We are no happier with our take on President Obama's health care  speech to Congress and the nation than maybe you will be. But it's a  perspective the other advocacy groups you are hearing from may be too  wimpy to give you. And at the end of the day, that is why you are on  THIS distribution list, to hear the real scoop on what's going on. So  it is still a call to action, and action is what we must always take  if we want something better..

Obama's New "Improved" Leech Therapy

The sheer sappiness, even from progressives, of most of the  commentary we've heard in the aftermath of President Obama's address  to Congress this week on health care is truly breathtaking. Now we  are going to tell you what really happened last Wednesday night.

The first thing we need to understand is that Obama HAS NO PLAN, at  least not one that he will publicly disclose, otherwise he would put

forward a particular bill and say, "This is what I want Congress to  pass." Instead, what he did the other night was embrace a hodge podge  of half-baked congressional proposals, all of which have ONE purpose  and singular directive ... to NOT curtail in any way the usurous  profit margins of the existing health care industry.

Worse yet, he went out of his way to SMEAR the one proposal that  would actually make a meaningful difference, to institute a single  payer system, like any of the ones which have been so successful in

every other major industrial country. Indeed, what was so incredibly  conspicuous by its absence was the fact that, while he dedicated a  large part of his speech to debunking the lies being told about  health care reform, there was not a word about the heinous and  slanderous lies being told about single payer, namely that it is not  working in all these other countries or that people there are not  happy with their single payer systems.

Instead he stabbed single payer in the back by trying to characterize  it as "radical change". This is EXACTLY the same tactic that right  wing propagandists have deployed against any proposal Obama himself  might make that would be even slightly worthwhile. Remember last  month when every right wing Republican magically had the same  expression, "risky experiment", coming out of their mouths all at the  same moment. Same tactic from Obama, same dishonestly slanted  demagoguery, and you'd have to be a serious hardcore Obama moonie not  to see it. Obama literally played single payer advocates in the  Congressional audience for suckers.

There was a mini uproar when a lunatic fringe Republican house member  committed the offense of being in contempt for yelling out, "You  lie," when Obama asserted that bills in consideration would exclude  illegal aliens, even though that part was probably true. But what  about when Obama said that they would consider the best ideas for  reform? What kind of a lie was that, when the best idea of all,  single payer, the approach favored by a majority of the American  people when they are asked, the only change that would make an actual  meaningful difference, has been pushed so far off the table that it  is not even to be given serious consideration?

Funding of the health care system in America is the 21st century  counterpart of leech therapy. We have a massive medical insurance  "industry", the function of which is to "manufacture" senseless and  unnecessary paperwork to generate outrageous profits for itself, in  excess of 30 percent of every health care dollar, sucking the very  life blood out of our economy. THAT is the problem, and yet all Obama wants to talk about is building on "what works".

NOTHING about the way we pay for our health care today works, except  maybe for medical mega-corporation CEOs reaping their obscene  salaries and bonuses. For THEM it works just fine, and they want to  keep it just like it is. For the rest of us it is an unmitigated  disaster, a veritable Katrina for our whole economy, and nothing  Obama said the other night was intended to change anything of  substance about it.

Remember in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina when George Bush got  up on TV with the misleading rap Karl Rove put in his mouth, talking  about how they were going to study "What went wrong, and what went  right", complete with cute synchronized hand gestures, as if ANYTHING  went right. Nothing went right about the federal response to that  cataclysm. And there is nothing worth building on top of the way  insurance companies are currently gouging the American people.

So when Obama talks about the government creating an "insurance  market", all he is really talking about is making the government the  COERCIVE SALES AGENT for the medical insurance leeches. What is the  need for creating such a thing? Don't we already have a market where  people can shop for the plan they like? Isn't it called the "free"  market? So the only difference they are talking about is creating a  compulsive mandate, backed by fines if you don't buy one of the  provided choices, to FORCE you to buy essentially the same overpriced  insurance you couldn't afford last week, or to have taxpayers  subsidize the difference.

Sure, the hideously egregious insurance industry practices of denying  coverage in every possible unjustified way needs to be outlawed. This should have been done decades ago. But what Obama is talking about is   trading the one dollar we would get back in our pockets that way, for  license for the same corporate greed heads to take TWO dollars back  out with their other hand, by hooking up a catheter direct to the  U.S. public treasury, for hardship cases who cannot possibly cough up  the required insurance ransom. Net result, even more outrageous  profits, not less, for the same culprits we have now, and at taxpayer  expense!!

The reason why the Congressional Budget office predicts that only 5%  would participate in the so-called "public option" they are talking  about is because it would not save us any actual money, so it would  have minimal participation. This is even assuming it would ever kick  in at all, with them trying to trick it up with triggers and such, so  it would NOT provide any real "competition" day one or day 730. It is  being conceived of as the weakest possible alternative, a kind of  welfare option for those who can prove they are totally destitute  already, just the way the insurance industry wants us all to be  eventually.

