A letter to David Swanson

David,

John Marty’s healthcare legislation is anything BUT single-payer universal healthcare.

Certainly nothing like Canadian-style healthcare.

John Marty is using this as an election gimmick pure and simple.

You obviously haven’t bothered to ask how much this healthcare will cost someone of very modest means.

A working person making around $35,000.00 a year will be paying a premium of about $750.00 a month. I lived in Canada for ten years, and I seriously doubt even Conrad Black paid that much into the healthcare system every month. With Social Insurance (pretty much like Social Security here) and Canada Health Care combined, about $62.00 was deducted from my pay-check every month while I lived in Manitoba.

You may hold John Marty up as some kind of progressive, in fact, this past weekend he had op-ed pieces published explaining the military budget is robbing us of things like healthcare placing the blame for these wars on Bush--- never mentioned Obama.

In fact, I think if you do a survey of most unions, you will find none supporting this Marty proposal.

In fact, I asked the national PNHP to certify this legislation as authentic single-payer universal healthcare… they have refused to state this.

In fact, anyone taking the time to read this legislation quickly finds out that it will relieve the burden of healthcare costs for business--- especially small business and well-heeled professionals while placing a greater burden for healthcare costs on the backs of the poor and working people.

John Marty can’t even protect the interests of the poor in a Democratic controlled Minnesota legislature which is essentially veto-proof on this issue.

Minnesota Democrats passed the strongest resolution in support of single-payer universal healthcare in the nation--- I wrote it; John Marty and almost every single sitting Democrat in the Minnesota State Legislature opposed it… 72% of the 2006 State DFL Convention delegates supported it. A resolution based on the understanding that what was being supported was Canadian-style healthcare.

PDA and PNHP stopped referring to John Marty’s “Minnesota Health Act” as single-payer; now, here you come claiming that it is single-payer. In fact, because of my objections stated very publicly including in newspaper op-ed pieces, John Marty had to rename his legislation--- he initially called it Single-Payer.

The “Minnesota Health Act” is a most reactionary and regressive piece of healthcare legislation; if the legislation in these other states is anything remotely similar, they are not single-payer.

You need to be up-front with your readers and tell them that you think this is single-payer by explaining the atrocious premiums that will come with this legislation and then state you support this as the kind of single-payer you have in mind.

John Marty has refused, time and time again to state the costs associated with this. In fact, John Marty cancelled a series of campaign events after I stated to the media that I would be present to question him about the costs associated with this legislation.

John Marty is now pushing this as legislation “supplemental” to Barack Obama’s and the Democrat’s health insurance “reforms.”

In fact, John Marty’s primary supporter for this has been the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition whose head, John Kolstadt ran for Mayor of Minneapolis with support from the Republicans, the John Birch Society and the Ron and Rand Paul supporters. Kolstadt’s main platform was support for the Minnesota Health Act… boasting that he led the efforts for it’s passage.

I am posting this to my blog… I make the same offer to you I have made to John Marty… I will be happy to publish your response.

I can assure you that if you bother to ask working people if they want a $750.00 health care premium they will tell you in no uncertain terms, “no.”

If anyone challenges my figure of $750.00 a month; I suggest that you get the figures directly from DFL gubernatorial candidate John Marty who is viewed as a washed up loser when it comes to running for governor and publish these figures. Let’s have a complete breakdown of premium fees beginning at $4,000.00 going up to $250,000.00 a year incomes.

Together with Marty’s premium fees and Obama’s mandatory insurance, Minnesotans are going to have it socked to them real good--- fortunately John Marty will never become governor and his Minnesota Health Act doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of ever passing so why is anyone wasting our times on this when real healthcare reform is what is needed--- John Marty just abhors me talking about single-payer as a step towards socialized/public healthcare, but, this is what is really needed.

John Marty is the epitome of an opportunist politician the American people and Minnesotans are fed up with.

Alan L. Maki



Single-Payer Healthcare Coming to Missouri
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/50429
By David Swanson

Canada did not create a civilized healthcare system nationally until its provinces led the way. Clearly Congress is dragging behind the states in our country, and it is through state successes that we will eventually compel the U.S. government to provide our people with this basic human right.

Hawaii has a single-payer healthcare system. California's legislature has passed a single-payer bill three times but not yet found a governor to sign it into law. Single-payer healthcare bills are advancing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and a growing list of states, including New Mexico, where State Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a long-time supporter of single-payer healthcare, is running for Lieutenant Governor. In Minnesota, single-payer champion John Marty is running for Governor.

