start shouting! I'm sick of us losing to them because they are batshit crazy and not afraid to show it!

Obama's emails want my help, but I'm not helping to support the lameass legislation that's out there now, much less the ghost of what it is now that will be left by the time anything passes. I will be part of a concerted effort in any way I can, *if* it's fighting for a strong public option lead-in to single payer.

I've written an called my congresscritters over and over, Talking about single payer as the ultimate goal each time, but I don't see that doing any good.

I'm fed up with the Center Right crap. Give me a Progressive party!

The assumption is that insurance companies are somehow involved in healthcare; they are not.

The discussion needs to be reframed: the GOP and the insurance syndicates are anti-healthcare.

We need to start saying that.

The GOP is anti-healthcare.

The GOP is anti-healthcare.

The GOP is anti-healthcare.

The GOP is anti-healthcare.

The GOP is anti-healthcare.