A real single payer system would give we the people, we who need and  have a RIGHT as citizens to the health care we deserve, real power to  negotiate favorable prices for our health care services. And THAT is  the LAST thing those exploiting us now would ever voluntarily allow.  And Obama and too many members of Congress are in league with the  medical industry devils, bought off, paid off, or just naively  backing off, making deals behind our backs and then announcing them  as "done" deals, and giving speeches to try to bamboozle the American  people into thinking they are getting real substantive reform when in  fact they are not.

What Obama did more than anything else last Wednesday night was throw  down the gauntlet to US, standing in the way of real single payer  reform. He said as bluntly as possible, for those with ears to hear,  that if you want single payer you will have to fight HIM, to go  through HIM. For his real constituents in this are NOT YOU, they are  the medical industry special interests, in that way just like George

Bush served only the upper class, and we might as well face up to it  now. Because for him to even suggest that a silly new insurance  "market" would give you as a medical care consumer any negotiating  leverage comparable to single payer, with each of us out there still  forced to bargain all alone by ourselves, is absurdity on steroids.

Moreover, as weak as Obama's proposals are, taken all together, the  medical mega-corporations are still on full press offense trying to  kill off anything that would help cure any part of the real problem,  which is THEM of course, at all. It is not enough that they have  their own people literally writing these bills word for word, like  ex-Wellpoint VP Liz Fowler, to ensure that the outrageous bottom line  profit margins of medical mafia are in no way threatened. They won't  be satisfied until even the "public option" is literally killed off.  In short, the plan is to do nothing to remove the leeches sucking the  economic life blood out of our medical care system.

We agree with Brent Budowsky, with his longterm perspective and  insight into Capitol hill deal making, that Obama has absolutely NO  intention of letting a truly viable public option of any kind  survive. When Obama intimates that a public option is not a mandatory  provision, this is not "change we can believe in", this is not even  "change we'd kinda like", this is "maybe we won't bother". The only  reason even the words "public option" are being allowed to hang  around on the table is so they can be pushed off later.

And THAT is Obama's REAL plan, the one he won't talk about in a  public speech, to let the weakest possible "public option" hang  around for a little while as an illusory sop for the terminally

gullible, only to bleed it to death before it can actually go into  effect. Yes, THIS is Obama's new "improved" leech therapy.

We would not have written all this if we were not also going to point  the way to the path of salvation. It's just what it has always been.  You must speak out now, you must keep speaking out, and you must

never stop speaking out. There was a story the other day about how  certain special interest lobby groups were forging letters to members  of Congress as if they came from the public. Now, ask yourself, WHY  would they even BOTHER to do such a thing if writing letters, sending emails, and making phone calls to members of Congress did NOT  constitute compelling pressure, and they KNEW it? Why would they do  such a thing if real activism did not work?

Here is an action page that will send a message to all your members  of Congress with the message, "Any health bill without single payer  is no reform at all." All you have to do is click a mouse one time  and submit it.

SINGLE PAYER ACTION PAGE:

http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1003.php

And here is a Facebook action page that does the same thing

FACEBOOK SINGLE PAYER ACTION:

http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1003

And here is a Twitter message you can send as a reply to the gateway  to do the same thing. Just enter the following in your Twitter  message sending box and send it as a reply

@cxs #p1003

And here is another resource, the new blog site in support of HR 676,  that was, is and has always been the REAL health reform bill, single  payer Medicare for all, where you can record notes of your phone  calls to members of Congress where other can read the kind of  responses we are getting, so we know where members of Congress are  really coming from. On this same page is a link to give you all the  phone numbers of your own members of Congress down to the local  district office level. And there is also an "Easy policy points" link

so you have the best arguments at your finger tips. 

HR676 PHONE CALL BLOG: http://www.peaceteam.net/lobby.php

So one way or another, send your message. The enemies of actual  change are counting on you NOT doing so. They are counting on you  being lulled by our charismatic new President of the United States  into thinking he stands for actual change of any kind, when in fact  he sold you out day one when we brought in the so-called stakeholders  and gave them an instant press conference to announce a chump change  deal, the constructive equivalent of getting a coupon for a medical  "happy exam".

They are counting on your silence, out of politeness, out of a  willingness to give the ludicrous the benefit of the doubt, or if all  else fails out of defeatism and utter exasperated despair. Go to one  of the action sites, pick up the phone, and contact your members of  Congress. Tell them, "Get the medical industry leeches off my back." And THEN and ONLY then we will have real health care reform.

And we're shipping out the single payer health care caps just as fast  as we can. No donation of any size is too small. We just want to  demonstrate our support for real reform. What other activist group  out there will do anything like that?

Single Payer Health Care Caps: http://www.peaceteam.net/all_gifts.php

We just want you to win, folks. That's why we talk to you the way we  do. It isn't always pretty but it is always the truth, as these  latest developments demonstrate. Please take action now.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed  to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible