Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Health care for all the people not for profits for the few.

When I asked Ted Kennedy back in 1972 when Democrats were going to enact Medicare for All he told me that we had to be patient.


Well, back in 1948 Harry Truman ran on a platform which included Medicare for All...


That was seventy years ago.


Does anyone know how many people have suffered and died for lack of health care during these seventy years?


Will the Democrats tell us how many families have lost their homes and everything they worked a lifetime for in order to pay health care bills over this seventy year period?


Will Democrats tell us how many families have had to file medical bankruptcies over these seventy years?


Medicare for All has been the Democrats favorite election gimmick to suck people in. They had no intent of enacting it seventy years ago and they have no intent of enacting it today... not even if there wasn’t one single Republican in Congress.


Frances Perkins placed a National Public Health Care System on the agenda back in 1936 and the Democrats rejected it...


We need to place a National Public Health Care System on the agenda today by building a movement pushing for:


Publicly financed health care.


Publicly administered health care.


Publicly delivered health care.


There is nothing controversial about such health care...


As Frances Perkins pointed out, such a health care system is based on the model of public education and no government program works better than public education.


Now...


The Democrats have never delivered health care reform protecting all of us because their main claim is that it is too expensive.


But...


They have never questioned the cost of militarism and wars nor suggested we have neighborhood and community health care centers across the country providing free health care while creating over twelve million good jobs paying real living wages...


Instead of our tax dollars paying for over 850 U.S. military bases dotting the globe on foreign soil...


We would get about the same number public community health care centers providing the American people with free health care... and for a much lower price.


Imperialist militarism and wars has a very real cost...


Do you want militarism and wars or health care?


Demand that a National Public Health Care System be funded by a Peace Dividend... that Peace Dividend Democrats promised us, just like Medicare for All, exactly seventy years ago, too.


We didn’t get a Peace Dividend.


We didn’t get Medicare for All.


What we got was a great big national debt the bankers and the Wall Street merchants of death and destruction profit from.


Instead of wasting our time supporting these worthless Democrats we should be organizing a massive People’s Lobby to demand a Peace Dividend to pay for a National Public Health Care System.


Medicare for All is nothing but a gimmick and a scam... don’t be sucked in by the Democrats... even if enacted it would be no better than the present Medicare system, which, by the way, Democrats working with Republicans have been wrecking instead of improving... huge payroll taxes still rising, Part B premiums sky high, huge co-pays, the need for very expensive supplemental insurance, no coverage for many very basic health needs like dental and hearing.


I challenge anyone to claim a National Public Health System is not better alternative than Medicare for All which leaves the private, for-profit health care system intact for the doctors, administrators and bill collectors, hospitals, nursing homes and pharmaceutical companies to continue enriching themselves at our expense.


Doctors are bankrupting Medicare and Medicaid because instead of the government setting the fees for service, the American Medical Association establishes fees and under the Medicare for All legislation the American Medical Association would continue to set the fees.