Pres. Barack Obama wants to solve the US health care problem by making overtures to the Sweeney Todd of Public Medicine, the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA has long opposed national health care, and opted for our current rationing system which distributes care based on employment and wages, not based on human need.
A few months ago, when the president hosted a health care summit at the White House, congressional supporters of single-payer health care - like what Europeans enjoy - were intentionally uninvited.
For single-payer supporters, it has been an uphill battle ever since. Only the protests of supporters got us a seat at the Obama table. But the president remains compliant to keeping the for-profit model while giving lip-service to universalizing health care.
Has he not learned with all his years of schooling that public services are not longer at the public's disposal when they are controlled by for-profit interests?
We populists, progressives, liberal democrats must continue to protest. I have written and do consider that Obama might be attempting to make a speedy transition into a National Health care system by setting up a two-tiered system, by which the for-profit, rationing system, which leaves thousands uninsured and fuels bankruptcies and is supported by the AMA members will whither and die into the compost heap of history.
He might be.
Since these things are not guaranteed, and since I do not know what the intent of this man who was so heavily funded by Wall Street: we single-payer, universal health, socialized medicine advocates must barrage our legislators with threats that if they do not support a rational health system, we will vote them out and replace them with someone who will.
It is really that simple.
Obama knows as a politician and community organizer the importance of getting constituents "on board." Unlike those of us on the outside, in our armchairs, in the trenches, in our columns, Obama truly must deal with some unsavory cretins, like the AMA. We supporters of universal health do not: we can speak to our choirs.
So there is a lot to scrutinize with this president, who has already inherited the mantle of Iraqi Invader by funding US occupation rather than withdrawal; he has given raw meat to the bigots, by defending the offensive Defense of Marriage Act against the LGBT community that massively supported him, authored by the other duplicitous liberal, Bill Clinton.
But we must scrutinize our own selves. What sort of society are we really demanding, as progressives, populists, as socialists? Do we want a good life at the expense of world poverty? This is what the US military budget is partly about.
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