[ 1 comment ] ( 2 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.9 / 16 )An open letter reminds the president of the major campaign vow that got him into the White House.
August 27, 2009
by Anne Lamott
I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding since that election in 2008, during which 66,882,230 Americans cast their votes for you. Perhaps one of your trusted advisors has given you bum information. Maybe they told you that we voted for you -- walked, marched, prayed, fund-raised and knocked on doors for you -- because we hoped you would try to reunite the country. Of the total votes cast that long-ago November day, I'm guessing that about 1,575 people wanted you to try to reconcile the toxic bipartisanship that culminated in those Sarah Palin rallies.
The other 66,880,655 of us wanted universal healthcare.
You inherited a country that was in the most desperate shape since the Civil War, or the Depression, and we voted for you to heal the catastrophic wounds Bush inflicted on our country and our world. You said that you were up to that challenge.
We did not vote for you to see if you could get Chuck Grassley or Michael Enzi to date you. The spectacle of you wooing them fills us with horror and even disgust. We recoil as from hot flame at each mention of your new friends. Believe me, I know exactly how painful this can be, how reminiscent of 7th-grade yearning to be popular, because I went through it myself this summer. I did not lower my bar quite as low as you have, but I was sitting on the couch one afternoon, thinking that this adorable guy and I were totally on the same sheet of music -- he had given me absolutely every indication that we were -- and were moving into the kissing stage. Out of nowhere, I thought to ask him if he liked me in the same way I liked him.
Read More...
[ 1 comment ] ( 3 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 3 / 7 )I'm a little behind on my Democracy Now! listening, so I just heard this today:
Advocates for universal healthcare are calling for a boycott of the grocery chain Whole Foods over the views of its CEO, John Mackey. This week Mackey wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal criticizing President Obama’s plan to create a government-funded public healthcare option and dismissing the single-payer healthcare system of countries such as Canada and Britain. Mackey said he doesn’t believe in “an intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter,” which he said are best provided through “market exchanges.” On Thursday, the group Single Payer Action released a letter calling for a boycott of Whole Foods.
You can read about the boycott or watch video on the Single Payer Action website.
You can contact Whole Foods here .
Here's what I wrote:
I was horrified to learn that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey had written an editorial opposing universal healthcare coverage. It was bad enough when Whole Foods came out against the Employee Free Choice Act! I stayed away for a few months, but when EFCA wasn't in the news anymore, I started shopping again. What was I thinking? Now I have even more proof of the right-wing reactionary viewpoint of Whole Foods leadership.
Anyone who can stand up and argue against a right to healthcare at a time when Americans are getting sick, going bankrupt, and dying in record numbers because they can't afford healthcare is obviously lacking any heart, soul, or human decency.
I can't believe Mr. Mackey is proud of providing health "insurance" to his workers that makes them pay the first $2500 in medical costs. That's a lot of money for someone trying to make a living on a grocery store salary!
And I was dumbfounded to hear Mackey repeat the Republican lies about healthcare rationing in the UK and Canada. What about the amount of time people in the US wait to get an appointment, and more importantly what about all of the Americans who can't get an appointment at all because they can't pay? Besides, the United States pays much more for healthcare right now than the UK or Canada. We could spend less than we do now and still provide better care, if we moved to a single-payer system.
If all of this isn't bad enough, Mackey says the government should not regulate what services insurance companies cover. As the CEO of a major company, there is no doubt in my mind that he knows insurance companies will prey on consumers by eliminating lifesaving benefits they really need in exchange for a marginally cheaper plan. Buyers won't realize the fatal shortcomings of the plan they've chosen until it's too late. For Mackey to advocate for private insurance companies in this way shows me he cannot be trusted to run a company, participate in the public debate, or provide the food I'm putting in my body.
I will not shop at Whole Foods until Mackey retracts his editorial and apologizes for his regressive position on healthcare, or is removed as CEO. I'm sure the organic farmers and co-ops in my area will welcome the business.
[ 7 comments ] ( 16 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 3 / 5 )Yesterday before work I visited Senator Feinstein's San Diego office to express my support for healthcare reform, and particularly for single payer. Eight other people showed up to push for healthcare reform just while I was there. Katie, the staff member I spoke with, said they've had quite a few visitors this week, with a mixture of single payer and public option supporters. They haven't had people coming in to oppose reform, although they've had phone calls from all viewpoints. Katie told me that Senator Feinstein supports the public option, and I urged her not to compromise on that. I pushed for single payer but Katie said Senator Feinstein doesn't have a position on single payer. But she seemed quite receptive, took notes of what I was saying, and took the written statement I brought.
Overall it was a great experience, and demonstrates to me that contrary to what you hear in the media, citizens do support healthcare reform, and they are making their voices heard in a very calm and reasoned manner. I wish the reporters would visit Senator Feinstein's office and cover the informed, active citizens participating in healthcare reform, rather than focusing on a few ignorant rabble-rousers who choose to disrupt meetings and repeat paranoid rumors that slander the reform effort.
