Original article, by Kate Randall and Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:
The New York Times is spearheading the campaign for President Obama’s health care proposals. His drive for an overhaul of the health care system, far from representing a reform designed to provide universal coverage and increased access to quality care, marks an unprecedented attack on health care for the working population. It is an effort to roll back social gains associated with the enactment of Medicare in 1965.
You may not like what you read. Obama's pretty much shown he's in the pockets of the bosses, bankster frauds and the insurance shysters. Every step he's taken has been toward the betterment of the corporations, insurance companies and investment banks.
It is a counterrevolution in health care, being carried out in the profit interests of the giant pharmaceutical companies, insurance conglomerates and hospital chains, as well as the corporations, which will be encouraged to terminate health care for their employees and force them to buy insurance plans providing less coverage at greater out-of-pocket expense.
There is an answer, of course. Many progressives will say they cheer for it, but that it can't be done. It's Universal Single Payer Not-for-Profit Health Care as embodied by HR 676. Of course, the reality based community can't get passed the fact that it's the Conyers/Kucinich plan. So much for 'progressives' and 'reality.'
In a full-page editorial published on Sunday, entitled "Health Care Reform and You," the Times seeks to allay growing concerns in the US population over the legislation proposed by the White House that is currently working its way through Congress. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 21 percent believe they will be worse off under the new legislation, double the number in February.
We will get some form of health care 'reform' this session of Congress. It might include a public option that takes effect after the first Obama term in office, it might not. What is sure is that the true public option, single payer, has never been on the radar of the Congressional leadership or the Obama administration. One can only hope that an advocate for Single Payer will challenge the Democrats and the Republicans in the next presidential cycle.
I'll let you read the rest of the article. Randall and Grey paint a bleak picture, but it's what we've come to expect from the current administration. Perhaps bleakest appears toward the end:
The economic crisis has been seized upon by the American financial aristocracy, with the Obama administration as its central instrument, to carry through a class-war agenda, long in preparation, that is directed against the vast majority of the American people. All that remains of the social reforms from the 1930s and 1960s, and the gains won by previous generations of workers in bitter struggle, is to be wiped out.
The choice is yours: Support the man with the D after his name, or fight for real health care (and social, come to think of it) reform.