All Life Is Problem Solving

This talk by Jane Hamsher to Congressional Staffers on July 8th distills what this American fight for health care reform is about, and what is at stake. It also provides a good feel for the hard slogging that is going on to being forth a bill that will introduce real change and begin to break the overweaning plutocratic power of the Health Insurance Lobby (the fifth plague of Egypt illustrated above) and its daily threat to the economic survival, health, and well-being of American citizens.

Just today, 22 members of the House sent a letter to the House Leadership expressing their “strong desire to see a robust public health insurance option.” But their idea of “a robust public health insurance option,” evidently includes the idea that there should be “a level playing field” with private insurance companies, thus raising the costs of the public option. Scarecrow gives more detail here.

Also, today, 40 Blue Dog Democrats in the House expressed their opposition to bills introduced into the House that would provide for a robust public option on grounds that they are too costly.

In short, this battle goes back and forth day-by-day. And where is our inspirational President in all of this? Missing in action, I’d say. Limited to puncturing the sellout trial balloons of Rahm Emanuel, and providing no visible leadership in the fight for the public option at all. What a disappointment he has been!