Absolutely Everything Else: A healthcare reform for suckers

Thursday, July 23, 2009

A healthcare reform for suckers

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

Editor's Note: Most visible "liberal media assets" such as MoveOn.org, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Huffington Post, The Nation, etc., have circled the wagons around Obama as the hypocritical attacks by the right continue to convince people that his healthcare plan is really a populist assault on ingrained corporate power. In doing so, these liberals are adding further credence to the ludicrous notion that this is indeed a serious if not revolutionary plan, one being secured at great cost by a heroic and embattled president, standing tall for the interests of the "little guy". Alas, if only part of this manufactured belief were true. As it is, all that's being obtained by such loyalty to Obama is to add confusion to an already sufficiently murky debate, rendered intentionally obscure by the Obama team itself, which is advancing a veritable Rube Goldberg concoction capable of satisfying no one, but sure to meet the demands of his real political owners, the rich financial elites who chose him, promoted him through their media, and eventually made his election possible. A lot of suckers are born every minute in America, but the birth rate for this kind of infant sure shot up since Obama rode into town.

By Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama's left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?

The health care debate inside and outside the matrix

Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you're inside or outside the matrix.

Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan [1] is at last making its way through Congress. It's being fought by greedy private insurance companies, by chambers of commerce, by Republican and some Democratic lawmakers.

Under the Obama plan, we're told, employers will have to insure their employees or pay into a fund that does it for them. Individuals will be required under penalty of law to buy private insurance policies and for those that can't afford it or prefer not to use a private insurer there will be something called a "public option." This "public option, the story goes, is bitterly fought by the bad guys because it will make private insurers accountable by competing with them, forcing them to lower their costs. Both the president's backers and opponents agree that the whole thing will be fantastically expensive, and the president proposes to fund it with cuts in existing programs like Medicaid which pay for the care of the poorest Americans and a tax on those making more than $300,000, later raised to $1 million a year.

The "public option" has that magic word "public" in it, and that's reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.

That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.

What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama's left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama's way or the Republicans' way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.