Yesterday our great orange leader Markos asked to know more about Obama's being quoted in the Wall Street Journal as supporting Single Payer national health coverage. Here's what Obama actually said at the New Mexico event:

"If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system," Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy.

[snip]

But Obama repeated that he rejects an immediate shift to a single-payer system. "Given that a lot of people work for insurance companies, a lot of people work for HMOs. You’ve got a whole system of institutions that have been set up," he said at a roundtable discussion with women Monday morning after a voter asked, "Why not single payer?"

The fair and balanced FOX news has created a new affiliate that they're calling FOCKS news.  I have been hired as their new investigative journalist.

For my first FOCKS report, I have been doing some investigative work into where our great hero, John McCain, stands on the issues.

I was surprised to find, despite his being a former POW, that he is really a radical liberal who wants socialized medicine.

Today's Dallas Morning News has a front-page article headlined:

McCain's health insurance plan: More radical than Democrats'?

Perhaps some eyes will finally be opened among the older, conservative demographic targeted by most of this newspaper. Then again, perhaps pigs will fly. But it's worth your look, I think. Some excerpts and observations to follow...

HR-676 is the United States National Health Insurance Act (or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) sponsored by John Conyers and co-sponsered by some 91 congresspeople in the House. It is the so-called single payer  bill supported by CNA/NNOC, PNHP, Health for Now and endorsed by many unions and other civic organizations.

But what does it actually say?

nyceve, me, and many others have diaried about with much linky goodness, but not everybody clicks through. So below, here it is in all it's cut-n-paste glory from Rep. Conyers house website and the "thomas.loc" house website.

Let us take time to know what it is we are supporting.

Imagine that you work in pain everyday.  Your body aches; your muscles throb; you just plain hurt. Something’s not right, and you pray everyday that it doesn’t get worse because you can’t afford to go to the doctor.  

Unfortunately, this is a reality for too many workers in this country and a story we heard on the Painful Truth Tour’s Orlando stop. I’ve been blogging about UNITE HERE’s tour of injured workers from the Cintas Corporation’s industrial laundries and how it points to the need for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass next year.

In follow-up to an earlier diary by Tasini I've sent an email to leading members of the Democratic Party Platform Committee to strengthen the language for real universal health care.

Here are the emails in cut-n-paste form for everybody:

tburga@ohaflcio.org, MYaki@jmbm.com, tpersico@murphy08.com, rmcguiness@colemancampaign.com, chuck@rosadelauro.com,dharris-aikens@nea.org, andrew@jenningsps.com, zazette1428@msn.com, agussert@charter.net, ronhishorse@aol.com, campaign@tammybaldwin.com, brittanigarner@tammybaldwin.com, BillMurat@aol.com

This started as a response to Kitsap River's excellent diary, but as usual when commenting on someone else's diary, I developed diarrhea of the word processor. Since my Kaiser plan doesn't cover that, I brought it here.

One of the best arguments I can think of in favor or single-payer UHC is the one the right-wing free-marketeers drag out all the time:  No business entity is, itself, entitled to exist or to be profitable in the first place. The "hand of the market" determines which businesses survive and which fail.

Sounds great to the laissez-faire crowd, when Wal-Mart swoops into a town and wipes out half the other businesses. But apply the same allegedly axiomatic principle to for-profit health care insurance corporations, and watch their heads explode.

Exactly one month ago, my wife Bradie suffered a miscarriage after 22 weeks of pregnancy.  He was going to be our first child, our son, and he already had a name- mine (it's a tradition in my family, I'm the 4th of my name).  

We don't know why or how it happened, but it did, and was the most devastating thing that ever happened to us.  Then, a week later, she developed a life-threatening complication, an infection, and had to return to the hospital for a surgical procedure.  

Despite this awful tragedy, the last few weeks have reminded us how much we love and cherish each other, and as we mourn and recover together I am moved to consider myself lucky despite everything that I'm married to such a wonderful woman.  

That's all I'm going to say about that.  I dearly love this community, but I'm not going to use this space to share my personal pain.  

Instead, our story is simply background for the point I'd like to make.  I thought I'd share with you something a little more apropos to the site: we just received our bill from the hospital.  

It is truly a shining example of the outrageous state of our health care system.  After the flip, I'll share with you some of the most egregious (and bleakly hilarious) points:

Some of you will remember our niece Brittani, who was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma when she was 15. Brittani underwent chemotherapy to kill off the cancer, which worked. Unfortunately, the chemo also killed off her lungs. Brittani had a double lung transplant in May 2007 to correct this.

