I posted this in response to a blog posting on “The Century Foundation” web site:
http://takingnote.tcf.org/2010/03/who-is-don-berwick-and-what-will-this-mean-for-health-care-reform.html
The Century Foundation is responsible for coordinating all the work that went into undermining the grassroots and rank-and-file movements for single-payer universal health care.
In my opinion, the hour is too late to keep dinging around with advocating single-payer universal health care… what we now need to do is focus our energies in struggling for socialized health care.
Here is what I posted in response to a blog posting by Maggie Mahar who heads up all the destructive work of The Century Foundation aimed at undermining grassroots and rank-and-file struggles for peace & social and economic justice of which real health care reform is a major part:
Why aren't we talking about a national public health care program (socialized health care)?
This is the only solution to this health care mess created by the for-profit, market driven health care system.
We already have three of the finest socialized health care models to expand and work from: VA, Indian Health Service and the National Public Health Service. Even as under-funded as these public health services are--- they are the best examples of good health care systems in the world.
If we ended these dirty wars that George Bush and the Republicans started with support from the Democrats which Barack Obama and the Democrats now keep going and expanding all on their own, we could use the money now being used to kill people and killing jobs to create the finest public health care system in the world which, in turn, would create up to ten million new jobs.
Here is a formula we should all be considering:
Peace = Socialized health care + Jobs
I work with people employed in the loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos of the Indian Gaming Industry for whom real health care reform is a matter of life-and-death... working people employed in environments causing diseases and illness should not have to pay a single penny for health insurance.
People went to the polls to elect a president and congress to end these dirty wars, for real health care reform and for creating jobs paying real living wages... what we are getting is more wars, the "Health Insurance Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010" and trillion dollar "stimulus funding" creating poverty wage jobs without the enforcement of Executive Order #11246 (affirmative action).
I look forward to your response. In the meantime, we are telling people we are fed up with the politics of the Democrats and the Republicans:
No peace; no votes.
No public health care system; no votes.
No living wage jobs with affirmative action enforced; no votes.
This is what they call "accountability" in a "democracy."
We are living in the richest country in the world with a Wall Street imposed government that can't even provide its own citizens with something so basic as a fundamental human right like health care as trillions of dollars are squandered on militarism and wars.
We have a President who moonlights as a health insurance salesman who has a bunch of Congressman working for him as if they are part of Amway's pyramid scheme as the health insurance industry rakes in the dough and organizations like The Century Foundation have schemed to undermine even a simple reform like a single-payer universal health care system based upon the Canadian model.
Ms. Mahar--- you and The Century Foundation along with your "partners" like the Campaign for America's Future are playing us all for fools as if every day of the year is April Fool's Day.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
