From TruthOut
By Steve Weismann

Growing up in Florida in the 1940s, I saw many of the doctors my family knew fighting against Harry Truman’s effort to enact what they called “Socialized Medicine.” Their immediate target was Sen. Claude Pepper, a New Deal Democrat who supported universal health care. Our doctor friends dubbed him “Red Pepper” and helped defeat him in the elections of 1948. Yet, for all this early “fight for freedom,” I now find myself in France enjoying single-payer, socialized medicine, which I would heartily recommend to all Americans.

The system here is surprisingly nonbureaucratic, at least for the patient. My wife Anna and I picked our own general practitioners (GPs), specialists and hospital care, with no insurance company restricting us to their list of doctors or hospitals. In fact, we found only two restrictions. The GPs could turn us down if they already had too many patients and they had to be within our geographical area so they would not have to travel too far when making a house call. Yes, under socialized medicine here in France, doctors still make house calls, even here in the boondocks where we live.

Nurses also make house calls to give shots or take blood for testing. Test results usually arrive in the next day’s mail.

For each visit to the GP, we write a check for 22 euros. The system then reimburses us for 70 percent with a direct deposit to our bank account. For some particularly debilitating conditions, the government system pays the full 100 percent. To pay whatever the government doesn’t, most people here have private top-up insurance, which is very reasonably priced. So, the single-payer system has more than a single payer, but the insurance companies exercise none of the control they would back home.

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From Tom Dispatch
By Mike Davis

America’s “Futurama” is defunct. The famous walk-through diorama of a car-and-suburb world, imagineered by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, has weathered into a dreary emblem of our national backwardness. While GM bleeds to death on a Detroit street corner, the steel-and-concrete Interstate landscape built in the 1950s and 1960s is rapidly decaying into this century’s equivalent of Victorian rubble.

As we wait in potholed gridlock for the next highway bridge to collapse, the French, the Japanese, and now the Spanish blissfully speed by us on their sci-fi trains. Within the next year or two, Spain’s high-speed rail network will become the world’s largest, with plans to cap construction in 2020 at an incredible 6,000 miles of fast track. Meanwhile China has launched its first 200 mile-per-hour prototype, and Saudi Arabia and Argentina are proceeding with the construction of their own state-of-the-art systems. Of the larger rich, industrial countries, only the United States has yet to build a single mile of what constitutes the new global standard of transportation.

From day one, Barack Obama campaigned to redress this infrastructure deficit through an ambitious program of public investment: “For our economy, our safety, and our workers, we have to rebuild America.” Originally he proposed to finance this spending by ending the war in Iraq. Although his present commitments to a larger military and an expanded war in Afghanistan seem to foreclose any reconversion of the Pentagon budget, he continues to emphasize the urgency of an Apollo-style program to modernize highways, ports, rail transit, and power grids.

Public works, he also promises, can put the public back to work. His “Economic Rescue Plan for the Middle Class” vows to “create 5 million new, high-wage jobs by investing in the renewable sources of energy that will eliminate the oil we currently import from the Middle East in 10 years, and we’ll create 2 million jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads, schools, and bridges.”

Read more Shock and Awe

From The Black Agenda Report
By Bruce Dixon

No presidential administration keeps its promises without relentless pressure from below. It’s never happened before, and there’s no reason to expect any different. The popular demand for jobs, peace and justice are the concrete “change” Democratic voters believe in, and what swept Obama and his party to power. The self-made crisis of the US auto industry is the perfect opportunity to make good on two of those promises. It’s not just the first test of whether an Obama administration intends to serve its voters or its wealthy corporate campaign contributers. It’s the first test of whether Obama’s popular base can or will hold the new president and his party accountable for producing the “change” they promised.

The US auto industry is in deep trouble. There’s no room for doubt about that. But there are plenty of reasons to disbelieve the explanations of and doubt the possible solutions to the crisis put forth by our bipartisan political elite, their mouthpieces in the corporate media and public office.

The media and politicians have exhibited amazing discipline in that few of the analyses and none of the solutions advanced in the mainstream media take into account the competitive advantage of universal free health care enjoyed by auto makers in Canada, Japan and Western Europe. The biggest difference between US and foreign auto production is that only US automakers are saddled with the burden of paying the health care costs of current workers and retirees.

