By Dave Lindorff
For the most part, the health care "town meetings" staged by members of Congress are shams designed to deceive and disinform the public on the possibilities and progress of health care reform. Despite being shaky on the facts, right wingers may be quite correct in treating them as opportunties for street theatre. Maybe, suggests Dave Lindorff, we ought to do the same.
Progressives Should be Shutting Down These So-Called 'Health Care Town Meetings' Too!
By Dave Lindorff
Many progressives are getting all bent out of shape over the "brown shirt" rabble organized by health industry PR firms to disrupt the so-called "town meetings" being organized all over the country by Democratic members of Congress.
What they are conveniently forgetting is that these are not really "town meetings" at all, at least in the sense of the town meetings I grew up with, and started out covering as a young journalist in Connecticut--that is, meetings called and run democratically, with leaders elected from the floor, open to all residents of a community.
These "town meetings" are really nothing but propaganda sessions run by members of Congress who are trying to burnish their fraudulent credentials as public servants, and trying to perpetrate a huge fraud of a health care bill that purports to be a progressive "reform" of the US health care system, but that actually further entrenches the control of that system by the insurance industry, and to a lesser extent, the hospital and drug industry.
ObamaCare is to health reform what bank bailouts are to financial system reform, which is to say it is the opposite of what its name implies.
The right-wing nuts who cry that ObamaCare is introducing euthanasia for the elderly and infirm, or that it is socialism, are ignorant wackos, to be sure, but they are right about one thing: Americans are about to be royally screwed on health care reform by the president and the Democratic Congress, just as they've been screwed by them on financial system "reform."
The appropriate response to this screw-job is the one the right has adopted: shut these sham "town meetings" down, and run the sell-out politicians out of town on a rail, preferably coated in tar and feathers they way the snake-oil salesmen of old used to be handled!
This is not about civil discourse. This is about propaganda. The Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership have sold out health care reform for the tainted coin of the medical-industrial industry, and are holding, or trying to hold, these meetings around the country to promote legislation that has essentially been written for them by that industry--legislation that will force everyone to pay for insurance as offered, and priced, by the private insurance industry. What a deal for those companies--a captive market of 300 million people! There will be little or no effort to control prices, and the higher costs will be financed through higher taxes, and through cuts in Medicare benefits.
This isn't "reform." It's corruption, pure and simple.
Any mention of a system that works--single payer--the system we already have in the form of Medicare for the elderly and disabled, and the system that has proved successful for almost four decades in Canada-- has been systematically blocked and censored out of the discussion. Every effort has been made to bury an excellent bill, HR 676, offered up by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which would cover every American by simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.
The only proper response at this point is obstruction, and the more militant and boisterous that obstruction, the better.
Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events, progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own both Democrats and Republicans alike.
The only proper approach to the wretched health care legislation currently working its way through Congress at this point is to kill it and start over. At these "town meeting" staged events, Obama and the Democrats need to hear, in no uncertain terms, that we don't want no stinkin' ObamaCare. We want Medicare for all.
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of “Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains” (Bantam Books, 1992), and more recently of “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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NY Single-Payer Action Alert!
Statewide Call-in to Congressman Rangel, Senator Schumer and Congressman Hinchey Thursday August 13th through August 20th
The next few weeks are critical for health care reform.
When they come back from recess, the full House will take up an amendment by Cong. Weiner to adopt single payer as the House universal health care proposal. It is unclear as to when the vote will actually occur. Congressional members have been encountering vocal protests from the right wing who have little interest in the details on health care reform [Single-Payer]; we need to show that America [sic] wants real health care reform that covers everyone. If you need more information on single payer (e.g., HR 676, S. 703), in addition to the information on this website, please visit www.pnhp.org or www.healthcare-now.org
Details at: http://singlepayernewyork.org/
Thanks.
Good links and info.
HEALTHCARE TOWN HALL[meeting]S
[CODEPINK has provided Town Hall meeting info below; Single-Payer advocates can attend & hammer away at congressional reps to make them enact Single-Payer]
http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?id=5051
8.17.09, MON, 6-8PM, Bronx: Protest: Demand Single-Payer care!
8.17.09, MON, 6-8PM: Protest: Demand Single-Payer Healthcare, Metropolitan Oval, Parkchester, Bronx. http://is.gd/2ig1Z
Much as I like Lindorff's work, I object to "nuts" and "wackos"
Because I am an advocate for people with disabilities.
Yes, it's a very old practise to call political opponents
"crazies", "wackos" and variations on the same. I was
surprised to find it in a book on Lincoln, We Are Lincoln
Men by David Herbert Donald, 2003 - used in
Lincoln's election campaign (can't recall which side).
Why don't I like it used? Continues the stereotyping of
people with mental disabilities/mental illness.
I like the point of view of the article. And appreciate
that we can post comments here about the article.
What've Obama said have
What've Obama said have shocked me..
Maybe what he said is right..
We must to care about health care Town..
Payday Loans
..the right wing nuts etc etc...
Who are the right wing nuts saying the reform will lead to euthanasia ? The LaRouche Movement ??
Interesting strategy, but faulty hypothesis??
"Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events, progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own both Democrats and Republicans alike."
