Within the first two sentences of the whole page, government-run healthcare is denounced as extreme and wrong. Is this change I can believe in? I hate to say it Mr. Obama, but this is exactly why I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primary. I submitted the following response. I encourage you to post your own.
Why do you say that government-run healthcare with higher taxes is wrong? It's not wrong; it's the only way! It's not extreme; people in Canada, Europe, and many other places are enjoying government-run healthcare right now! I can't believe you're ruling out single-payer healthcare from the very start. This is really, really disappointing. If our employers don't have to cover healthcare, salaries will rise, so higher taxes won't hurt the bottom line. If higher taxes are what it takes to get everyone covered, no questions asked, whenever they walk into a hospital, then let's do it today. I'm ready for my higher tax bill. I am ready for UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE. It is long overdue. Haven't you seen the movie Sicko? Haven't you heard Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers introduce HR 676? I am deeply concerned that you ask for dialog and input from the American people but you rule out single payer healthcare in the very first sentence. I sincerely hope you will reconsider and make single-payer healthcare the centerpiece of your agenda. We need it now more than ever.
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( 3.2 / 19 )Santa Bush
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( 3 / 10 )Check this out!
Artists in Iran have created the world's largest sand carpet , on the shores of the Persian Gulf. It's certainly beautiful, and I suppose the temporary nature of the medium only makes it more precious.
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( 3.3 / 6 )Did you see Jon Stewart's interview with Mike Huckabee last night ? I got the link from the Courage Campaign. If you like what he said, you can send him a thank you note for speaking up.
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( 2.6 / 8 )Check out this video on "clean coal."
I heard a "clean coal" proponent on NPR the other day. He was explaining how "clean coal" is a term of art describing technologies that are in a gradual process of improvement and eventually, some time in the future, they will be able to capture 90% of carbon dioxide emissions. And he thinks the American people understand and accept the combination of existing dirty technologies with hypothetical future clean technologies as "clean coal." Now that's some serious newspeak!
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( 3 / 5 )I received the following auto-response from the Obama team. I had sent a message listing priorities for the new administration. I have to say, I'm rather disappointed in the response. There's no response whatsoever to the content of my message. There are three links to get information from the transition but only one mention of sharing my thoughts with the team, and if I do share my thoughts I won't get a response. And also today I got a message from them with a video about giving Americans a seat at the table for the transition. I would say what they're promising in that video dramatically overshoots the kind of involvement they're actually offering citizens. Maybe the national governnment isn't the best level for practicing active democracy.
Thank you for writing to us about the transition process. President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden set up the Obama-Biden Transition Project to make sure their new administration is ready to hit the ground running on Inauguration Day, January 20th. The Transition will work to develop details of the President-elect’s policy agenda, help him choose senior administration staff, and review the current functioning of government agencies.
Barack Obama is committed to running the most open and transparent transition in history, and we hope you’ll visit our website often. For more information, please refer to the following links:
For updates from Obama-Biden Transition Project, including video of President-elect Obama’s weekly address, please click here: http://www.change.gov/newsroom/blog/
To learn details about the Obama-Biden policy agenda and share your ideas, please click here: http://www.change.gov/agenda/
For the latest news about the President-elect’s and Vice-President elect’s preparations to take office, please click here: http://www.change.gov/newsroom/
We appreciate hearing from you and hope you will continue to visit and share your thoughts. Although we may not be able to address each message individually, your input and the input of millions of other Americans will continue to guide President-elect Obama.
Again, thank you for your interest and we hope you will continue visiting our website.
Sincerely,
The Obama-Biden Transition Project
Please note that replies to this email will not be answered
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( 5 / 1 )I recieved the following response from my Representative, Brian Bilbray, regarding universal healthcare:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding universal healthcare. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
Today, medical cost inflation heavily outpaces general inflation. More and more people are left to face the prospect of a reduction in healthcare benefits or even the wholesale loss of their insurance coverage. In short, the current system must be fixed. As a husband and a father I believe change is needed to provide individuals the ability to provide health coverage for themselves and their families. The best way to do this is to provide individuals with choice, encouraging insurance companies to compete for business thereby lowering prices.
In response to this issue, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) introduced H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act, on January 24, 2007. H.R. 676 has since been referred to the House Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Natural Resource Committees. This bill would create a federal program that would provide universal health coverage for all Americans. Specifically, the plan would fund public and non-profit health providers in much the same manner as traditional Medicare.
While well intentioned, this proposal leaves individuals with fewer choices for health insurance. Particularly, the bill excludes private health providers, including HMO(s) from federal funding under the program. This will reduce the number of competitors, thereby giving the remaining companies less reason to innovate because of a more stable and reliable client base. Also, this program would provide for full medical coverage to individuals residing in our nation illegally, as well as raise taxes on the top five percent of income earners, institute a progressive excise tax on payroll income and institute a further excise tax on stock and bond transactions.
