Selling Out Single Payer

Selling Out Single Payer
by Helen Redmond at CounterPunch

Helen Redmond has a nice piece up on CounterPunch about the effort Democrats are putting into killing single-payer/national health insurance. Which of course is also an effort they are putting forth to protect private insurance companies and their ability to gouge profits out of the sick and injured.

Its a nice piece, but there seems to be a basic misunderstanding on one point.

So the question becomes why don’t the Democrats and HCAN fight to get rid of the parasitic private health insurance industry (the source of the crisis) once and for all instead of constantly and unsuccessfully, decade after decade, trying to rein in, regulate, and do an end run around them?

For the Democrats, with the exception of John Conyers and a few others, they simply don’t want to abolish the private insurance industry. They are capitalists and believe in the capitalist system that makes health care a commodity to be bought and sold. For them, health care is not a human right. And importantly, they don’t want to take on President Obama who is opposed to single-payer. Like the true cowards they are, they will not oppose Obama on health care reform even though they disagree with him.

Actually, its a lot simpler than that. Why don't the Democrats fight to get rid of the parasitic private health insurance industry? Its because they are well paid by that industry to do no such thing. A trip to Maplight.org reveals the following total contributions (to all of Congress) from the 'health' industry since mid-2003.

Interest	Contributions	Bills
Health Professionals	$118,553,725	301
Health Services/HMOs	$15,485,897	75
Hospitals/Nursing Homes	$31,366,801	54
Misc Health	$6,939,601	26
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products	$39,181,959	67

$200,000,000.00 buys a lot of support, from both parties. This is a fundamental problem that people on the left tend to have. They tend to believe the Democratic propaganda that says the Democrats are on our side. This leads to all sorts of twisted reasoning being produced as to why they don't ACT like they are on our side. The problem is, people just don't realize that the Democrats are not on our side. They are on the side of the people who pump millions of dollars into their accounts.

Have you pumped millions of dollars into their accounts? If not, then the Democrats are not on your side. The key is to realize this, and thus not to listen to them when they spin their line of bull about how they are on our side. Don't fall for it. Vote for candidates that really are on your side.