"Precooked Pabulum" for Obama's Administration

What a sad day it was when Charles Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and China and top defense official for international security decided to give up the fight on his nomination to oversee all intelligence analysis, including the writing of National Intelligence Estimates.

Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair defended Freeman at a Senate hearing under sharp questioning from Sen. Lieberman, Ind. CT. (sharp? Lieberman? is there such a thing as ulterior motive questioning?) . Blair praised Freeman's "inventive mind" and said the analyst wouldn't serve "precooked pabulum" to policy makers.

I hate rumors that circulate through our corridors of power and undermine good people; there is no way to track rumors; they circulate in the air tainting everything, "did you know that Freeman is [insert your unsubstantiated rumor here]. . .

The Washington Post printed an editorial "Blame the Lobby" that shocked me; none of the lobbyists came to them so it can't be true? Really? Let me get this straight - all lobbyists must contact the Washington Post to let you know that they are going to Capitol Hill to spread rumor and innuendo? I'm glad you let me know! (It turns out I'm not the only one who feels this way!)

"The inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel."
What Freeman says is true. You really should read his whole withdrawal statement. Articulate, accurate, amazing.

I am sorry Mr. Freeman's voice won't be giving the Obama administration commentary it needs to hear.

Until later. . .

Contact the White House!

I sent off my pitch for single payer health care to the White House last week - after I learned that no one, NO ONE, not from Congress nor from any physician based group had been invited to their big meeting on health care reform. I checked the box titled "no need to send a reply"; I didn't want to receive one of those lame assurances of concern I get from my congressional representatives.

This morning my husband and I decided that we would both write notes to the White House every day in support of the single payer plan - and a free Palestine (more on this issue in later posts). We will include our congressional representatives (although I noticed that when we discussed which reps, neither of us mentioned Herb Kohl (my thought is that he really doesn't represent us - just himself; but I digress). We don't need to write more than a sentence or two; no one reads to understand what we say, they only tally the issues: "for" or"against".

Yesterday I watched a strangely inarticulate Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), head of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the biggest beneficiaries of payoffs (albeit in advance, but let's call them what they really are) by health insurers and the drug industry in the Senate with $413,000. What he said was, "Well, I just have to make a judgment. And I think at this time in this country, single payer is not going to get even to first base in the Congress. I just—and we’re also—we’re a big—we’re a big country. It’s—you know, we’re a battleship. We’re an ocean liner. We’re not a PT boat. We’re not a speedboat." This, from Democracy Now!

Take a look at this piece from the March 8 2009 Washington Post: "Consumer Watchdog, formerly known as the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, says the amount of money pouring into Congress from the health-care sector raises questions about the independence of lawmakers as they consider dramatic changes to the health-care system. The group conducted the study using Federal Election Commission data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, isolating the insurance and pharmaceutical categories from the broader health-care sector."

Even though President Obama was elected on a mandate for change he has been back-peddling on the single payer issue. He supported it, or said he did, when he first ran for his senatorial seat but on his run up to the presidency, he began to move away from his earlier stance. Listen to Amy Goodman's interview with Obama's friend and former doctor Dr. Quentin Young, Chicago Physicians for a National Health Program, also on her March 18 Democracy Now program. Contrary to President Obama's statement, I am guessing that Americans are not so "acustomed" to their health care being provided by their employers that they wouldn't be REALLY happy to have a single payer system in place that would allow them the safety net of being able to move from one employer to another and still keep the same health benefits. Pre existing conditions would just ride along with continuing coverage. Yes, we have a system in place, but it isn't the system we should be building on. We SHOULD start over and if we were able to set Medicare in place, it shouldn't be that difficult to set up a single payer system for every American citizen.

If you want to send a message to the White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/ or

if you want to write:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

or call:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Until next time.

Single Payer Health Care

There was a period in my life when my husband, small son, and I had no health care insurance. It was the late 1970's and we had just returned to the US after spending seven years in Zaria Nigeria where our son was born and where we both taught school: my husband, Paul, at Ahmadu Bello University, and I at Basawa Teacher's Training College.

