Just returned from leafleting in nearly 100 degree weather for the public option at our famous (infamous?) Water Melon Festival, in Richmond, VA, capital of the ex-Confederacy and home of quite a few fellow traveling tea baggers.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Richmond Water Melon Festival is a one day food/entertainment event with a carnival atmosphere: funnel cakes and hotdogs and, of course, a kazillion water melons sliced up for the sweat drenched crowds. There is music in abundance and some of it is even good.
Normally, this wouldn’t have been much of a political event, but Bob McDonnell (R) is running for VA Governor and he had a mini-booth set up. Unfortunately, Creigh Deeds was no where to be seen.
More importantly, the tea baggers were out in force, commanding a tent of their own ringed in red white and blue and signing up the locals to oppose Health care reform, or as they preferred to call it 'mandatory euthanasia'...
I actually had some leaflets on hand, anticipating their presence, and began distributing them. I hit up a few of the booths who I thought might help with distribution as ‘Health Care Reform’, per se, had no actual presence. Despite presenting an issue that could be only tangentially supportive of whatever it is they were selling, I managed to hook up a couple of ‘distribution centers’:
10,000 Villages
Alter Natives
The AARP
The Sierra Club
Since I was pretty much alone in the handing out fliers, these other stores/organizations made a serious difference. The two national organizations, in particular, I think we should cultivate. The folks from the Sierra club were positively effusive in their support and eagerly agreed to hand out my fliers (The Top Ten Lies Against HealthCare Reform and One Important Truth ... copied below). The AARP were receptive and eager to participate as well.
These were local representatives, of course, but what’s important to recognize is that they are working for organizations where these issues are discussed and supported. Dozens of other booths could have handed out the fliers, if it was up to the individuals in them, but most told me that they couldn’t distribute the information because of ‘corporate policies’ or ‘managers’. At the same time, HCA (Hospital Corporation of America—Frist’s baby) was there commanding twenty feet of prime sidewalk space, handing out trinket gifts, little whistles emblazoned with their ‘brand’ HCAVA.
No message was imparted, per se, except all the families with kids got a free whistle with a beautiful blue logo. That’s what money buys you in this war. Tables, spaces, a place to put out your information in slickly published format and a million trinkets for the kids.
Where does the money come from? HCA had more than 28 billion in revenues in 2008, 24 billion in assets. Those revenues and ‘assets’ come from American’s paying 10,000 dollars a pop for less than a half hour procedure, or millions on drugs that could be gotten at a quarter the cost from Canada or cheaper if they were allowed to be produced generically. HCA is the poster child for why the public option is essential, because we can’t continue to fund Frist’s miserable empire while bankrupting our children and our children’s children over the next tonsillitis.
There is much fear that the public option could drive private companies out of existence. Good. One thing we need to make clear is that it ought to drive private corporations out of business. As annoying and dumb as they are, the teabaggers aren’t our enemy, or, if they are, only tangentially so. Our enemies are organizing behind the scenes, they are ensuring shallow front groups like the tea baggers and the howlers at the Town Hall Meetings get top billing while their own efforts are low key ‘normal’ corporate branding efforts, handing out their pathetic whistles with their happy HCAVA logo, with absolutely no message at all. In this way they assure the broad swath of middle class folks that they are among the ‘normal’ players in the debate, even though they are the actual folks driving the nightmare health care system that bills like HR676 are trying to at least partially correct ...Business as usual, corporate America style.
As Promised, below is the flyer I was handing out.
Top Ten BIG Lies of Health Care Reform and One Truth
The Lies:
- The United States has the BEST healthcare system in the world!
No, it doesn’t. In fact, for the amount of money we spend, we have one of the WORST.
We rank 37th by the World Health Organization in terms of Health system performance. Countries that out perform us include every single Western European nation (France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy etc...), Middle Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel), Latin American countries (our ‘poor’ neighbors to the South, Columbia, Chile, and Costa Rica) and even a few African countries. We just barely beat Slovenia and Cuba.
2. The current Healthcare bill will mandate euthanasia.
No, it doesn’t and it won’t. There is nothing in any health care reform bill before Congress that would require people to "decide how they wish to die." Yet Conservative talking points from activists and legislators, including Sarah Palin, have lied and suggested otherwise.
Section 1233 of the House bill would allow Medicare for the first time to cover patient-doctor consultations about end-of-life planning, including discussions about drawing up a living will or planning hospice treatment. Something anyone who is in their later years would naturally be interested in. Patients would, of course, seek out such advice on their own -- they would not be required to. The provision would limit Medicare coverage to one consultation every five years.
- With healthcare reform, Americans will lose their private insurance.
No, they won’t. The bill does not force private insurers out of business or force people onto the public plan.
