Time is NOW for Mass Health Care Struggles

Drug and Insurance Monopolies on the Offensive Here and Around the World,
Spreading their Addictions; and, They Are Winning;
But, there is Still Time; If We Fight Back
Upcoming G20 meeting in Pittsburgh will be crucial

by Phil E. Benjamin

If you think that the full court press that the Drug and Insurance Companies monopolies are applying to the U.S. Congress and the White House is only taking place here, your mistaken. The globalized international economic and financial crisis is causing desperate hardships and deaths around the world, NOT SO, for these monopolies. They are enjoying profits and seeking more.

In the U.S., the front page NY Times story of August 6th put a dagger in the hearts of health activists. Big PHARMA, the organization of the drug company monopolies in the USA and also, I am sure, in concert with their international counterparts, have been able to win the most important concession in the current round of Congressional and White House health struggles. It is reported that our government will NOT try to negotiate low drug prices with the drug companies as is done in the Veterans Hospitals and Medicaid.

This prohibition on the government-negotiating drug pricing dates from the Bush Administrations 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, which specifically prohibits that. Too many Democrats endorsed that Act which continued the privatization of Medicare and gave the hope a prescription drug benefit, which had many holes. Now, with the opportunity to reverse that provision, it appears that the drug monopolies can continue to charge what ever they please in any future national health legislation coming out of Congress and the White House. This could be the equivalent of throwing in the towel.

TRUE DRUG ADDICTION

This kind of drug addition by Washington politicians, that is, being addicted to the taking of millions of dollars of PHARMA political contributions has not stopped. That means that the price of any national health proposal will skyrocket. And, it means that the overall cost of any health legislative proposal must be borne by others…that means you and me.

When politicians look around the for money to finance the House and Senate proposals they will be doing the usual, making working class people pay the bill. Having federal negotiations of the price of drugs would not solve the problem completely, but it would have sent a major signal that this time Corporate America would pay and not workers and their families.

This means that the TAXING OF WORKERS BENEFITS' will be high on the agenda for Congress and the White House. We have to remove it.

INSURANCE ADDICTION

The insurance carrier monopolies appear to be also winning their goals. For example, there was talk of eliminating the profit making insurance carriers from the Medicare program, i.e., the Medicare Advantage carriers. That would have saved over $15 billion a year. The proposal seems to be lost.

Why? Simple. Their full court press of the health insurance monopolies with financial contributions to every member of Congress and the White House; and their massive media blitz on television on radio is outdoing their 1990s blitz.

Karen Ignani, CEO of the American Health Insurance Plans organization and chief lobbyist for the insurance industry, was written up in the August 5th NY Times paper. She, ironically, was, a few years back, a secondary lobbyist for the AFL-CIO on health matters. She now made heading up the insurance monopolies, according to the NY times, $1.7 million in 2007. She is in charge of legions of well-heeled lobbyists combing every member of Congress and the White House to plea their case against the Public Option.

Max Baucus the head of the Senate Finance Committee, an admitted INSURANCE COMPANY ADDICT, is winning the day against any PUBLIC OPTION; or a PUBLIC OPTION THIS IS SO PRIVATE IN NATURE AND SUBSTANCE AS TO NOT REALLY BE PUBLIC AT ALL. There has been expose' after expose' that Baucus us owned completely by the insurance carriers. Yet he is allowed to sit at the grand power broker of national health reform. He should be forced to recuse himself due to conflict of interest with the insurance carriers.

Baucus is using the phoney "bipartisan" strategy for national health insurance. His idea of "bipartisan" is just another word for corporate rule.

DARK DAYS IN CONGRESS UNLESS WE ACT: NOW

These are dark days in Washington, D.C. THE FATE OF OVER 50 MILLION PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO HEALTH INSURANCE AND THE OTHER 60 MILLION WILL LOUSY BENEFITS IS BEING DETERMINED BY THE INDUSTRY ITSELF.

The fate of the Obama Administration is in the wind. The DRUG AND INSURANCE COMPANY MONOPOLIES smell blood. They have no shame or conscience.

UNLEASHING THEIR FOOT SOLDIERS TO DESTROY MEETINGS

Now we hear about, and maybe some readers have personally witnessed, the foot soldiers of their monopolies as they deliberately disrupt and destroy honest Town Hall meetings seeking to learn about national health reform. Sounds like Germany in the 1930s, breaking up peaceful meetings.

A united labor and people's movement can turn the tide, but time is fleeting.

AN EMERGENCY "MARCH ON WASHINGTON" WHEN CONGRESS RETURNS FROM RECESS MAYBE THE ONLY WAY TO GET OUR MESSAGE ACROSS AND TRUMP THE POWER BROKERS IN CONGRESS.

AROUND THE WORLD

Around the world these same monopolies are using the International Economic and Financial Crisis to their benefit. In every country in Europe there are efforts to cut back in national health care programs. The Center Right governments of Germany, France, Italy and Portugal are gleefully hoping to move in this right wing direction and cut back on their national health programs. Those lead by social democratic forces: England and Spain….are collapsing under the demand from these monopolies.

How?
Simple.

These anti-people cutbacks are being met with mass demonstrations lead by labor unions and peoples' organizations. These are happening extensively in each and every country but they are rarely reported in the USA.