I recently wrote about North Carolina house candidate Marcus Brandon, who has pledged to introduce a bill to create single-payer healthcare in that state as his first act in office. Now a formidable candidate for state representative in Missouri has made a similar commitment.

Byron DeLear, whom I have known and learned from for years, said on Monday: "If elected, I will sponsor the 'Melanie-Care for All Act', providing a simple plan to get all of our Missourian families the coverage, protection and care we deserve." DeLear, is a state rep. candidate in the 79th District of Missouri. (See http://www.ByronDeLear.org ) and who is Melanie?

DeLear explains: "A dear friend of mine, Melanie Shouse, recently passed away from breast cancer. She found a lump in her breast but couldn't afford to see a doctor. Through the course of her disease she tirelessly continued to advocate for healthcare for all as a moral imperative. I met her through our shared work as concerned citizens and like many of her friends and colleagues was inspired by her unbridled energy and enthusiasm to effect positive change. Even in the midst of great personal suffering, Melanie selflessly put it all on the line and did the best she could to help us all. Her story was propelled to the national stage with President Obama mentioning her in a speech and culminating with 'Melanie's March' from Philadelphia to Washington DC, ending with a rally attended by Senate leader Harry Reid and other members of Congress."

DeLear is proposing to accomplish something, however, that neither Obama nor Reid will even entertain any discussion of: taking the profit-motive out of healthcare coverage. "If Melanie had access to affordable healthcare," DeLear says, "her untimely death might have been prevented. Seeing a doctor was simply too expensive, just as it is for tens of thousands of Missourians, whose fear of skyrocketing healthcare costs are justified. Health insurance premiums in Missouri have risen 82.5% in the last decade, consequently, the vast majority of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical costs, for both the insured and uninsured alike. This creates a specter of fear for families all across our state. Melanie's death is one of thousands of needless lives lost due to our current broken and inhumane healthcare insurance system."

DeLear provides the statistics for the nation and his state: "According to a recent Harvard Study, 45,000 Americans perish each year due to lack of preventive or primary healthcare. This equals approximately 800 Missourians like Melanie. 800 Missourians die each year due to our broken healthcare system. This is a moral crisis, and suggests that we should all take a step back from the raging debate to ask ourselves, in a perfect world, what would our ideal system be? What do we want for the family of Missouri? And then takes steps to make that ideal a reality, or get as close to it as possible."

DeLear proposes something that has never been mentioned in over a year of endless, tireless, and tiresome healthcare debating in Washington, namely looking for a minute at all the nations that have already solved this problem and asking how they have done so: "Many nations have struggled with the health-care debate before us. What's the best way to adopt complete healthcare coverage for all? The world is full of examples of different solutions to this question. But the trends over time are very specific. What they show is that . . . universal coverage, regardless of class distinctions, is the desirable end result. This goes to the heart of what insurance is and mathematically what 'risk pools' are all about. Pooling risk makes a community, state, and nation stronger. It protects us all against personal catastrophe. Currently, in the United States, health insurance corporations cherry pick through the populace to determine who's worthy of coverage, or how to deny care once you become sick. This is at odds with the healing mandate of the medical profession, and has to be turned around."

DeLear makes an unequivocal commitment, saying "The right thing to do, is to cover all our citizens with healthcare. Medicare covers and protects more than 800,000 Missourians. The first bill I will support will be a Medicare-for-All type plan for Missouri. In honor of our local heroine, Melanie Shouse, if elected, I will sponsor the 'Melanie Care for All Act', providing a simple plan to get all of our Missourian families the coverage, protection and care we deserve."

Byron DeLear's website is at
http://www.ByronDeLear.org

He needs all the help he can get, and there is a little button on his site reading "Make Donation". Those who want a real healthcare system in this country would be wise to pour money into his campaign and those of other state leaders across the country.

Alternatively we could keep putting all our eggs in the basket of fantasies about the United States Senate getting its act together and fixing bills after they're passed.



Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell Phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Please check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Mouse-land and healthcare reform

Mr. Boston;

This is an outright lie and you know it:

“Like the Democrats after their 2008 victory, the CCF moved slowly at first to implement its plan, a delay that emboldened the opposition. In an attempt to win the support of doctors, the government created an advisory panel for their concerns. Doctors used the panel to stall, and the government waited more than a year to pass its reforms, with the start date delayed until July 1, 1962. The province's doctors responded with a vote to strike if the plan was implemented.”

