I'm on a mission to restore the American Dream - and I know that to do that, we're going to have shake things up in Washington. It's time we fundamentally change our priorities; and that starts by putting pressure on our leaders to act on creating good jobs and stop protecting unnecessary tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent.
(Welcome to Mr. Hernandez! Check out his website! - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
In the midst of economic and political turmoil, it is difficult to imagine and embrace the fundamental values that we as Americans believe in; the things that make our country the greatest nation on earth. Sadly, these tough times have made far too many middle class families believe that the American Dream is far from reality.
But I can tell you it does exist. And I am living proof of it's incredible promise.
I have not been talking about the insanity around the debt ceiling and debt and deficit and the efforts of Republicans to drive us all off the cliff, but I am today - and I'm going to do it by allowing you to grab ahold of this problem and see for yourself just how unbelievably bad this manufactured crisis is going to be.
You will hear a lot of conversation about the consequences from others; today, however, you are going to get the chance to be both the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, and you will get to decide for yourself exactly what bills the Federal Government should and should not pay as the cash runs out if a deal is not made by the time borrowing authority runs out.
At that point you'll be able to see what's coming for yourself - and once you do, you won't need me to tell you what ugly is going to look like.
So I disappeared for a full week, right in the middle of what should have been a busy writing schedule, and I have to claim some "personal days" to cover the time we missed here at the blog - but it won't be time entirely wasted.
Instead, I'm going to jump into my own personal life for today's story, and I'm going to do it so that we can stimulate some thinking about where we really need to go to if we ever hope to make some sense out of the crazy way we deliver health care in this country.
Since this appears to be the weekend that a lot of decisions are either going to be made about the future of our "social safety net"...or they wont; we're entirely unsure...let's talk about how it actually works for a lot of us - and how it could work a lot better.
By now you have heard that President Obama has chosen to throw Social Security and the Medicare and Medicaid Programs over the side of his proverbial fishing boat as bait to see if he can get Republicans to give him another really lousy compromise, much as he did last December when he gave up billions upon billions of deficit reduction in order to help Republicans preserve tax cuts for billionaires.
And it looks like the President doesn't really lose if you or I get hurt here: in fact, it seems that, in his eyes, it's to his advantage to fight against his own base as he seeks to be "the adult in the room" in the runup to the '12 election.
So we're going to have to find a way to put The Fear on this guy - and I think I've got a plan to force this President to listen.
And it works like this: if this President ain't gonna be moved by our message...we do it by holding the rest of his Party hostage.
Oh, my, has there been a lot of news since we spoke last about the Potential Impending Death Of Medicare: obviously we're going to have to talk about the implications of Osama Bin Laden's death (but we'll do that another day), President Obama very publicly congratulated Donald Trump for having the leadership skills to know that Gary Busey was the one who needed to be fired after the way he ran the men's cooking team on "The Apprentice", and, of course, there was that "extreme ironing incident" on the M1 near London's Mill Hill.
But what you may not have noticed is that in the past two weeks the Grim Weeper himself, Speaker of the House John Boehner, has gone from saying "I fully support Paul Ryan's budget, including on Medicare" to saying that the Paul Ryan "Let's Kill Medicare" plan is "an idea ... worthy of consideration"-and when that happens that quickly you know somebody applied what we might politely describe as being at least "an equal and opposite force".
And what I'm here to suggest today is that the opposite force in question...is you.
We are continuing a recent theme here today in which two of my favorite topics are going to converge: Social Security and in-your-face political activism.
I have been encouraging folks to take advantage of the recent Congressional recess to have a few words with your CongressCritter about the proposed Death Of Medicare and all the proposed cuts to Social Security...and you have, as we'll discuss...and now we have an opportunity to do something on a national scale, just as we did a few weeks ago in support of Social Security.
This time, we're going to concentrate on fighting the idea that retirement ages should go up before we become eligible for Social Security and Medicare (and elements of Medicaid, as well), and that Americans should just keep right on working until the age of 67 or so-which isn't going to be any big problem...really...trust us.
Now that just makes no sense, and to help make the point we have a really cool video that you can pass around to all your friends-and your enemies, for that matter, since they'll also have to worry about what happens to them if they should ever make it to old age.