To make matters worse, beginning in the Reagan administration, federal laws allowed automakers to spend their employee pension funds on executive bonuses and bad investments and not repay them. After three decades of executive raids on the money that should pay for pensions and medical care, there is nothing left. GM alone has at least $5 billion in unpayable pension and medical liabilities, money it deducted from worker paychecks for decades and promised to prudently invest and safeguard but instead spent.

Read more Health Care

From The LA Times
By Tim Rutten

There seems to be little energy these days for anything but anxiety and finger-pointing about the economy. Still, it’s sobering — even shocking — that Monday’s final report by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses failed to find a place on the front page of a single major newspaper.

For nearly 20 years, a succession of Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense officials under both Republican and Democratic presidents have denied even the existence of what’s come to be called Gulf War syndrome, a complex of neurological afflictions ranging from memory problems and chronic pain to brain cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Veterans who have sought help for their illnesses frequently have been treated as head cases, or worse, malingerers.

Now a panel of prestigious scientists and veterans, working under congressional mandate, has concluded not only that the syndrome exists but also that it afflicts at least 175,000 Gulf War vets — one in four of those who served. The cause, according to the panel’s 450-page report, was ingestion of a drug administered out of fear the Iraqis would use nerve gas, as well as exposure to pesticides used to hold down sand fleas. There is no known cure for Gulf War syndrome, and the panel has recommended an annual appropriation of $60 million to find one.

That would be a good first step — but only that.

It would be convenient to regard neglect of the Gulf War vets as an anomaly, but the discomforting fact is that it’s all of a piece with this country’s historic maltreatment of its returning service men and women. The government, usually extravagant in its rhetorical gratitude for military service, has been miserly when it comes to making “the thanks of a grateful nation” material.

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From The Guardian UK
By Simon Lazarus and Ian Millhiser

Fourteen years ago, a single mother named Ann Dunham began a long, ultimately unsuccessful battle with cancer – and a simultaneous war with her health insurance provider. Over and over, as Ms Dunham’s son, Barack Obama, recounted during the October 6 presidential debate, company representatives suggested that his mother’s cancer “may have been a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment”.

Ann Dunham’s story is hardly unique. Millions of Americans know well that the pain of serious illness is often compounded by endless jousts with insurers arbitrarily withholding coverage of physician-prescribed care. Myriad court records tell the stories of people like Maureen Kurtek, who lost five fingertips and most of her right foot after her husband’s employer switched to an insurer which resisted continuing to cover her lupus treatment. And of construction manager James Lind, who was able to continue working despite his multiple sclerosis, until his insurer abruptly declined to continue paying for the prescription that had kept his MS at bay. And Rhonda Bast, who died after her insurer refused coverage of a bone marrow transplant which could have prevented her cancer from spreading to her brain.

Many of these sad stories could and should have been avoided. The fault lies with senior federal officials driven by the same deregulatory fervour responsible for enabling the imprudent lending frenzy behind the current financial crisis. In this case, however, the zealots do not run administrative agencies or departments. They preside at the United States supreme court. Over the past quarter-century, court majorities, led principally by Justice Antonin Scalia, have systematically dismantled the framework of laws designed to prevent benefit providers from breaking their promises to patients like Ann Dunham.

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From The Raw Story
By John Byrne

Senate Finance Committee Chairman and Montana’s Democratic senator Max Baucus will introduce a sweeping healthcare measure today intended to ensure healthcare coverage for all Americans.

The move is short on financial specifics. But its introduction will immediately move healthcare into the spotlight, putting pressure on President-Elect Barack Obama to bump medical coverage to the top of his priority list. Asked in an interview four days before the election what would be the priorities of his incoming Administration, Obama has named healthcare third after the economic crisis and energy independence.

Baucus’ healthcare proposal differs from Obama’s in one key respect: he would mandate all Americans to have health insurance. In that respect it is more like Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary proposals.

In addition to mandating coverage, the bill would bar insurance companies from charging higher premiums or denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. The measure enjoins businesses to provide coverage to their employees.

“Under the Baucus plan, most employers would be required to offer insurance to their workers or pay into a fund, with the contribution based on the size of the firm and its annual revenue,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. “Small employers would get a tax credit if they offer insurance, with the size of the credit based on the size of the company and its earnings.”

