And who knows Washington better than Helen?
I covered the battle to create the Medicare system back in the 1960s. The cries of "socialized medicine" worked for years until President Lyndon B. Johnson rammed Medicare through Congress in 1965.
Johnson signed the Medicare legislation on former President Harry Truman’s desk in Independence, Mo. Truman had first proposed a health care program for the elderly back in the 1950s.
Truman, still feisty at age 81, was all smiles.
I remember a newsman went up to Johnson and told him "my mother thanks you." Johnson turned to him and said: "You should thank me," meaning Medicare would help families with the increasingly heavy financial burden of caring for seniors.
What kind of a country are we if we do not provide everyone with the excellent medical care that only some of us now receive?
I continue to think the so-called single payer system is the only answer to the nation’s obligation to make sure that no one lacks health care. Yes, single payer means a government-run health insurance program for all -- the prevailing system in Canada and in many nations in Europe.
At this point under the current employer-provided private health insurance system, 47 million Americans have no coverage and more are losing what they have every day through job loss in this devastating recession.
President Barack Obama is making a big mistake by ignoring the single-payer proposal.
Because the words "single payer" have been subjected to such pervasive demagoguery and misrepresentation, its polling numbers do not reflect how popular it really is.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month, 58 percent of Americans either strongly or somewhat favored a program to provide insurance "through an expanded, universal form of Medicare-for-all."
That’s basically the same as single payer. But once the same poll actually used the words "single payer" to describe the program, support dropped to 51 percent.
In 2003 before he became a U.S. senator from Illinois, Obama actually called himself a single-payer "proponent." But now that he is president, Obama has buckled to Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Democrats in pursuit of consensus. My question is if Congress passes a watered-down version of health care that doesn’t truly cover everyone, is the result worth it?
The president has given no hearing to the advocates of a single-payer system and neither has the media.
He also had worked out a deal with the drug manufacturers not to use the federal government’s massive bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices -- although now the White House appears to be having second thoughts.
Single payer works; it is not code for substandard medical care. It’s understandable why the president has bent over backwards to appease Congress, having studied Hillary Clinton’s failure to touch base with key lawmakers in selling the program she drafted in her years as first lady. Her recommendations died on Capitol Hill, aided by the phony "Harry and Louise" television distractions.
President Obama should lay down markers for real health care reform -- meaning we all kick in to a national program instead of fattening the pocketbooks of the insurance financiers.
Instead, the president has given up on Medicare for all, calling single payer "impractical."
He still has time to do the right thing and nothing to lose. Source: The Susquehanna Valley
by Helen Thomas, SF Chronicle
A universal health-care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for politically attuned President Obama.
A single-payer system -- such as Medicare for everyone -- would solve the problem of out-of-control costs and would provide health care for all.
President Lyndon B. Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his political clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid, star accomplishments of the Great Society.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more financially secure.
All around the world, governments have long made medical care available for their citizens. Why not us?
Obama clearly has no stomach for the political battle that any single-payer plan would ignite. So he's endorsed a step that would allow the government to provide health insurance coverage -- not health care -- to eligible people.
Such government-sponsored health insurance -- the so-called public-plan option -- is now being considered in Congress as it writes health-care reform legislation.
While the public-plan option gets full consideration in Congress, the single-payer model -- such as universal Medicare -- has been unwelcome at the White House or on Capitol Hill. It's too hot politically.
Even the public option faces a struggle. Believe it or not, opponents of that plan -- including many lawmakers beholden to the health-insurance industry -- are still using the bugaboo "socialism" scare word in an effort to intimidate would-be supporters.
Obama said part of the fierce opposition to health-care reform has been fueled "by some interest groups and lobbyists -- opposition that has used fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve reform as an attempt to, yes, socialize medicine."
He made it clear that his idea of health-care reform would allow patients to choose their own doctors and keep their own health plans. Somehow government bailouts have been more palatable for Wall Street plutocrats who happen to be broke and needy.
Obama, apparently fearing to be labeled a liberal, stressed in a speech to the AMA in Chicago this week that he does not favor socialized medicine. (We won't ask him whether he favors government- financed public schools, libraries, roads and parks, just to name a few examples of socialism in our midst.)
Some 47 million Americans are uninsured, many of them because some employers have dropped coverage in the economic downturn. Others lack insurance because pre-existing illnesses deny them access to private insurance. There also are millions with no way to pay for soaring health insurance payments because they have lost their jobs.
Nearly all Republicans and some moderate Democrats are opposed to any public-plan option. These are the same lawmakers who receive many government-provided perks including health insurance coverage.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, exemplified the dominant Republican viewpoint on the public option when he wrote in the newspaper Politico that as many as 119 million Americans "would shift from private coverage for the government plan" if one were created.
The Obama administration scoffs, contending that such an option would increase competitiveness and lower private-insurance costs.
In his remarks to the AMA, Obama warned against "scare tactics" and "fear mongering" by opponents of the public-plan option, which the president said it should be available to those who have no health insurance.
Obama also told the AMA that a "public option is not your enemy, it is your friend." He rejected the "illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single payer system."
Obama should tear a page out of LBJ's vote-getting manual and shame the heartless opponents.
The health of all Americans is our business.
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