Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning
Appearances by single-payer advocates on corporate mainstream media are few and far between — all the more reason that when a golden opportunity arises, single-payer advocates must take care to appropriately frame the base-line issue of health care reform.
While there can be no doubt that a single-payer system, which President Obama concedes, provides the only means by which every American can be “covered,” is the most cost-effective, the issue is really more basic.
It’s about the immorality of treating the health of our people as a commodity; that those who seek to perpetuate a system designed to create obscene wealth for a few insurance company CEOs and their Wall Street investors are advocating nothing less than a death sentence for more than 18,000 Americans each year…
The appearance by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on MSNBC’s Good Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough (video below) produced a classic colloquy.
SCARBOROUGH: Now you’re sounding like you want the government to take over. You say ‘why do we have insurance companies in the health care business because…we believe in free enterprise.
WEINER:…What is the value? What are they providing?
SCARBOROUGH: Well, what’s the value of Wall Street companies making money?
WEINER: …Forty percent of all Americans get their health care from a single-payer, government-funded, government-administered plan. Medicare…Department of Veteran’s Affairs…So they have a pretty good experience of a low overhead thing…I’m not here to advocate for the profits of insurance companies, I’m here to advocate for health care.
SCARBOROUGH:…Well, it sounds like you think there is no need for us to have private insurance….
WEINER: I’ve asked you three times: What is their value? What are they bring to the deal?
SCARBOROUGH: …I’m astounded by your question because your question is suggesting that there is no need to have a country that is run on free market principles. …
WEINER: But this isn’t a commodity, Joe.
SCARBOROUGH: You think that health care is different….
WEINER: What are health insurance plans doing to produce health care? Just tell me.
SCABOROUGH: I don’t even understand the question, other than it’s you trying to make the point that we don’t need private industry involved in health care at all. You are advocating a complete takeover…
WEINER: When you say “takeover,†only as much as the federal government took over health care for seniors 44 years ago.
SCARBOROUGH: But you want to expand that for all Americans…
WEINER:…So they get a 4% overhead, they get efficient reimbursement, there’s no profits being taken by the insurance companies
SCARBOROUGH: Your position is what is scaring a lot of Americans…Those people who are showing up, who say the federal government wants to take over health care. Those people are scared of your position.
Weiner’s effort to get through to the rather thick Scarborough was appropriate. But there were two points I wish he had driven home.
First, the ideal response to Scarborough’s “free market” mumblings would have been:
Second, when Scarborough launched into “those people are scared of your position,” it would have been an ideal time for Weiner to bring out the fact, covered by some of Scarborough’s MSNBC colleagues — Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow — that “those people” consist of under-informed individuals who have been bused to and handed scripts to follow in disrupting the town halls. Olbermann, for example, described the town hall disruptions as a “carefully orchestrated campaign funded by people like Jack Abramoff’s former money launderer Tim Philips and disgraced former Columbia Health Care boss Rick Scott.”
It would have also been an ideal time to point to a June 2009 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed that 76% of all Americans support a “public option.” A Feb. 2009 New York Times/CBS News poll [PDF] revealed that 59% of all Americans favored a national health care system. A Feb. 2009 Grove Insight Opinion Research poll [PDF] found that 60% of all Americans favor Medicare for All, the single-payer concept embodied in H.R. 676.
Of course, I hope this piece is not construed as unduly critical of Weiner’s performance. It’s a great deal easier for someone to review and analyze the Weiner/Scarborough colloquy having the luxury of time than it is to provide on-the-spot responses during the course of an interview. But, this points to the need for better preparation by single-payer advocates, especially since their opportunities on MSM are so few and far between.
At every chance, single-payer advocates need to frame the real issue — obscene profits for the few vs. the health and very lives of our citizens. In the final analysis, that is the core of health care reform.
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Scarborough did pose one intriguing question. “What’s the value of Wall Street companies making money?”
Good question given the recent history of a potential $62 trillion debt created by the unregulated, credit default swap market.
One article, entitled “Capitalism on Trial”, suggested an answer:
The financial catastrophe unfolding on Wall Street is the product of blind greed and arrogance. And now that the house of cards is collapsing, the U.S. government’s series of rescues carry another lesson: The bigger the bet and the wider the potential damage if it loses, the more likely the Feds will have to come to the rescue to stop the whole game from coming to an end.
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Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Poor Mika, she sits in cowed silence as the men work out the problems of the world, only able to pitch in on the relationship analysis section. How stereotypical.
Meanwhile Joe evades and dodges, pretending to be the voice of moderate conservative reason, even as he shouts down his guest every time a substantive point begins to be made, and yet he is stumped into silence, unable to answer any of the challenges put to him.
Incentive for medical care to treat and bring people to complete health can be missing if there is a loss of income because the patient is no longer needing care…the state of health of a large percentage of Americans is for the most part
dismal…I work in the health care field and see what western medicine can do or does not do to bring people to complete health…I do not have health insurance, I am a certified herbalist/licensed massage therapist and can take care of myself and others using herbs and essential oils Many of the treatments/surgeries that my clients receive are ineffective. Americans are taught to go to the doctor for a hangnail without considering that maybe this doesn’t require a doctor. I remember as a kid we had a neighbor lady who was kind of the neighborhood witch doctor and she would make up concoctions to treat various health problems I see people everyday who have been caught in the sticky web of western medicine, often floundering for months,years until a doctor finally decides what they have and how to treat it. I see people not being taught how to care for themselves but to be dependent upon inadequate medical care, all for a profit.
When the congressman puts it in that succinct NY no bullshit question “What are we getting for our 30 per cent?” he really hits the nail right on the head! He might just be one of the few that works for us not the drug or insurance companies.
Scarborough demonstrated with that question who he’s actually speaking-working for…Wall Street.
Scarborough’s show isn’t to inform and discuss…It’s to indoctrinate his listeners to Wall Street’s point of view; like what’s good for Wall Street is good for the average American…BULLSHIT!
I have yet to see Wall Street’s prosperity ever benefit Main Street or the middle class American.
Walmart’s prosperity kills Joe’s Hardware on Main Street…
Best Buy’s prosperity kills the computer-electronics guy trying to eek out a living with his shop living around the corner. Dole and big agra are killing the local produce growers…
What’s the value of Wall Street making money ?
No value to me at all…
American’s would be better off if Wall Street didn’t exist. Someone would then start a local neighborhood bank…that bank would loan money responsibly to folks it knows in the community. Those folks would then start businesses to serve the community they live in…an economic cycle that breeds true prosperity for all.
The Federal Reserve and Wall Street…treasonous serpents who have robbed us blind.
BlueHawk wrote:
Scarborough demonstrated with that question who he’s actually speaking-working for…Wall Street.
_________________________
Perhaps. Or it could mean that the real title for Scarboro’s Morning Joe show should be, Clueless at MSNBC.
That describes it well Mr. Canning…
Congressman Weiner will be back on Scarborough’s show tomorrow (Monday Aug 24), according to http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/45417
Wouldn’t be interesting if if Wall St was outlawed like gambling used to be?
The fat fucks would actually have to produce something tangible before they could earn a profit?.
We’d have a lot more wall street whiners looking for the Government option I think.
Ah, Flo… you beautiful dreamer you!
Skippys assertion that a “free market ” can be equated with Capitalism is fallacy.
As a National of the united States the Tunga can no more be liable to pay federal insurance premiums than the ones he dispenses with in the face off fraudulent Internal Revenue slander.
Free thinking people will see through your attempt to incite.
Your retarded thinking does serve the purpose of awakening the People born upon the land of the freely associated compact states who know that a lot more than 18,000 US citizens per day will perish if the fiat slave state collapses.
Are you sure your bunk in the bunker is still reserved?
Barracuda right on!
Western medicine seeks only to treat maladies, disease and sickness.
Cures are the exclusive province of healers and the self aware.
Damn those free thinkers! Always screwing up the “SYSTEM”.
For Tunga….
Tunga…Comment #11
I take it you’re a healer and you are TEACHING those with maladies and sicknesses to heal themselves and hence become healers like you.