I'm as outraged as you are about the latest Republican attacks on Medicare and Social Security. Yes, the gloves are off, with the GOP leadership declaring open warfare on America's greatest safety nets for seniors.
We need Democrats in Congress who are going to stand strong against these Republican attacks. Now that Blue Dog Jane Harman has vacated her seat in southern California, we have an opportunity to send a progressive to Washington. Please contribute securely at Winograd for Congress at Act Blue to help elect me on May 17th in a special election in the 36th congressional district. Once we get to Washington, we can organize a Save Medicare & Social Security Caucus to go head-to-head with the GOP leadership determined to destroy government for the common good.
Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced a 10-year budget proposal that would essentially eliminate Medicare and Medicaid, replacing it with a voucher and managed-care system that would drastically curtail benefits for the poor, disabled and elderly.
"This is not a budget. This is a cause," Ryan said yesterday on Fox News. "We are here to try and fix this country's problems. If that means we are giving our political adversaries a political weapon to use against us... shame on them. We owe it to the country to give them an honest debate."
Democrats universally condemned the plan, including CA-36 candidate Debra Bowen,
"Let's be clear: these are not simply 'cuts,' and this is not simply 'reform.' This is fundamentally abolishing Medicare as we know it and replacing it with a voucher system -- one with no cost controls which will force seniors to pay a greater and greater share of their medical bills out of pocket over time.
"While the Ryan Budget is a sweet deal for private health insurance companies and multi-millionaires, it breaks the faith with America's seniors and the tens of millions of working class Americans who have paid into Medicare their whole lives. It should not be passed."
The prospects for California would be pretty grim. Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries will lose their guaranteed benefits altogether. Currently, Medicaid is a shared responsibility between the federal government and states, which are required to provide comprehensive health care benefits to people in poverty. Ryan's plan turns the program into block grants for the states -- with no guarantees.
Cash-strapped states like California would likely be forced to drop beneficiaries from the rolls should the plan become law.
If you tuned into the Rachel Maddow Show last night, you know that major health care provisions in the Patient's Bill of Rights take effect today. You also know Gail, the woman in this video. She's an amazing person whose life was immensely improved because President Obama and the Democratic Majority in this Congress fought tooth and nail for health care reform that puts patients first.
Gail was told by her doctor, "Either you dip into your retirement fund, or you're going to die." Because of health care reform, she can now choose to live and keep her retirement. Gail, previously denied coverage because she has a pre-existing condition, was able to enroll in a temporary high-risk pool to receive the cancer treatment she needs and deserves because of the Patient's Bill of Rights. By 2014, no insurance company in the nation will be allowed to deny her care.
Gail is one of millions of Americans who know firsthand that the need for health care reform was and continues to be a life and death priority.
I recently met Violet, a gregarious two-year old girl born at Contra Costa County Regional Medical Center near my district. She was born with a rare - and costly - form of epilepsy. Under the old system, she was at risk of reaching her plan's lifetime and annual coverage limits by the age of four, and there was little stopping her insurance company from finding trivial excuses to kick her off her coverage. As of today, the Patient's Bill of Rights guarantees that lifetime coverage limits and rescissions are banned in all new plans, and annual limits are being stretched over a three-year flexible period until they are completely eliminated by 2014.
We are coming down to the home stretch on healthcare, and we have seen the results of the first couple of rounds of crazy that have been sent forth in an effort to stop the process.
In addition to the Town Halls, opponents are flooding the email inboxes of America's "low information" voters with no end of lies. Those emails are getting passed around and around and around, and by now some of them have probably appeared in your inbox.
But it's summer...and who has time to respond to this stuff?
Well, guess what, Gentle Reader: I've already done the hard work for you.
Today's story is an email response that you can send right back to your "inbox friends". It's a reminder of some of the frustrations that we all share in this country and some explanations of what's being proposed...and a few words about socialism, to boot.
So get out there and copy and paste and forward and reply, and let's see if we can't fight the madness, one email at a time.
There's a fundamental lesson in collective bargaining that seems to have been lost on the White House, and those in Congress who devised their failing strategy on healthcare reform:
Don't make all your compromises before you walk in the room.
As a person whose economic life was ruined 23 years ago at age 23, when I got a lupus diagnosis and lost my health insurance, I know I'm only alive thanks to government health care--and charity, which has so far kept me from dying of the poverty I have to stay in to GET the government health care.