[ 1 comment ] ( 2 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.9 / 23 )Here's a press release from CODEPINK:
NEW YORK CITY - August 6 - "Sex & The City" star Kristin Davis, well known for her work as a goodwill ambassador of international human rights organization Oxfam and for her lucrative spokesperson job for Israeli cosmetics company Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, has been suspended from all publicity work by Oxfam for the duration of her contract with Ahava. Page Six of the New York Post reported the suspension today (read it here ).
Last month, the women's peace group CODEPINK launched a boycott campaign of the cosmetics company, "Stolen Beauty" (www.stolenbeauty.org), bringing to light Ahava's illegal business practices. Ahava manufactures its products at a Jewish settlement in a plant near the shores of the Dead Sea in Occupied Palestine. The settlement itself is illegal according to international law, as are all the settlements in the Occupied West Bank. According to the 4th Geneva Convention, it is illegal for an occupying power to exploit for profit the natural resources of an occupied territory. Ahava harvests mud and minerals from the shores of the Dead Sea in Occupied Palestine, and this exploitation is illegal. Ahava also labels its products, which are made in Occupied Palestine, as “products of Israel,” which is another breach of international law. Ironically, Oxfam has been a global leader in the fight to expose those illegal practices, while its ambassador actively promotes them.
In June, CODEPINK activists hand-delivered a letter to Davis at an Ahava publicity appearance at Lord & Taylor in New York City. The letter urged her to drop her ties to Ahava and live up to her Oxfam mission; the fact that her Oxfam affiliation is being used to burnish Ahava's image is unconscionable.
During the final week of July, Oxfam began circulating a statement saying it has suspended Davis's publicity work for Oxfam. Clearly, just a few weeks into the Stolen Beauty campaign, heads are turning!
That was the best part but you can Read More...
[ 1 comment ] ( 3 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.7 / 26 )The best and most cost-effective way to provide universal health care coverage to all Americans is a single-payer system. A single-payer system allows people to choose their own doctor and hospital, and the doctor gets paid directly by the government, with no deductibles or copays. No one is excluded based on pre-existing conditions or other risk factors. You don't have to get pre-authorization from an insurance company before a life-saving surgery.
I would love a single-payer system because I could find a good doctor and I wouldn't have to change if I change jobs. Under the current system, I've had to change doctors several times, because my work-sponsored insurance plans have each had their own provider network. That makes it harder to get quality care.
Representative Anthony Weiner has proposed an amendment to extend Medicare coverage to all Americans. If our Representatives care about our health, they will support the Weiner amendment for single-payer healthcare.
[ 1 comment ] ( 2 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.9 / 19 )You need to see the Bill Moyers Journal from July 10th. He interviewed Wendell Potter, former head of Public Relations for CIGNA. The other parts of the episode are linked on the right side under Also this week.
[ 2 comments ] ( 6 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.9 / 24 )We are coming down to the wire on healthcare reform work before the August Congressional recess, and to listen to President Obama and Congressional leaders you’d think it was a now or never sort of deadline. We in PDA and many other advocacy groups that support a progressively financed, single standard of high quality healthcare for all need not participate in all the hand-wringing about this campaign cycle driven calendar for healthcare reform.
Read More...
[ 1 comment ] ( 2 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.9 / 26 )Hold out for single payer
By Nick Skala
The following remarks were presented to the Congressional Progressive Caucus on June 4.
Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan from a massive new regulatory "exchange," with one plan potentially being a "public option."
The difference between these choices could not be more stark: single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage.
Read More...
[ 3 comments ] ( 8 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.8 / 21 )I can't believe the AMA came out against a public health insurance option . It reminds me of the Phil Ochs song I've heard many times before, but up until today I hadn't seen the full truth behind it.
On the other hand, on These Days this morning, freshman Republican Congressman Duncan D. Hunter was asked about a government plan in competition with private insurance and said he opposes a public option because, "It's a taxpayer paid-for government program, which means that people who pay for their own insurance, private insurance, are gonna be taxed so that people that want the government version can have that. So they're gonna be paying double basically so why not just have everybody go to that government program, which a lot of people are going to do." That sounds like a single-payer argument to me! He went on to say, "I don't think it's the right way to go to have taxpayer funded public healthcare competing with private healthcare because there's no way that private can actually win. I don't think it's going to make it more competitive because government doesn't have to make a profit... They don't have to make money on it."
So his big argument agains the public option is that it will be more competitive than private insurers and cut into their profits!
The private insurance companies have a lot of friends in this debate. I just hope Max Baucus and the others can remember that they work for us, the patients, and not for the insurance company executives and shareholders.
[ 1 comment ] ( 4 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink | related link |
( 2.5 / 11 )Back Next
Calendar
