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Showing Original Post only (View all)How Obama and the Democrats failed to defend the universal right to healthcare [View all]
from In These Times:
A Private-Sector Model: Really?
How Obama and the Democrats failed to defend the universal right to healthcare.
BY James Thindwa
Outside observers watching the brouhaha over the Affordable Care Acts website malfunction might well have assumed that the GOP, not the Democratic Party, is the governing party. After all, GOP zealots turned the long-overdue launch of national healthcarea momentous achievement for the countryinto a phony crisis about a website malfunction. Whats more, the national media obliged by allotting more time to fulminations about the website than interrogating the ideologues who oppose healthcare equity. While a few progressive commentators pushed back, the governing party went into retreat.
The GOP fury over the websites issues was rooted not in any newfound interest in the ACAs success, but in a long-held opposition to healthcare as a right. In a telling moment in the 2008 presidential debates, Obama asserted a right to healthcare, and McCain rejected it. The problem is that Democrats have handled this malevolence as normal political discourse, rather than the outlier worldview it is. Republicans are the only major political party in the industrialized world still fighting national healthcare. The failure of Democrats to turn this retrograde worldview into a national scandal explains why the GOP maintains an undeserved death grip on the healthcare conversation.
But Democrats have not only failed to confront Republicans. They have also reinforced conservative mantras that undermine their professed agenda by mimicking the anti-government evangelism and uncritical exaltation of markets, most memorably in Bill Clintons famous 1996 declaration that the era of big government is over. Democrats also ceded political space to GOP fanatics during the Affordable Care Acts conception in 2009. Instead of contesting Tea Party fearmongering around Obamacare, Democrats offered concessionsfirst by excluding single-payer healthcare from consideration, then jettisoning the public option. The presidents (and the ACAs) declining popularity underscores growing public doubts about Democrats willingness to stand and fight.
Rather than reassert the purpose of his health plan in the face of post-launch criticism, Obama apologizedrepeatedly. His team promised that the improved ACA website would operate with private-sector velocity and effectiveness. Apparently they couldnt find any examples of government velocity and effectiveness. They clearly didnt consider the U.S. air traffic control system, which wondrously handles 64 million takeoffs and landings each year (Air Force One included) and oversees the safest skies in the world. Nor the Social Security Administration, which has never missed a payment to its 57,469,232 beneficiaries. By contrast, in the private sector last year, a security breach at Target Corp compromised the credit card data of 70 million customers, and a battery malfunction grounded all Dreamliner jetsbuilt by that icon of capitalism, Boeingbut no one blamed free enterprise. ...........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16129/a_private_sector_model_really
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How Obama and the Democrats failed to defend the universal right to healthcare [View all]
marmar
Jan 2014
OP
This particular 'some guy' is a Chicago labor leader who thinks PBO owes him. He gets little
msanthrope
Jan 2014
#7
Wesley Clark was on NPR 'The Takeaway' this morning and talked about ''Bob Gates''...
Octafish
Jan 2014
#15
You're on a roll today, marmar! Thank you for representing the democratic arm of the
loudsue
Jan 2014
#10
The Greens and Libertarians don't like the ACA numbers any more than the Repubs do. nt
msanthrope
Jan 2014
#14
Canada's private health insurance companies were never as well entrenched as in the USA
Fumesucker
Jan 2014
#17
The similarity is the states/provinces go first, then the national system follows.
jeff47
Jan 2014
#18
If that were true, the insurance industry wouldn't be giving their political contributions
jeff47
Jan 2014
#20
Again, how exactly would the insurance industry stop it in all blue states? (nt)
jeff47
Jan 2014
#30
The same way they got a Democratic president to kill the public option we were promised
Fumesucker
Jan 2014
#31