The Democrats have proposed nothing like the CCF or NDP and is in no way like them.

This is dishonest to assert this.

Maybe you should check out this speech out by socialist Tommy Douglas and circulate it to your e-mail list:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqpFm7zAK90

Mouseland by Tommy Douglas.

Tommy Douglas was an ardent proponent of socialized healthcare from the very beginning of his political career… plus, the Liberal Party in Canada which you cite correctly as being an opponent of healthcare reform (and still is) is more akin to the Democratic Party than the Republican Party… but, alas, the Liberal and Conservative parties in Canada are the parties of big-business just like their Democratic and Republican Party counterparts here in the United States… we need a party similar to the socialist New Democratic Party (CCF) if we are ever going to achieve real progressive healthcare reform.

Again, your assertion that Democrats are doing anything like the NDP did in Canada is an out-right lie and you should correct this for those on your e-mail list… but, alas, it has been your purpose from the very beginning to serve to disorient and confuse working people when it comes to healthcare reform. You think you are being real “cute” in engaging in your despicable tactics of deceit… par for the course for the way Democrats operate.

The American people are going to give the Democrats the just trouncing they deserve at the polls come Election Day 2010 and Election Day 2012 and this kind of blatant dishonesty you promote will prove to be the Democrat’s own undoing because the American people are fed up with the kind of shenanigans you are engaged in here looking to confuse and disorient working people on the issue of healthcare reform.

It is dishonest people like you who fuel the fascist and racist Tea-bagger movement which makes working people so cynical they don’t want to participate in politics.

In this article you provide, this is a fine example of what all demagogues do; they include a little bit of truth with their pack of lies to justify giving the working people a good shafting. 

Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell Phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Please check out my blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

From: mark boston [mailto:markmabmab@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 1:25 PM
To: markmabmab@gmail.com
Subject: Fwd: Tea Party, Canada-Style

Tea Party, Canada-Style!

America's battle over health care reform started in Saskatchewan.

By Christopher Flavelle Posted Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010, at 6:51 AM ET

Nearly 50 years before Sarah Palin gave us "death panels," the American Medical Association was testing the limits of health care scare tactics in the Canadian prairies. During the 1960 provincial election in Saskatchewan, the AMA helped fund an advertising campaign aimed at defeating the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a quasi-socialist party whose leader, a former Baptist minister named Tommy Douglas, had promised to introduce universal, government-funded health care in the province. 

Protesting the implementation of medicare in Saskatchewan, July 11, 1962 The AMA, together with Saskatchewan's College of Physicians and Surgeons, warned that if the CCF won, doctors would leave the province in droves. But here was the kicker: As Dave Margoshes writes in his 1999 biography of Douglas, the campaign told voters that if the state were permitted to take over health care, "patients with hard-to-diagnose problems would be shipped off to insane asylums by bungling bureaucrats." 

The campaign failed. Douglas won the election, and the CCF government went on to introduce his health care plan in 1962, creating the model that the rest of Canada would later follow. (So far as we know, insane-asylum panels did not come to pass.) But the fight for health care reform in Saskatchewan, which the AMA worried could spark change in the United States, was a precursor to the battle in America today—a mix of populist anger, political opportunism, and disinformation. As Democrats debate whether to pursue health care reform in the face of growing opposition, they might consider the lessons of Saskatchewan. 

Like the Democrats after their 2008 victory, the CCF moved slowly at first to implement its plan, a delay that emboldened the opposition. In an attempt to win the support of doctors, the government created an advisory panel for their concerns. Doctors used the panel to stall, and the government waited more than a year to pass its reforms, with the start date delayed until July 1, 1962. The province's doctors responded with a vote to strike if the plan was implemented.

The events of the next 10 months were ugly by Canadian standards. Douglas' push for health care reform "lit the fuse of the incendiary bomb that would tear Saskatchewan apart into its two opposing elements," wrote Doris French Shackleton in her 1975 biography of Douglas. 

Part of the unrest came from doctors themselves. In the months leading up to the new plan, physicians across Saskatchewan put up office signs reading, "Unless agreement is reached between the present government and the medical profession, this office will close as of July 1." Douglas' wife, Irma, described how a doctor would tell his pregnant patient, after a check-up, "I'm afraid this is the last time I'll be able to see you." 

