Why is the discussion ONLY about RyanCare? Or is it Don'tCare?

[Atman]

I just don't get why the for-profit nature of our health care industry isn't part of the discussion. It is the biggest driver of costs. It's not Doctors' reimbursements, they've gone down every year. It's not fraud, though I don't deny fraud exists. In retail, it's called "shrinkage" or "loss control," and you deal with it. The insurance companies now deal with health care claims as "shrinkage" or "loss control," there is NO INCENTIVE for them to pay out claims. They are in it to make a profit, not to help anyone. They should be the first pillar we knock down, not the Medicare program you've paid into your whole life, but is now about to be pulled out from underneath you. Fuck Ryan and his "plan."

Okay,actually I do get it, from the standpoint of who owns the media and how much advertising dollars they get from Big Pharma, the Insurance Industry, etc. I get that, they're whores. Expensive whores. Escorts to the trough. Whores by any other name.

But why isn't there a Democrat up there saying roughly what I just typed (without the PG13 rating, of course)? Why isn't a there one serious person among a nation of 300,000,000+ willing to stand up and give this speech and address this issue? Unless, of course...they're just as bought and paid for as the media.

*sigh*

Never mind.

[ejpoeta]

1. there probably are. there is a 'people's budget' that the media seems to refuse to even

bring up as having been proposed at all. i think that the media won't even show anyone talking about anything that does not fit into their narrative. they have decided what the fight is going to be about and will only entertain things that fit in that narrative.

[dkf]

2. Did they address Medicare costs?

[ejpoeta]

4. The people's budget:

You can find it http://grijalva.house.gov/uploads/The%20CPC%20FY2012%20Budget.pdf">here.

Overview of Our Policies
Individual Income Tax Policies
• Allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, but extend marriage relief, credits, and
incentives for children, families, and education
• Immediately rescind the upper-income tax cuts in December’s tax deal
• Index the AMT for inflation for a decade (the AMT patch is fully paid for)
• Schakowsky millionaire tax rates proposal (adding 45%, 46%, 47%, 48%, and 49% top rates)
• Tax all capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income
• Progressive estate tax (Sanders’ estate tax, repeal of Kyl-Lincoln)
• Limit the rate at which itemized deductions can reduce tax liability to 28%for high earners
• Replace the tax exclusion for interest on state and local bonds with a subsidy for the issuer
Corporate Tax Reform
• Tax U.S. corporate foreign income as it is earned
• Eliminate corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies
• Enact a financial crisis responsibility fee
• Financial speculation tax (derivatives, foreign exchange)
• Reinstate Superfund taxes
Health Care
• Enact a public option
• Negotiate Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies
• CMS program integrity and other Medicare and Medicaid savings in the president’s budget
• Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade (maintain doc fix)
Social Security
• Raise the taxable maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable
maximum on the employer side
• Increase benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side
Defense Savings
• End overseas contingency operations emergency supplementals starting in Fiscal Year 2013,
providing $170 billion in FY2012 to fund redeployment, while saving more than $1.8 trillion
from current law spending levels over ten years.
• Reduce baseline defense spending by reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces,
procurement, and R&D programs
Comprehensive Jobs Program
• Invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, education, clean energy and broadband infrastructure,
housing, and R&D
• Infrastructure bank
• Surface transportation reauthorization bill ($213 billion)

[liberalmike27]

5. I loved the Clinton saying

Get sicker, die quicker.

As to the original quesion, it's on the corporate media, with talking heads that get up to 50 million a year to spread their anti-poor, pro-poverty so a few can be wildly wealthy, rhetoric.

[wiggs]

3. Bernie Sander is saying it (tho not a dem). nt

[wiggs]

6. There are a whole lot of arguments that aren't being used by

dems re healthcare: spending 2x as much for healthcare as next industrialized country for a healthcare rating near the bottom....our life expectancy, our infant mortality rate...number of medical bankruptcies....the fact that we're the only industrialized country that allows for-profit primary care insurance

...but one of the great frustrations over the last 10 years has been the realization that dems have one foot with us, on our side of the fence, and one foot with the corporatists with whom they grew up, with whom they sit on corporate boards, and who are their neighbors. The dems have all the issues, literally, yet 'keep their powder dry' and allow the gop to drag the conversation and legislation to the right almost every time.

[Atman]

7. +100

:(