Our return to the US was difficult for all of us and the expense of health insurance only added to the stress. As time passed and we joined the ranks of the full-time job-holding American workforce we were lucky to have health coverage through both of our employers - while our health care cup ran over, I never forget the period where we had to pay dearly for our coverage.

Over the past several years I have been fortunate to meet Dr. Gene Farley and his wife Dr. Linda Farley, both passionate advocates for a single payer health care system. In addition, my son, now married with two children and living and working in Denmark, made the decision not to return to the United States and part of the decision was based on the family's access to a state supported health care system.

The election of Bill Clinton brought some hope of health care reform - quickly dashed on the rocks of politics and a spiteful Republican controlled Congress. The "promise of Obama" which still rides high has brought new hope for reform until I learned that he hadn't bother to invite any of the sponsors of H.R. 676, the single-payer bill in Congress (this was later corrected).

Yesterday I spotted this article by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). Our American media can be so damned irritating -asking soft questions, covering parts of issues, not holding the interviewee to the point but letting them go totally off topic. . . Thank goodness for FAIR and for Common Dreams who posted the story!

FAIR Study: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare
Proponents of popular policy shut out of debate

3/6/09

Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama's March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system--two of whom participated in yesterday's summit--were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.

Single-payer--a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada's current system)--polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09). But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major U.S. newspaper.

Over the past week, hundreds of stories in major newspapers and on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer mentioned healthcare reform, according to a search of the Nexis database (2/25/09-3/4/09). Yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of "single-payer" (or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as "Medicare for all," or the proposed single-payer bill, H.R. 676), and only five included the views of advocates of single-payer--none of which appeared on television.

Of a total of 10 newspaper columns FAIR found that mentioned single-payer, Krauthammer's syndicated column critical of the concept, published in the Washington Post (2/27/09) and reprinted in four other daily newspapers, accounted for five instances. Only three columns in the study period advocated for a single-payer system (San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/26/09; Boston Globe, 3/1/09; St. Petersburg Times, 3/3/09).

The FAIR study turned up only three mentions of single-payer on the TV outlets surveyed, and two of those references were by TV guests who expressed strong disapproval of it: conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (NewsHour, 2/27/09) and Republican congressman Darrell Issa (MSNBC's Hardball, 2/26/09).

In many newspapers, the only argument in favor of the policy has been made in letters to the editor (Oregonian, 2/28/09; USA Today, 2/26/09; Washington Post, 3/4/09; Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/27/09; Atlanta Journal Constitution, 2/26/09).

In contrast, the terminology of choice for detractors of any greater public-sector role in healthcare--such as "socialized medicine" and "government-run" healthcare--turned up seven times on TV, including once on ABC News's This Week (3/1/09) and five times on CNN. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has herself adopted this terminology in discussing healthcare reform, stating (CNN Newsroom, 2/26/09) that "if in time, Americans start to think what President Obama is proposing is some kind of government-run health system--a la Canada, a la England--he will get resistance in the same way that Hillary Clinton got resistance when she tried to do tried to do this in the '90s."

Particularly in the absence of actual coverage of single-payer, such rhetoric confuses rather than informs, blurring the differences between the Canadian model of government-administered national health insurance coupled with private healthcare delivery that single-payer proponents advocate, and healthcare systems such as Britain's, in which healthcare (and not just healthcare insurance) is administered by the government.

The views of CNN's senior medical correspondent notwithstanding, opinion polling (e.g., ABC News/Washington Post, 10/9-19/03) suggests that the public would actually favor single-payer.

Though more than 60 lawmakers have co-sponsored H.R. 676, the single-payer bill in Congress, Obama has not expressed support for single-payer; both the idea and its advocates were marginalized in yesterday's healthcare forum. But given the high level of popular support the policy enjoys, that's all the more reason media should include it in the public debate about the future of healthcare.