Health Care Reform in Critical Condition
The public is going to have to wake up from its slumber and demand real reform.
Roy Ulrich, AlterNet
Long ago, I heard Joseph Califano, President Carter's secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (later to become Health and Human Services), tell an audience that real health care reform in this country could not become a reality until we accomplished the goal of enacting campaign finance reform at the national level.
A report issued last week (March 15-21) by Consumer Watchdog, a California-based organization, reminded me of Califano's remarks. The report found that over the past four years the health care industry and drug companies have showered the top-ten recipients in Congress with $5.5 million in campaign contributions. Taken together, the health care sector has contributed just-under a whopping $1 billion in the past two years alone.
Related:
Healthcare for All, Howard Dean, Democracy for America
Today, we draw a line in the sand. If Barack Obama's healthcare plan gets changed to exclude a public option like Medicare, then it is not healthcare reform.
Careless Industry: How Corporations Further the Health Care Crisis, David Sirota, In These Times
We do not have a government dedicated to “protecting the health of all Americans,” as we are told. We have a bunch of bought-off frauds pretending to care about ordinary Americans, but really only interested in protecting the health of one thing: the insurance industry’s bottom line.
The questions our healthcare debate ignores, Joe Conason, Salon.com
Why does every developed nation except the U.S. have universal healthcare? Why do they pay half as much in medical costs? Why are their infant mortality and longevity statistics superior?
