Over the last few days, I've been calling a lot of legislators to support single payer health care (something we all should be doing, since single payer is obviously, to me at least, the ONLY way we can get affordable health care for almost all of the people who post here, working people, the middle class, etc.)
First and foremost, I want to say, WATCH THE HEARINGS when you can on CSPAN or http://www.cspan.org. Then and only then will folk here on blogs like Daily Kos realize that that the "debate" going on in Washington is not a "debate" in any real sense about the issues that get discussed here, like affordability and denials of care, for example, and its certainly not about affordability, its about the issues that the insurance industry wants it to be about. "Overutilization" of health care (!) and making sure that any government-mediated initiative IS NOT "TOO ATTRACTIVE" to the healthy, profitable core customers that they repeatedly say THEY need to be profitable. They need to be profitable, and the opposite is also true, they need the public option to be unprofitable.
WAKE UP - "public option" is being created FOR THEM, NOT US, AND its ALSO being created TO FAIL.
SINGLE PAYER IS THE ONLY WAY. There's no wiggle room in that only, because if we leave any, WE WILL FAIL AND WILL HAVE TO WAIT ANOTHER 15 YEARS OR MORE FOR AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE, WE MAY NEVER SEE IT.
The devil is in the details. We hear that again and again, and its true. When you hear politicians or insurance company spokespeople talk, you need to read between the lines. What isn't said tells you as much as what is said. There is a language spoek by healthinsurance analysts and risk managers, and that language is the language that is being used. Normal people do NOT understand it. They also dont understand that the American political system is based on politicians being able to liel They are not held to any standard of accountability for their lying. No pay for performance, no penalty for blatant obfuscation. In fact, if you lie more than your opponent, as happened in the primaries, you posess a certain advantage as the media refuses to call a politician out on obvious lies if they are lying to support some "greater good" seen by those that own the press, like preventing entitlements.
Another thing that many (most) here dont understand. many posting here ARE PAID BLOGGERS who write pieces and post them for money, to promote causes, they are not private citizens who are posting because they desperately need change. They are employees of PR firm legitimate political groups, and astroturf -fake groups set up by PR agencies.
One might gather who is what by gauging the things they say in a real world context.. Ive found that AFFORDABILITY is a useful measure. The astroturf supporters of public option seem to hold the "option" part of public option to be their highest priority. That makes me think they are funded by the insurance industry, whose main priority of course, is its profit margins. In Canada, insurers exist, many of the same ones as here, but they are nowhere near as insanely profitable. Therefore, the insurance industry is pushing the optional part of public option. Not affordability. They will consider themselves as having succeeded as long as they kill single payer, the real threat. They will be successful as long as they kill affordability for average Americans, because their business model IS denying care.
Single payer is the only fiscally possible way for us to achieve quality health care for all Americans, its the only way that we could achieve affordable quality healthcare for 80-90% of the people on this blog (those who are too rich for medicaid loans, and too poor to afford an expensive new insurance of last resort, which will probably cost any family too rich to qualify for subsidies thousands dollars a month, because of the need to use community rating in pricing and take all comers, including the sick.)
These "choices" are the inevitable result of Obama having accepted the perverse insurance industry frames from the beginning, he is locked into a landscape they know intimately, and by working so hard to please them, he is prevented from pleasing any of the rest of us. THAT is the "public option" coming out of Washington. It wont be an outcome that many of us will find acceptable.