In These New Times

A new paradigm for a post-imperial world

Posts Tagged ‘Health Care Reform’

Compulsory Private Health Insurance: Just Another Bailout of the Financial Sector?

Posted by seumasach on December 28, 2009

Ellen Brown

Global Research

28th December, 2009

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is quoted as warning two centuries ago:

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an underground dictatorship. . . . The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.”

That time seems to have come, but the dictatorship we are facing is not the sort that Dr. Rush was apparently envisioning. It is not a dictatorship by medical doctors, who are as distressed by the proposed legislation as the squeezed middle class is. (For a withering analysis by an outraged M.D. of the nearly 2000 – page House bill, see here.) The new dictatorship is not by doctors but by Wall Street — the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector that now claims 40% of corporate profits.

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It is the War in Afghanistan Obama Declared a “Necessity,” Not Health Care

Posted by smeddum on September 17, 2009

It is the War in Afghanistan Obama Declared a “Necessity,” Not Health Care

The Health Care Deceit

September 14, 2009

Counterpunch

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The current health care “debate” shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them.

The health care bill is not about health care. It is about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies. The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont), a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance. Read the rest of this entry »

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Who are the undeserving “others” benefiting from expanded government actions

Posted by smeddum on September 15, 2009

Monday Sept. 14, 2009 09:15 EDT
Glenn Greenwald

The New York Times‘ Ross Douthat argues, uncontroversially, that the tea-party protests, townhall outbursts and related appendages aren’t about specific health care proposals but, instead, are motivated by a more generalized anger over what is happening in Washington:

At the same time, [the health care protests have] become the vessel for a year’s worth of anxieties about bailouts, deficits and Beltway incompetence.

This August’s town-hall fury wasn’t just about the details of health care. Neither were the anti-Obama protests that crowded Washington over the weekend. They were about the Wall Street bailout, the G.M. takeover, the A.I.G. bonuses, and countless smaller examples of middle-income Americans’ “playing by the rules,” as [GOP pollster Frank] Luntz puts it, “and having someone else benefit.” Read the rest of this entry »

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The media’s bizarre interpretation of Obama’s declining popularity

Posted by smeddum on September 14, 2009

Sep 13 2009

Alison Kilkeny

True/slant

Something missing from this article is the internet success of the  Alex Jones documentary

https://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/03/18/the-obama-deception-151-mins/

The incorrigible “liberal media” has been practically marinating in its own saliva as it obsessively tracks the decline of Obama’s popularity. The declarations from corporate desk jockeys, who appear to get a sexual thrill from declaring Obama’s “wax wings” have melted and the President is currently plummeting toward earth, are probably premature. A little over half of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance, according to Rasmussen. That represents a one point improvement since his Wednesday night speech and is the President’s best rating in three weeks.

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Matt Taibbi on the evisceration of Welfare Reform

Posted by smeddum on August 21, 2009

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