Read more Universal Healthcare

From Information Clearing House
By Bob Kendall

Now that the U.S.A. has discovered that only Mexico and Turkey had poverty rates higher than the 30-country study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, what if anything will be done to help the U.S. poor obtain health care?

Politicians, during campaigns, loudly proclaim “The U.S.A. is the greatest nation on earth and the richest.”

With the largest, almost incomprehensible national debt in the world, exceeding all prior national debts combined since the U.S. was founded, recent political rants have avoided claiming the U.S.A. to be the richest nation in the world! However, the persistent claim to greatness has been much used in the current election campaigns (rest assured).

Mary Reynolds-Gilmore of Northport, N.Y. in her October 24 Letter to the Editors of the New York Times hit the problem of U.S. health care precisely, stating:

“The problem is cost and access. We will never be first until all Americans have basic health care, health and malpractice executives stop pocketing such a high percentage of our premiums, and we institute a system of medical-specialist juries to control the malpractice frenzy. More money for evidence-based research is not the answer.”

Stanley R. Bermann of Santa Fe, New Mexico had this to say in his letter of the same day to the Times:

“What needs to happen is that we have a universal health care program for all Americans. Nothing else will do!

Read more Widening Gap

From Think Progress
By Elizabeth Edwards

Insurance companies will seize on anything to increase insurance premiums, and gender is no exception. An article in today’s New York Times points out that insurance companies rate-up individual insurance policies for women, forcing us to pay much more than men for identical coverage.

Since the individual market offers a raw deal to those who actually use care, women — who use maternity care and are more likely to have certain chronic diseases — may have a harder time finding affordable coverage than their male counterparts. A 30-year-old woman pays “31 percent more than a man of the same age in Denver or Chicago” and in Iowa, “a 30-year-old woman pays $49 a month more than a man of the same age.”

But Senator John McCain refuses to end this discrimination. McCain’s plan would make it even easier for insurers to cherry-pick the healthiest individuals who use the least amount of care. When asked why he didn’t support leveling the playing field and preventing insurance companies from covering only the healthiest and cheapest Americans, McCain replied that insurance companies should be able to decide who they cover and what they charge:

Q: Why not level the playing field, prevent insurance companies from cherry picking and let them compete on a level playing field?

MCCAIN: Because then I think then we would be mandating what the free enterprise sytem does and that would be, obviously, something I would not approve of.

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From AlterNet
By Sally Kohn

Over the last 40 decades, conservatives have launched a concerted attack on taxes with such success that now candidates of both parties reliably compete with each other to prove who is more anti-tax. When John McCain and Sarah Palin attack taxes, that’s one thing. But when Barack Obama starts doing it, we have a big problem.

Conventional wisdom has it that Americans hate taxes. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

“Nobody likes taxes,” Obama said during his third debate with McCain. “I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself.” Sarah Palin, during the Vice Presidential debate, said there is nothing patriotic about paying taxes. Well, I like taxes and am glad to be fortunate enough to pay them and I think April 15th is the most patriotic day of the year. And I’m not the only one. Polls show voters like taxes, too, so maybe politicians left, right and center should stop attacking taxes and instead start talking about the good they do.

So here are the three reasons why I love taxes — and, as it turns out, why the majority of Americans agree.

1. Taxes are a down payment on the common good

Public schools, roads and bridges, drinking water, national parks — we like these things and, polls show, we like the idea of our tax dollars helping make these things better.

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From The Seattle PI
By Elaine Rose and Mo West

Food prices are skyrocketing, the stock market has plunged and home values are dropping. Many of us are hoping things will get better, but if the future is worrisome, making ends meet right now has become a terrifyingly difficult task. One of the biggest concerns is the soaring cost of health care.

We need a president (and a governor) who is going to make smart decisions about health care. Both John McCain and Dino Rossi have shown that making affordable health care available to all people is not a priority, not even for children.

According to a recent study by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, McCain’s health care plan is worse for women.

The study estimates that 59 million women who receive health insurance though their jobs, or their spouses’ jobs, are at risk of losing their coverage. Thirty million women who suffer from a pre-existing condition could lose their coverage. Simply put, McCain’s radical health care plan would deregulate the health care industry and put millions of women at risk. In Washington, 1,861,748 women, aged 19-64, who rely on employer-based health insurance, would be at risk of losing their coverage.

According to one recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, employee premiums for family coverage now cost more than twice what they did nine years ago.

Read more Health Care