The doctors' worries about being paid by the province, rather than patients, may have been genuine. But those concerns were amplified by Saskatchewan's opposition Liberal Party, which had been shut out of power since 1944. Like the American Republicans 50 years later, the Liberals fought health reform in two ways: directly, by opposing it in public; and indirectly, by supporting groups that could provide the appearance of broad-based public anger. In Saskatchewan, the public opposition to health reform came in the form of a movement called Keep Our Doctors, which organized rallies and protests across the province.

Sometimes, the Liberals blurred the line between political opposition and rabble-rousing. At a Keep Our Doctors rally outside the provincial legislature, Liberal leader Ross Thatcher used the occasion to call for a special session of the legislature, which wasn't sitting at the time. To illustrate his point, he invited TV cameras to follow him up to the locked doors of the legislature, which he then made a show of trying to kick down.

But in another precursor to today's Tea Party movement in the United States, the unrest over health reform in Saskatchewan proved to be more than just political theatrics. "The fears inspired by the doctors and fanned by the Liberal party," Shackleton writes, "convinced many people at least briefly that the CCF was a dictatorial, power-mad, ruthless group of politicians who would rather see people die for lack of medical care than back down." Shackleton described "a sense of civil war." (Read more about the unrest in Saskatchewan.)

Public anger against the plan found its lightning rod in Douglas, who had resigned as Saskatchewan's premier to run for federal office as the member of Parliament for Regina. Election Day was June 18, 1962—just two weeks before the new health care plan was to take effect. A woman who worked on Douglas' election campaign recalled the venom of the time. At night at the campaign office, "teenagers would come up and hiss at us through the glass," she remembered later. 

"The city's residents had been whipped into a near-hysteria by the doctors' anti-medicare campaign," Margoshes writes, adding, "There were graffiti threats on city walls and calls in the middle of the night to Tommy's house. His campaign manager, Ed Whelan, got frequent calls from a man threatening to 'shoot you, you Red bastard!' A few homeowners placed symbolic coffins on their front lawns." 

As in the United States today, opponents of the health reform plan weren't sure whether to denounce the CCF as Communists or Nazis, so they did both. Protesters greeted Douglas' motorcade with Nazi salutes—when they weren't throwing stones at it. Other opponents painted the hammer and sickle on the homes of people thought to be associated with the party.

The doctors made good on their threats: When the new health care plan was introduced on July 1, doctors across the province walked off the job. But the government was ready, flying in replacement doctors, mostly from Britain. The strike ended after three weeks, the health care plan stayed in place, and four years later, the Canadian government passed the Medical Care Act, which provided funding for every province to create a similar plan

Douglas and his party were vindicated. Once their plan took effect, Shackleton writes, it "was soon so well accepted that no political party had the temerity to suggest its abolition."

But that vindication came too late. Douglas, who had led the CCF to five straight provincial victories, lost his federal campaign that June, receiving barely half as many votes as his opponent. Two years later, the Liberals defeated the CCF for the first time in 20 years. The party that passed health care reform would spend the next seven years out of power. 

The events leading up to the 1962 doctors' strike in Saskatchewan are different from today's Tea Party movement in important ways, of course. Saskatchewan wasn't seized by the same level of broad distrust for government that U.S. opinion polls show today. The idea of a government role in health care was already accepted, to a degree: Saskatchewan had already passed the Hospital Insurance Act in 1947, which paid for hospital care. And the changes Democrats have called for stop well short of single-payer health care, notwithstanding the charges of their critics. Even the AMA supported Obama's plan. 

But the anger of those months in Saskatchewan undermines a key belief in the debate over health care reform. When confronted with the overall success of Canada's brand of government-funded health care—better health outcomes at much lower cost—Americans tend to respond that such a broad government role is anathema to American culture. This has the ring of an excuse—after all, the idea was apparently somewhat anathema to Canadian culture in 1962. As Douglas said then, "We've become convinced that these things, which were once thought to be radical, aren't radical at all; they're just plain common sense applied to the economic and social problems of our times." 

The point isn't that U.S. and Canadian cultures aren't different. Rather, it's that cultural attitudes aren't static. However much some segments of U.S. culture may resist Obama's proposals, the Saskatchewan experience suggests that resistance will dissipate if the plan produces a system that works better than the status quo—especially since, as in Saskatchewan, the government was elected on a promise to make that change.

The other lesson of Saskatchewan is less exciting for Democrats: Even if people come around to the reform itself, they may not come around to the party that pushed it through. If they want to achieve health care reform, that may be a chance that Democrats have to take. But re-election qualms shouldn't be dressed up with bromides about the limits of what's possible. As Canadians can attest, health care reform takes a little more backbone than that.