Importantly, the magnitude of these tax increases is not accounted for by the bill. This will leave the full cost of the program shielded from public view and scrutiny. Ultimately, healthcare reform is vital and necessary for the continued well-being of our nation; however, the plan under H.R. 676 or similar proposals would lead us down a potentially dangerous path away from individual choice and invite waste that is inherent to large bureaucracies. If this bill or similar legislation comes before the House of Representatives for consideration, I will keep your views in mind.
Again, thank you for contacting me. If you have further questions please call me or my office at (202) 225-0508.
Sincerely,
Brian Bilbray
Member of Congress
I find it amusing that he feels it's so terrible for individuals to lose their choice of healthcare coverage: instead of having to pick and choose between different coverage packages at different prices, which may or may not be available to you based on what company you work for and what your preexisting conditions are, you will have full coverage with no premiums, copays, or deductibles. But boy, you're really going to miss that choice!
Furthermore, the government is not going to fund private companies under this plan. Really? No taxpayer giveaways to rich corporations? Tell me again why this is a bad thing.
We've given private companies plenty of time to compete and innovate. The results are skyrocketing costs, more people going bankrupt, and Americans in worse health. It's time to let the government take a crack at it.
And do you know who the government is? It's a bunch of people! People who work hard every day for you, not for stock options and golden parachutes. Wouldn't you rather have them running your healthcare system? I would.
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( 3.3 / 6 )Check out the video and discussion about healthcare on the Obama-Biden transition website, change.gov.
Here's what I posted:
I think it's telling that the word insurance came up just as big as health in the word cloud. We need to get rid of health insurance companies, whose whole reason for being is to provide less services than they are paid for. That's how they make a profit. And they spend a lot of the money we pay them on advertising and finding ways to deny our claims, instead of spending it all on healthcare. Those extra expenses and perverse incentives would be eliminated in a single-payer healthcare system. Representatives Conyers and Kucinich have already proposed HR 676 which would provide universal healthcare through a single-payer system. We should support that effort.
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( 2.5 / 4 )At tonight's PDA meeting Jim Bell gave a presentation on a report he wrote about how to generate enough sustainable energy to power San Diego County. This is obviously a more environmentally friendly path than the proposed Sunrise Powerlink, which would be used to transmit energy across the Anza Borrego Desert State Park from powerplants in Mexicali burning natural gas that would be piped inland, requiring liquification and de-liquification, from ships carrying it from Indonesia... But local sustainable energy generation is also cheaper, more secure, and much more beneficial to the local economy! Read Jim's report to get the full story, and then send an email to California Public Utilities Commission president Michael Peevey to urge him to reject the Sunrise Powerlink and adopt Jim Bell's plan for local, sustainable energy. Jim is also trying to get his plan to President-Elect Obama, so I'm going to submit it at the transition team website, www.Change.gov .
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( 2.8 / 25 )I got this message from the True Food Network today:
In the waning months of the Bush administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has joined the ranks of federal agencies rushing through new regulations that weaken protections for human health and the environment. USDA has released a proposed rule that would significantly weaken oversight of all genetically engineered crops, and which continue to allow companies to grow food crops engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals.
The USDA began this process over four years ago by promising stricter oversight. Unfortunately, improvements considered early on have been dismissed, and the proposed rule now has the same gaping holes as the policy it is replacing, and creates a few new ones, as well. For instance:
* USDA has created a huge loophole allowing biotech companies to assess their own crops to determine whether USDA should regulate them. And the criteria are open-ended, very subjective, and will certainly reduce USDA’s oversight of GE crops.
* The proposed rules could also allow companies to grow untested GE crops with no oversight whatsoever: “Over time, the range of GE organisms subject to oversight is expected to decrease...,” a move which USDA itself admits will make contamination of conventional/organic crops with untested GE material more likely.
* To add insult to injury, USDA has proposed to write into law its “Low Level Presence” policy, which excuses it from taking any action to remove untested GE crops from conventional or organic food, feed and seed. This contamination often occurs through cross-pollination or seed dispersal, and has cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales and lowered profits.
* USDA rejected options that would have banned outdoor cultivation of pharmaceutical-producing GE (food) crops, the only way to ensure that untested drugs don’t end up in our food, despite strong support from citizens and the food industry.
* USDA has refused to propose any controls on pesticide-promoting GE crops, despite increasing pesticide use and an epidemic of resistant weeds that have been fostered by these crops.
* Finally, USDA snuck in a last-minute “correction” that bars state or local regulation of GE crops more protective than its own weak rule. CFS strongly opposes such preemptive language that would bar local or state authorities from putting meaningful regulations or restrictions on GE crops in place that best suit their communities. This last-minute change should be cause to extend the public comment period.
The USDA is treading dangerous new ground here. The structure of the new proposal opens loopholes that can be exploited by biotech companies and expose consumers to more untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods.
After denying requests for an extension to the short comment period given for the proposed rules, USDA’s comment period closes on Monday. Sign our petition to the USDA today and demand stronger—not weaker—regulations for genetically engineered crops!
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