Just a couple of days left.
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
3645 Warrensville Center Rd.
Suite 323
Shaker Heights, OH 44122
Fax: 216-751-8241
stjcampaign@aol.com
My comment on universal health care-
The Democrats should be running on a platform of real universal health care, with no one left out. Sick people should not continue to be a cash crop for insurance companies. 90% coverage is not universal!
Our health care should be privately delivered, but publicly financed. Private health insurance is nothing but legalized theft. Suppose your electric bill is $400 and you don't have that much. And suppose that you check your back yard and find out that someone is tapping into the line between the power provider and your house, siphoning off as much as they can get by with. All of a sudden the fact that you don't have $400 isn't the main problem any more.
Incremental reform plans are inadequate, because they all assume that we continue to spend what we are already spending, but propose adding more to that total in order to further subsidize private insurance companies, who would continue to drain off funds in the pipeline flowing from the public to health care providers.
A note on the problem of cost control--an analogy is controlling the movements of a herd of cattle. You can do the sensible thing and build a fence around them, allowing them to move freely within the confines, or you can hire a passel of cowpokes with sets of reins controlling each cow individually. The former is what Canadians do with global budgeting, and the latter is what HMOs and insurance companies do in the US. It's obvious which system gives providers and patients the most choice.
The current situation is bad and deteriorating, so the Democrats should take full advantage of this ‘teachable moment.’ The Pew Foundation says that 82% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans prefer universal health care to the Bush tax cuts. If we can’t mobilize that kind of popular sentiment and turn it into real policy, what in heaven’s name is wrong with us? Let’s get people on our side by offering a real contrast to the Republicans.The
Nation likes the petition campaign--
http://kucinich.us/misc/nation.phpThe intensifying efforts of grassroots and progressive Democrats to have an impact on their Party’s 2004 national platform received a major boost today when the editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, urged the publication’s readers to sign petitions
http://kucinich.us/petitions/ being circulated by the campaign of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich calling for an exit strategy in Iraq, healthcare reform, and new fair trade agreements.
Criticizing the current draft of the Democratic platform that will be voted on this weekend in Miami, vanden Heuvel wrote, “I think it's shameful that the current 16,000-word document fails to even acknowledge existing divisions among Democrats on future policy toward Iraq.”
The Nation Editor also cites “a strategically-savvy Open Letter to the Platform Committee,” written by longtime political activist Tom Hayden and acknowledged supporter of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. Hayden wrote: "We progressives are not the happy campers that certain self- selected spokesmen describe in the New York Times. Our surface acceptance of the Party's current direction arises from deference to our respected nominee and our common loathing of the Bush Administration.
We are loyal to our partisan objective of defeating Bush, but loyal as well to those principles which we believe are shared by a majority of Democrats and Americans." http://www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?bid=7
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