Health care like Wall Street's warfare is a major issue in this
campaign even though most politicians do everything possible to sow confusion about these two issues. In fact, we need to be funding health care instead of warfare
just like many other things. But, keep in mind, just about everyone around the world views health care as a human right as well as peace being a human right. I also think most people in this country would agree with me that we need some kind of "Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity."
One thing to keep in mind when we talk about health care is the very long-term job creating opportunities, too.
Single-payer, at best, creates a couple million new jobs.
A National Public Health Care System providing health care in every
single community through neighborhood centers would create over
twelve-million new jobs with some 850 regional health care centers
(about the same number of U.S. military bases around the world serving
absolutely no purpose at all except protecting Wall Street's interests)
with thousands of neighborhood primary and urgent care clinics.
I think we need an electoral coalition, some kind of "New Broom" coalition to sweep Washington clean of the Wall Street bribed politicians.
I was a big supporter of single-payer universal health care as a step
towards a National Public Health Care System but not anymore since the
Democrats sabotaged this movement which called for enacting H.R. 676--- a
piece of legislation its own author, John Conyers, helped, in the end,
to derail by pushing the national Democratic Party Platform to include
"affordable" health care as a prelude to pave the way for the Affordable
Care Act, Obamacare which should rightly be called: "The Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010."
As a matter of fact, I authored and led the
movement which resulted in the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor
Party's state convention passing the resolution for single-payer universal health care. A resolution that was
later modified to insert ONE IMPORTANT WORD, "AFFORDABLE," which changed
the entire meaning of the resolution without the same grassroots
support the initial resolution had.
I was an elected delegate to
that DFL State Convention and the big-shots, or big-shits as some may
prefer, tried to prevent me from speaking on the convention floor by
challenging my credentials--- a dirty trick that will for certain be used against
many of Bernie's delegates across the country.
Also, the primary
weakness of universal single-payer health care is that it enables most of the health care for
profit crowd to remain happy as single-payer would be publicly financed, publicly
administered and privately delivered contrasted with a National Public
Health Care System which would be publicly financed, publicly
administered and publicly delivered with doctors, nurses and all health
care workers on the public payroll just like teachers.
Bernie
Sanders' approach seems to be to keep all existing public services
public but all new public services publicly funded, publicly
administered and privately delivered. This to me seems very strange for a socialist to be taking this position which is not unlike that of the reactionary neo-liberal crowd which holds the right to profit off anything and everything as being very sacred.
With child care Sanders seems to
favor mostly personal funding, some mixture of private/public
administration and keeping it privately delivered. Like most of what he
advocates in the way of reform the child care advocacy
suffers from huge ambiguities.
Bernie Sanders' infrastructure job creation program would apparently
leave the private engineering firms, private architects, private contractors and private construction firms in charge, instead of the government, to feed
like pigs at the public trough.
Again. I invite those with
documentation to prove me wrong since they say I am lying. I am not
attacking Bernie Sanders I am challenging him to come clean with what
his proposed reforms really are--- and aren't; isn't this why we have political
campaigns in order to clarify where candidates stand and challenge them
if we disagree?
But, don't we all know that ambiguity is the trade-mark of capitalist politics? Always "properly frame issues" with the intent of getting votes; never be specific because someone who disagrees is sure to vote against you.
Plus, ambiguity lets these corrupt politicians off the hook when it comes to assuring accountability.
Shouldn't these candidates participate in
roundtable discussions? Not only to defend their positions but learn
from voters what they are looking for in the way of solutions to their
problems.
It doesn't do much good to attack Citizens United whose
main problem is that it takes citizens out of the democratic
decision-making process when all the Democrats and Republicans are so
arrogant that they think they have the right to shove their thinking,
and what they perceive to be solutions to our problems down our throats.
If Bernie and his campaign, an entourage of very narrow minded people,
are not open to the people for this entire process then this makes a
mockery of his opposition to Citizens United.
If we have enacted a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would require the president and members of Congress to attain and then maintain full employment we would be assuring peace because no Nation can afford "guns and butter."