For the first year after the surgery, things went fairly well. She went diabetic, then not diabetic, then back to being diabetic, which she remains. For most of the year following her recovery, Brittani got to act like a normal kid, albeit an extra careful one, since her immune system is suppressed by the anti-rejection drugs she must take.

But in the past few months, she has started to lose lung function.

On Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 my godson Sam was critically injured in a fall; a fall that has almost taken his life several times now.  Sam is 10 years old.

I should give you some context by way of back story...I love to ride motorcycles.  I find every excuse possible to ride my motorcycle.  I live 1 mile from work and sometimes it can take me two hours to get home...but only on the days that I ride in.  When I find a girlfriend that will hopefully end up as my wife one of the qualifiers will be the motorcycle test; 70% or better...otherwise she will flunk the entire quarter and have to take the class again.  The motorcycle test will comprise 50% of the letter grade...you get the idea.

By mana_man

After observing human nature for sixty years I see that most folks are basically nice....but some of them....well, ‘clueless’ is too impolite a word, and calling people dumb as a bag of hammers wasn’t attracting many buyers either, so maybe I’ll just say that a lot of people don’t have a well-developed sense of situational awareness. Or, as I sometimes mumble..."Here’s your sign".

Most people know that the cost of prescription drugs is going up, and that the drug companies are not hurting despite most business and industries taking a hit in the recent recession.  We look at the cost in one county, and the causes nationwide.

Otherwise it would be known as the teethbrush.  (Before you start composing the hate mail, you should know that we have a tradition in Massachusetts and New Hampshire of insulting each other. It's okay, they're still Sox fans and we still go skiing.)

I'm planning to have big fun this afternoon getting endodontic therapy, popularly known as a root canal.  This will be my third, which leads me to reflect that one of the particularly unintelligent aspects of our design is that the teeth just aren't built to last a lifetime.  Here's some info from the CDC which might get your attention.  

There aren't enough thanks in the world for everyone who responded to my Monday diary about my brother Alan.  The past 45 hours have changed a lot of landscape because of your comments, suggestions, resource links, and contributions to the ChipIn account that betson08 (of Pretty Bird Woman House fame!) suggested.

E-mails have come from literally all over the world with information and offers of assistance.  In just 45 hours, we've raised more than $2,500 via the ChipIn site and other contributions.  A friend is helping me send the money via a Visa gift card and payment on account at my brother's pharmacy and the local grocery store.  Others are sending him birthday cards (he turns 47 on June 30).

I just read  drchelo's very moving diary about his/her work with a charity clinic and s/he mentioned that Thursday is "health care change" night at dailykos so I thought I'd share my story.

I spent 1995 through the fall of 2006 in the ranks of the uninsured. During those years I grew angrier and more frustrated over the state of health care in this country. I finally got health insurance late in 2006. That's when I really got angry.

Reading through John McCain’s Health Care proposals it is obvious that not only does he not have a plan but he purposely ignores the real issues facing millions of Americans.   So let’s go though McCain’s proposals and see exactly what they are;

A "Call to Action"

John McCain believes we can and must provide access to health care for every American. He has proposed a comprehensive vision for achieving that. For too long, our nation's leaders have talked about reforming health care. Now is the time to act.

Ok Sidney, thanks! Let’s act (like you give a rat’s ass about health care).

that I'm headed for a dire financial future.

My BCBS health insurance premium just went up to $581 {39% of my income}...I'm 50 yo, have a $1000 deductible and an 80/20 plan.  If increases continue as they have, I will not be able to afford insurance in just 2 more years as the cost will be just shy of $1000 a month.  I had a "good kind" of breast cancer (required no chemo, etc.) 3 years ago so I am unable to enroll in a different plan.

Will the Democrats solve the healthcare crisis?  Or should I just cancel my policy now 2 years early, bank that money and hope for the best?  Thanks for your thoughts & advice.

Anyone with a modicum of environmental awareness must realize that subsidizing further development of coastal habitats with federal tax dollars is a bad idea.  And yet that is precisely the effect of proposed federal legislation to subsidize insurance in hurricane zones.  Like similar laws that encourage irresponsible growth in flood plains, such legislation would underwrite the irresponsible development of critical habitats.  The result is subsidized environmental destruction, as well as economically nonsensical policy.