Obama moving quickly to stack administration with right-wingers, appease Wall Street.

by: Michael Kwiatkowski

Mon Nov 10, 2008 at 13:38:10 PM EST

Those who made excuses for Emanuel, claiming it's simply a "pragmatic" move to ensure the White House has a tough guy with whom to bully recalcitrant GOPhers, are living in a dream world.  They refuse to accept that the appointment of Emanuel, an extreme right-wing Democrat with a history of using his position in the House of Representatives to bully left-wingers and run vicious primary campaigns against them from the right, reflects Obama's impending hard-right style of governance.  Now Obamabots have another jerk to make excuses for: Jane Harman, another Bush dog.  Earlier this year, she voted to give telecommunications companies that aided the shrub in his illegal domestic spying program immunity from prosecution.  This is not surprising, since Obama himself also believes it's okay to let criminals get away with snooping through your communications without warrants or judicial oversight.

And while pseudo-liberals busy themselves trying to stamp out all criticism of their golden calf, Obama - who collected more corporate money than his Republican counterpart, John McCain, did throughout the presidential campaign - is likely going to use it as an excuse to "delay" (read: bury) all hope of passing health care reform, domestic spending, and other vital actions necessary to pull America back from the brink.  This is in spite of calls from more than 15,000 physicians to pass a health care bill that works.

A group of over 15,000 U.S. physicians has called on President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to "do the right thing" and enact a single-payer national health insurance plan, a system of public health care financing frequently characterized as "an improved Medicare for all."

"Our country is hailing the remarkable and historic victory of Barack Obama and the mandate for change the electorate has awarded him," said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.

"In large measure Sen. Obama's victory and the victories of his allies in the House and Senate were propelled by mounting public worries about health care," he said. "Yet the prescription offered during the campaign by the president-elect and most Democratic policy makers - a hybrid of private health insurance plans and government subsidies - will not resolve the problems of our dangerously dysfunctional system.

"We've seen such hybrids repeatedly fail in state-based experiments over the past 20 years in Oregon, Minnesota, Washington and several other states, including Massachusetts, whose second go-round at incremental reform is already faltering," Young said.

"The only effective cure for our health care woes is to establish a single, publicly financed system, one that removes the inefficient, wasteful, for-profit private health insurance industry from the picture," he said. "Single payer has a proven track record of success - Medicare being just one example - and is the only medically and fiscally responsible course of action to take."

Young, who points out recent polls showing a majority of American physicians supporting single-payer health insurance, went on to state:

"We see no value in trying to bail out the private health insurance industry, an unsustainable system of financing care that has outlived its usefulness," he said. "By contrast, a single-payer plan would provide direct and much-needed relief to millions of American households at a time of great economic hardship."

"Only a single-payer system can achieve the goal of comprehensive and affordable care for all," he said, noting that the estimated $350 billion administrative savings realized by replacing private insurers would be enough to cover all of the country's uninsured and to end co-payments and deductibles for all Americans. "This would be the perfect way for President Obama to get the country back on track."

Obama's plan, however, falls far short of universal coverage, and allows people to game the system by waiting until they get sick to sign up for insurance, thereby driving up costs.  What's more, with the bailout throwing taxpayer money away on salvaging corporate profits, Obama is ensuring that even this pitiful excuse for health care reform is unlikely to be passed.  There is something we can do, however.  Ralph Nader and other progressives have laid the groundwork to hit Congress from all sides, thus applying pressure on the Legislature to do its job of representing the interests of all Americans.

http://november5.org

Check out the web site linked to above, and find out how you can add your voice to the thousands already gearing up to hold Democrats' feet to the proverbial fire.