Good luck with that one. Most of these "tea-baggers" are hardcore facists and rednecks hostile to reason and critical thinking. I don't hear them complaining about another wealth transfer to HMOs and Pharma, I hear them talking nonsense about the government making end of life decisions as if, for heavens sakes, durable wills and powers of atty didn't exist. Thomas Frank documented the phenomena of working class Whites voting against their self interest in "What's the Matter with Kansas." We're witnessing in the town halls a redoux of that tome. It's hard as hell if not impossible to show so-called "progressives" that Obama is full of it, and most of them are at least facially rational.
Which leads me to the question of the soundness of the hypothesis. "Are there any TRUE or REAL "progressives" left? I don't think so. As Henry Rose writes in this edition of BAR below, w/r/t/ African Americans:
"The new circles of Black elites are not of that historic Black current and offer nothing of value for the future. They are, however, valued by the established order for the services they render - and they know it." I would add a friendly amendment that, "The new circle of White Progressives are not of that historic Liberal current and offer nothing of value for the future..." In otherwords, honest liberals and progressives are being smashed between the Scylla of the "Moderate" (read RW "Liberals") and the Charybdis of the "Right Wing" (read facist/corporatists/bigots).
And this present state of affairs is aided and abetted by the Media and Obama. Glen Ford cogently breaks this down at Real News Network, his premise (correct IMO) is that "Obama allowed the right wing to to dominate the reform debate." Glen, you are too modest. I'll add a friendly amendment to that assertion and say, "Obama has allowed the Right Wing to control ALL public policy debates. And we should have expected this with his poisonous "bipartisans" bullshit, ceding ground to Right Wingers who started Obama's term at the nadir of the movement. As Cripes states, "Welcome to Obamaland." Where moderate is right wing and right wing is facist, and liberals are scrambling to be "Blue Dog" while true "Liberals" are pesky flies and mosquities to be swatted at every opportunity. But you would never know it following today's "news."
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&It...
Plus, this is all kabuki theater inasmuch as Obama and the HMOs and Big Pharma cut a deal before the "health care debate" even started as documented by Greg Palast and Businessweek:
http://www.gregpalast.com/obama-on-drugs-98-cheney/
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/have-the-health-insurers-already-won/
The real question is: "Is there a "Liberal" "Progressive" movement at all? Let's test that hypothesis before we hurl ourselves headlong into convincing "birthers" and "death panelists" that so-called health care reform is another wealth transfer and not socialism, and that Obama is not the anti-christ.
Better Health Insurance
Health care always be important issue in every nation, include also in USA, in Obama's gobernment. People hope that health policy will make justice for the society, according to experience before some insurance health didn't work good enough for some society in USA. So i think the president should fix this problem by collect all insurance company and discuss the best way for society and also for company.
Myspace Play
We should be ashamed
We have entered the upside-down world of Obamaland--where "liberals" fight for their ghastly president's sell-out policies to Finance, Insurance, Real Estate (FIRE) and Pharmaceutical, Munitions industries, etc. etc.
Strangely, the ignorant proles hired by the fascist right correctly oppose Obama "health" policies--for all the wrong reasons--making reasonable people wonder if this, too, is just another bait and switch, kabuki theater exercise in confusing an american public that has never been accused of being too well-informed.
What a godawful shame, and ashamed we should be. If ever there was a time to demand that banks are brought to heel, that our government act insure basic health care for all, to reign in military spending that is bankrupting us, it is now.
Instead, that big-eared jerk, that black Alfred E. Newman, promises that health "reform" won't add a cent to the deficit, sneers at "little singlepayers" questions, while giving away the store to predatory banks and endless military intervention. He makes FDR and LBJ look like communists.
My grandfather was a simple man who worked on the railroad, but even his generation were smart enough to organize unions and fight for the welfare of their own families and workers rights in the middle of a depression. We're a sorry bunch, blathering on about saving the "middle-class" and darfur, "public-private partnerships" and "personal responsibility," while getting our clocks cleaned by facist troglodytes.
Better get in line at the nearest emergency room for that healthcare--or hire a homeless person to hold your place in line--while you can still afford to.
Fake health care sessions
Anyone who lives in the USA should be outraged at these phony/fake/criminal/morally bankrupt/lying politicians. The people I see at these events appear to be regular people and they have every right to be protesting and angry. Why are they being called names? How are they any worse than other organized disruptions? Yes, everyone should be showing up if/when they can and making a stink. These politicians have NOT EVEN READ these crappy pieces of legislation that no one asked for. Why are so many people continuing to protect and stick up for Obozo when he continues to push policies that are detrimental to the majority of the population of the USA? Maybe those "right-wing nuts" and "ignorant wackos" actually read some of the tripe shoveled by these politicians.
The phony debate
This so care debate reminds me of a similar set-up leading up to the Iraq war. Talking heads in the media were pondering over the timing of the war and the size of the army, the extent of the media coverage - but leaving out the question "why go to war?"
Here we have the Democrats who sold out to pharma and the clueless GOP-ers who call Obama a socialist.
I am more skeptical than the author about the possibility of reaching common ground with the protesters from the other side - but I absolutely agree: we should be protesting too.
Wonderfully written piece!