Tainted Saints

The first rule of medicine is, “Do no harm.” The post-Joe Lieberman version of the Senate health care bill fails that basic criterion. Unless Democratic leadership steps up to fix this misguided proposal, our only recourse will be to kill it.

The fundamental failing of the newest Senate proposal is that it requires individuals to purchase health insurance, but does nothing to rein in what insurance companies charge. There is nothing to stop spiraling health costs from eating up an ever-increasing percentage of our national productivity.

The House bill has two major cost-control mechanisms: the public option and the 85 percent medical-loss ratio requirement. The Senate bill is on track to have neither, and nothing new to replace them. The Senate bill is a recipe for national disaster. If it’s that bill or nothing, I prefer nothing.

We all know America’s current health care system is failing — and it’s failing everyone, not just the uninsured. It is far too expensive: Americans spend 16 percent  of GDP on health care and get worse results than countries that spend half that. Literally.

We need health reform that expands access to quality health care, abolishes unjust practices of insurers, improves value to the country, and puts us on a trajectory to continue to improve our health care system over time.

But the Senate has systematically stripped out nearly everything I liked about what was proposed in the early, heady days of health care reform. They have done so in order to please a handful of so-called centrists who care more about protecting corporate profits than protecting the people they claim to represent. [more...]

On Saturday, November 8 the Democrat Congress gave us a corporate driven healthcare bill which amounts to nothing more than a de facto bailout of the healthcare insurance companies. The carnival conducted by the Democrats, masquerading as a debate around healthcare, demonstrates conclusively how craven are Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats.

We have witnessed cynicism in other administrations but the Obama administration has as raised cynicism to a veritable science. Imagine promising the poor and desperate people of this country healthcare reform and passing legislation which will not only hurt the working class but strengthen the very forces which oppose real reform – the healthcare insurance companies! [more...]

[Just when I think it's impossible to hate this man more...

The moral outrage surrounding this shooting is so completely hypocritical. Soldiers who were mostly destined for Afghanistan or Iraq where they had a very good chance of dying were instead killed before they left U.S. soil. And Ft. Hood has declared today a day of mourning for the shooting victims, when virtually every day soldiers are killed overseas without a day of public mourning.  It's only sad to die HERE, and not THERE...? Propoganda at it's best... - Ed.]

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will seek to move forward on an investigation surrounding the mass shooting Thursday at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the committee’s chairman, said today.

The chairman said the scope of the probe would address the motives of the alleged shooter Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan and whether signs of “Islamic extremism” were apparent, but missed or ignored. [more...]

If Democrats are disappointed by Joe Lieberman’s threat to filibuster any healthcare reform bill that includes a public option, they shouldn’t be. Despite all of his past promises to support universal healthcare, nothing was more predictable than the Connecticut senator’s fealty to the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists.

Much the same can be said of Sen. Evan Bayh, who emerged from hiding on healthcare to announce that he too plans to filibuster against reform with the Republicans, regardless of what his constituents and Americans in general plainly want. Like Lieberman, his state is home to powerful corporations that want reform killed — and like Lieberman, his wife has brought home very big paychecks from those same interests. [more...]

(Well, knock me over with a feather… -Ed.)

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told reporters today that he would in fact filibuster any health care bill he doesn’t agree with–and right now, he doesn’t agree with the public option proposal making its way through the Senate.

This time, it’s about his abject refusal to support any type of health care reform (even the Baucus bill, which doesn’t do much of anything except force people who already can’t afford insurance to buy it or be fined even more money that they still can’t afford to pay…)

Yesterday, Joe Lieberman quietly added an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill, with the tacit approval of the White House, that serves to “‘legalize suppression’ of evidence of American war crimes” by blocking the release of abuse photos:

“…our torture regime was systematic, pervasive, brutal, fatal, and — becuase it was the by-product of conscious policies set at the highest levels of government — common across America’s “War on Terror” detention regime.  These photographs would have documented those vital facts; combated the false denials from torture apologists; fueled the momentum for accountability; and revealed, in graphic and unavoidable terms, what was truly done by America’s government.  But a Democratic-led Congress, at the urging of a Democratic President, are now taking extraordinary steps — including an act of Congress which has no purpose other than to suppress evidence of America’s war crimes — to ensure that this evidence never sees the light of day.”