John Garamendi has been seeking votes in California for well over 30 years. He first took a run for the Governor's mansion in 1982, and was set to do so again in 2010 until the seat in CA-10 opened up, and he was inspired to return to Washington, where he served in the Clinton Administration in the Department of the Interior. He has the most diverse record of anybody in the race, with stints at the federal level, the state legislature, and in two statewide offices, as the Insurance Commissioner and now Lieutenant Governor. In our interview, we discussed health care, lessons learned from regulating insurance, No Child Left Behind, saving the NUMMI plant in Fremont (more on that from Garamendi here), and foreign policy in Iran. I found Garamendi to come at issues in a very comprehensive and thoughtful way, and you can see this for yourself below. A paraphrased transcript follows. (flip it)
Nothing better symbolizes the corruption of the debate about healthcare reform than the rhetoric about "government-run" healthcare. Or, for that matter, the related argument that we need a "uniquely American" solution which precludes a public system like Medicare for all.
Two reports that notably received scant coverage from either the media or even those advocating the public plan "option" in Congress, reveal the seldom told truth.
Medicare is a "uniquely American" solution, and it works.
Before you start celebrating the pending passage of a healthcare bill in Congress, you might want to make sure you have enough savings to offset the huge out of pocket costs coming your way.
I don't know if you've been thinking about it, but the costs of long-term care have been on the mind of some friends of mine lately.
For reasons that we won't go into here, they are in the process of pricing long-term care at care facilities...and yesterday afternoon, we had a chance to have a look at the "menu" of services (the facility's term) that can be purchased at this particular location.
If you are facing this issue in your own family, if you are a taxpayer thinking about how we plan to fund long-term care in the future...or if, one day, you expect to be old yourself...this conversation will surely matter.
Fresh of one of the most family-oriented holidays of the year, I'm sure all of you will know exactly what I'm talking about with the following scene:
Half a dozen extended family members crowded in a small living room trying to accomplish a task nobody really knows how to do. At least twice as many proposals as people. And somehow everybody gets to thinking that if they just repeat their idea often enough, at loud enough volume, it will become the best idea. Total chaos. "Too many cooks," as they say.
Except we're not arguing about how to tell if the turkey is done, or what the best route to the movie theater is. We're arguing about how you're supposed to put an I.V. into somebody's arm.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care plan claims to be a takeoff of th Massachusetts plan. That plan requires every citizen to purchase health insurance. As I've written in the past, the individual mandate is not really a solution. It leaves the "insured" open to huge deductibles, and/or large premiums. Why can't we find good, affordable health insurance?
Why? Becuase health insurance sucks! It is a source of loss in the health care delivery system. Insurance companies are skimming ridiculous amounts of money off the top of our health care system. And Dr. Marcia Angell, a Harvard med school teacher and former editor of the New England Medical Journal, thinks there is a better system available now:
Private insurance companies offer little of value, yet skim off 15 to 25 percent of the health care dollar for profits and overhead. It would make much more sense to extend Medicare to everyone. That could be done gradually by dropping the eligibility age a decade at a time, while phasing out the insurance companies. The loss of insurance jobs would probably be more than offset by job gains in other industries no longer saddled with health costs.
Medicare is not perfect, but its problems are readily fixed. It is far more efficient than private insurance, with overhead of less than 4 percent, and since it is administered by a single public agency, controlling costs would be possible. Unlike private insurers, it cannot select whom to cover or deny care to those who need it most.(Boston Globe 1/29/07)
Governmental programs? Oh my golly golly gosh, it would send the conservatives into a tizzy. What is this? Yup, we have a single payer system for everybody over the age of 65. Why not for younger people?
It has taken me a week to be able to write this diary. First I was in tears, then I was angry, then I was frustrated, and now I am just a total mix of all those emotions, but more then anything the overwhelming sense of disgust at the GOP envelopes all of my being.
Many of you already know that my Mother was very ill at the start of this year, she was in and out of the hospital and there was a point that the Doctors thought she wasn't going to pull through. During her illness she lived with us, thankfully she recovered and is now in better health then she has been for years (of course my household is still recovering from her 5 month stay with us : )
