More Looney Views Defending Our "Health Care System"

June 17 Editorial

Today, believe it or not The Editors are presenting another piece defending our disgraceful health care system and the wealthy worthless insurance corporations. In "President Barack Obama rolls out health care ‘Trojan horse’ " they find some fancy far-right AMA member hip surgeon by the name of Norman Dunitz, who essentially spews the radical-right generated talking points on "socialized medicine" and what The trash at The Oklahoman say "...Experts talk of a slippery slope toward government dominance of health care."

Please read "The secret Right-Wing Strategy on Health Care Reform" which I posted several weeks ago. It is interesting to see how all these things are playing out, and how folks like the Oklahoman Editors are playing their part to ensure nothing changes, and that all kinds of lies are told to ensure they get just what they want, and the population continues to suffer.

Now, this Dunitz hoodlum they found is ranting and raving about how a public health option will be a trojan horse for socialized medicine. This is THE talking point the radical-right wants repeated over and over and is why in his talk to the AMA folks, Obama stated very clearly "a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.”

Dunitz states that Obama has said some things and done others. What he does not clarify is that literally everything Obama has backtracked on has greatly benefited people like himself. What kind of progressive President hires people like Summers, Rubin, Pritzker etc...? Dunitz seems to have missed out on this stuff as he is so busy memorizing radical-right propaganda talking-points. If he could give one thing where Obama backtracked on something and it was for the good of the people, not the elites, I would be very surprised.

To hear a decent view on these matters, here is an exerpt from a piece from DemocracyNow! yesterday entitled Dr. Chris McCoy: “Dear AMA: I Quit!”

This exerpt is Dr. Quentin Young speaking, National coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program. He has been a member of the American Medical Association since 1952. He was Reverend Martin Luther King’s doctor when King was organizing in Chicago and was a close ally of Barack Obama in Chicago:

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Quentin Young, you, too, are a member of the AMA. You haven’t quit yet. You’ve been a member for more than half a century. What was your reaction to President Obama’s speech right there in your hometown of Chicago, where he was addressing the AMA?

DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, I was deeply disappointed, because Obama, as we all know, is a brilliant politician and a student of America’s problems, and he has abandoned earlier commitment to single payer for expediency reasons, as far as I can tell.

I am a member of the AMA. But let me explain. I’ve agreed with their policies in the last half-century about a minute and a half. I’m a very severe critic of what AMA has done. And it’s worth noting that AMA membership has dropped from some 90 percent of doctors when I started out a half-century ago, and now about a third of America’s doctors do belong.

The problem is the diagnosis here. America’s difficulties, indeed the crisis in healthcare, is due to one big thing: the multi-payer and private insurance companies. Everybody knows that. Obama knows that. He said he was for single payer not that many years ago, and if he was starting from scratch, was the way he put it, he would go with it. Well, he is starting from scratch, and the failure to grasp the nettle and really give America the kind of healthcare reform system it deserves is very painful and very dangerous.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama said what are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming “a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.” He said, “When you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run healthcare, know this: they’re not telling the truth.” Dr. Young?

DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, to that extent, he’s accurate. This public option is not a slide toward single payer, unfortunately. This is a bugbear that has haunted American medicine debate, and we have to bring it to an end, because it’s too costly, the whole idea that this is socialized medicine, government medicine. We have magnificent examples of government medicine; reactionaries would never dream of calling them back. I speak of the VA system for veterans; the public hospitals, the safety net for the very poor. We have a variety of public systems. Medicare. Is anybody here advocating an end of Medicare? And that’s the government medicine that they’re making a fuss about.

We haven’t got much time left. The system, as Obama aptly notes, is running amuck, and it’s up to $2.5 trillion and, as we all know, rising at a rate two or three times the rate of inflation. And he’s right in saying the economy can’t tolerate it.

Where he’s wrong is his unwillingness to do the serious job of getting the multi-payer insurance companies out of the mix. They add nothing; they subtract a great, great deal. Public experience with this system is horrible. We have a million people having personal bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills, and that just went up from 50 percent of personal bankruptcies to 60 percent—62, to be accurate. And this country, rich as it is, in this economic downturn cannot tolerate it.

Mr. Obama would be wisest to challenge the American people to support single payer, which, I might point out, America’s doctors, in a poll in the University of Indiana last year, April, showed 60 percent of our doctors now support a tax system that provides for healthcare. Doctors have learned there’s something worse than government; it’s called corporations. And we must trade on that insight. And the American public wants it. So, why is there this hesitancy and this currying favor with the reactionaries who talk about socialized medicine? It’s nonsense. It’s American medicine, and it can only grow and serve the people if we have a single-payer system.

Full interview here

Why are we forbidden to hear from people like this in The Oklahoman? Why do they hate giving both sides opinions so much? What are they afraid of?