Cures (healing) are not the *exclusive* province of anyone, they can’t or shouldn’t be bought and sold like commodities; they are the shared responsibility of all sentient thinking empathetic human beings…
But free thinkers already know this…you sound more like a puffed up braggart, who can’t cure his own sense of self delusion. But then I’m sure your self awareness already had that insight and you were just joshing us ?
yes ?
Comment @13…..please pardon my redundancy…
I used the term “sentient thinking”
when sentient sufficed….
That bugged me…
proof reading is a valued skill….
Tunga reminds me of Tonga (Denny Miller) in “Our Vines Have Tender Apes”…Go figure, lol
Or was it Kam Fong as Chin Ho?
BlueHawk #13 there is none so blind as those who will not see.
Doctors treat because there is no profit in cures.
But your obfuscation serves to further incite what?
More ignorance? Masterful.
Thanks 99, you’re humble and lovable.
Tunga…Comment #16
You’re kind of one track minded aren’t you ?
Have you ever read the hippocractic oath ?
Doctors while making a good living for sure; don’t practice medicine *for profit*… They treat illness and alleviate suffering.
Now…Health reform while the present focus is on how care is funded; true health reform would focus on holistically and pre-emptively learning how to live healthy existences. Personally I think doctors treat because it’s all they’ve learned to do.
For your information…doctors make a living…private health insurance companies make a profit.
You seem to have the two confused
Your comment # 11 said..
My reply comment # 13 said..
Please point me to the “obfuscation” in my reply sir…or should I post for you the definition of *obfuscation* for you.
But hey!…Tunga has it all figured out. He’s smarter than Einstein, he cures his own cancer and leaps tall buildings while making a profit…or do the buildings profit because he leapt them ?
And us poor saps just muddle along…
By the way Tunga…
Maybe you should read barracuda78’s comment #2 again…
You mangled it. You completely recreated it for your own purposes.
Here’s a link to Anthony Weiner’s follow-up appearance on Morning Joe today:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/224...37669#32537669
(health care discussion starts at 4:20)
Save Medicare
HR676
I love my Grandma
New meme to try out as the (some of) Dems try to pass healthcare, the Repubs try to pass hellscare.
If you likey, spread it around
Floridiot…
*hellscare*….very nice. I will pass it around.
Lol BlueHawk, I threw it out there and now we have:
Single Prayer Hellscare
The man who brought us Tush Lumpboil has now topped himself with Single Prayer Hellscare! OMG, Flo, you’re really good at this!
Somehow 99, we gotta get Howie Dean to use this meme 😉
Yes. And I gotta figure out how to catch back up with him, what’s happening with him, where, and I’ll work on him about it for sure. I have griped for a while now about him being screwed and I wonder if it has taught him something about trying to play by the rules yet. The guy’s got the stuff, but he seems to keep choking right at the point where he might actually succeed. I know that they have choked him before he can ever succeed, but I’ve also seen him choking right before they choke him a couple times now, and I’m hoping he’s learning his lessons… hoping he decides not to choke or be choked anymore…..
Blueballs, Tunga agrees with you when you say doctors TREAT because that is what they have been taught.
Barracuda says TREATments prescribed by western medical practitioners is ineffectual.
It’s OK if the ultrasonagrapher tells the patient eating dairy products cause a gall bladder to go into convulsions but if a doctor says it s/he could be sued by the dairy industry.
You’re covering for the status quo when you pretend not to understand this difference.
That is obfuscation to the Tunga. Perhaps you think of it as parsing your speech. Same Same.
People are thinking that Scarborough is “thick” and “poor little Mika” is cowed, MSNBC is “clueless”… Scarborough is FAKE thick. His job is to say whatever disinforms people for $$$. Mika is there to create the old good cop/bad cop schtick, but do your homework re: who she is (clue: who’s her daddy?) MSNBC is a disinformation broadcasting station, not to be trusted, same as FOX and CNN. The factions in MSM that appear to be opposed to each other really are not. It’s all part of a big game to keep the citizenry politically divided. Because when they have a 50/50 split, then NOBODY can get ANYTHING except the rich elite. People, wake up. It’s all a show. Kabuki theater. They’re all just minions of the elite, manipulating opinions and facts to serve their masters for $$$.