The CBO, in fact, estimates the House bill would result in a net increase of 3 million Americans with employer-provided care.
In truth, it would be a GOOD thing if private insurers did go out of business, because their private profit is predicated on a diseased and sickened America trapped into going to their outrageously expensive ‘resources’ for care (the ultimate captive market), but, unfortunately, that is not what is in the bill. Not even close.
- The Health Care Legislation Mandates Taxpayer Dollars Pay for Abortions
No, it doesn’t. In fact, the House Energy and Commerce Committee adopted an amendment, proposed by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), that would prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.
"Private health care providers are free to cover abortion, but not with federal funds," -- U.S. News and World Report.
- Americans Don't Want a Government-Run Health Care Plan
Yes, they do. Republicans have consistently berated the proposal for a government-sponsored health insurance plan, or "public option," as unpopular.
But, in fact, a CBS/ New York Times poll from late July shows that, even though doubts have grown in recent months about Mr. Obama's health care proposals, 66 percent of Americans still want the government to provide a health insurance plan like Medicare to compete with private health insurers.
- Healthcare will be rationed with a health care reform.
Healthcare will not be rationed. One of the misleading buzzwords in the health care debate is "rationing" -- the idea that patients will have limited treatment options if the government becomes more involved in health care delivery.
In fact, while a public plan would not be able to cover all procedures, private insurance plans do not either. The difference is, actual health needs will determine the priority on who gets care, not someone’s ability to pay. If you have the money, of course, you can always pay extra and get your nose job or breast implant done privately, pronto, rather than waiting behind the long line of critical care and cancer patients (for example) who will have priority in a public system.
- Health care reform is not urgent. We should take more time to study matters.
Urgency is in the eye of the beholder. Close to 50 million Americans currently have NO health insurance, which means something as simple as an auto accident could bankrupt them. During the span of Congress' three-week vacation this August, 43,250 people will lose their health insurance coverage, 53,507 people will file for bankruptcy because they can't pay their medical bills, and 1,265 people will die because they lack coverage.
- The Blue Dogs are honestly interested in cutting government costs in Health Care Reform
No, they aren’t. Our so called ‘Blue dogs’, those self described fiscally conservative Democrats are in the back pockets of the drug and health insurance companies. Follow the money. When Blue Dog Democrats negotiated a compromise with Democratic leadership over certain elements of health care reform, they required the government-sponsored health insurance option that would be created to negotiate its own payment rates, rather than using Medicare payment rates, which will dramatically increase the costs to the American taxpayer. They also refused to allow cheaper drugs from Canada to compete with US firms.
According to a CBO preliminary analysis, the cost of those two changes would almost completely offset the $100 billion achieved in savings elsewhere. It’s not about being fiscally conservative, it’s about helping the insurance companies and drug companies maintain their profit thresholds—at the expense of America’s health.
- Health care reform will cost us nearly One Trillion dollars!
No, it won’t. First of all, that's not a trillion every year, as most people assume -- it's a trillion over 10 years, which is the way that people in Washington talk about federal budgets. On an annual basis, that translates to about $140 billion, when things are up and running.
Even that, however, grossly overstates the net cost to the government of providing universal coverage. Other parts of the reform plan would result in offsetting savings for Medicare: reductions in unnecessary subsidies to private insurers, in annual increases in payments rates for doctors and in payments to hospitals for providing free care to the uninsured. The net increase in government spending for health care would likely be about $100 billion a year, a one-time increase equal to less than 1 percent of a national income that grows at an average rate of 2.5 percent every year.
And now, a simple truth: Selling American’s health for profit is a killer system
It kills the average American, while reaping huge profits for the privileged few. Why do we pay the MOST of any country on Healthcare cost and reap such few benefits, barely able to keep ahead of Cuba which pays less than 1/100th of what we pay per capita? Because Shareholder and CEO profits trump access to quality health care. The U.S. averages twice as much spending on health care with worse outcomes than any other industrialized nation on Earth. Where does the money go? Into the drug companies and health insurance industry pockets, that’s where. Commercial health insurance is responsible for 20 to 30% of health care dollars siphoned to excessive administrative costs, lobbying, marketing, CEO salaries and profit-taking. $1.4 billion stock options to former UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire, for example; another $30 billion went to after-tax health insurance profits, plus $32 billion insurance underwriting and marketing costs.
All that money could have cured thousands if not millions of Americans. Instead, it went to health care and drug company CEOs who have spent lavishly on Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats to ensure that meaningful healthcare reform does not happen in this country. That money is spent in hopes that you will continue to believe the 10 big lies that are currently be propounded by their lobbyists and fellow travelers and in hopes that you ignore this single truth: They don’t care about your health, they care about their wealth.