Because of these massive fight backs, the governments find more stealth methods to cut back. They simply claim poverty and don't fund their national health services and hospitals to the degree necessary. As you can surmise, this brings gaps in services. Those gaps are filled with the offers from private insurance companies buy those same services that were heretofore free. United Health Care Insurance Company is actively working with the English government to get their profits and probably has a hand in other country's governments health programs. United Health Care spends half its time avoiding jail time for their shady financial dealings.

And, this is happening NOW. Less than 7% of people in these countries go that route, but the foot is in the door.

Also, each country is being lobbied hard by the Drug Cartels, which are also internationally based; to pay more for their government negotiated prices. This is a new feature that surely will be more apparent in the next few years.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY IS NEEDED

This all the more reason for a resounding demonstration of the upcoming G-20 Meetings taking place in Pittsburgh, Pa in Mid September.

People from around the world will be in Pittsburgh demanding justice from the G-20. Health Care Rights is a Good Demand to Start With. Get yourself to Pittsburgh!!!

FOLLOW THE Political Affairs AND Peoples World FOR MORE ON THESE DEMONSTRATIONS.

Book Reviews: Portugal Dictatorship Draws Attention in its 35th Anni versary of Revolution

Ballad of Dogs Beach
José Cardoso Pires
JM Dent & Sons Ltd, Great Britain
1986; Translated by Mary Fitton, from:
Original in Portuguese @ José Cardoso Pires
1987 1st USA Edition, Beaufort Books Publishers, NYC
[Currently Out of Print; Available by Amazon, Used $10.00;
Or Original Book for about $90.00]

Night Train to Lisbon
Pascal Merceir; Translated from German by Barbara Harshan
Gove Press
2004/2006
Germany/USA

Various books by Jose Saramago

HOW TO YOU WRITE AND REPORT ABOUT A DICTATORSHIP?

by Eric Green

Well, Jose Saramago; Jose Cardoso Pires and Pascal Merceir each have a different way.

Here are three writers, the first two Portuguese members of the Portuguese Communist Party and the last a German contemporary novelist writer. Pires died in 1998 and Saramago is still alive and writing. But, they have one thing in common; they care deeply about the Portuguese people.

This is the 35th Anniversary of the revolution that freed Portugal from the dictatorship.

In Night Train to Lisbon, Merceir creates a university professor character that develops a deep interest in a writer by the name of, Amedea Inaciode de Almedia Prado. Through the life of Prado, the readers learn about the dictatorship that gripped Portugal for over 48 years and ended on April 25, 1974 with the "Carnation Revolution." Gregorius is the professor who admits that when the events of 1974 were taking place, he was a university teacher, but with far less interest than other on campus. But, in a chance meeting with a Portuguese woman in Bern, Germany, he becomes infatuated with Portugal and Prado.

He learns that Prado is a boy genius that has very intense relationships both personal and professional. He becomes a physician. Prado's life changes, during the heat of the dictatorship when he is asked to help a dying man, a man who he learns is known as the "butcher of Lisbon" Rui Luis Mendez. Prado's successful use of his medical skills on Mendes earns him the wrath of all resistance fighters, most of whom are his colleagues and friends.

His extreme guilt leads him to quietly join the resistance. How Merceir takes these events and put them together into a novel is quite impressive. The book is worth the awards it is receiving. The "resistence" in this book is a amorphous movement with no real understanding of the revolt talking place in the military and the role of the Portuguese Communist Party.

In the Pires book, we follow the life of a Lisbon detective, Elias Santana, nicknamed "Graveyard" by his precinct buddies. In this detective story novel, Pires, a life long member of the Portuguese Communist Party, used the death of Major Luis Danta Castro to display the relationship between the regular police department and the Salazar secret policy the PIDE.

In the Pires book the reader gets a graphic picture of the sex lives of all security and police forces as well as the brutality of the Salazar regime. There is Mena the key witness to the crimes and the architect, Renato Manuel Fontenove Sarmento. How all of these characters intertwine and relate to each other is magical ride delivered by Pires.

The writing style of Merceir is very direct and easy to follow. Events and interrelationships are very linear. On the other side, Pires's plot follows more of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez style. They both use the same number of characgters, but, as the reader can imagine, the Pires book is, sometimes, hard to follow, which is probably no mistake.

But, being a Communist writer, at least this writer, Pires is far more politically direct than Merceir, but Merceir's development of the Prado character gives readers some real insights into the dictatorship's impact on the middle strata of Lisbon.

In Pires's "Concluding Note" he gives the reason for this award-winning book:

" 1] It was during the autumn of 1961 that I received from L.V., then a political refuge in the Brazilian embassy, a 22-page document written by a young man sentenced some months before to penal servitude for complicity in a murder. It was an account, lucid and direct, of a crime which had profoundly disturbed public opinion; simple, I thought, and objective. One saw into the conscience, heard the voice, of a courageous man.

"Later re-reading of the two dossiers—of the Criminal Police and the PIDE—confirmed my belief in the accuracy and directness of his document; but when I came to know the writer after his release these qualities took on a new dimension. For here was someone sensitive, creative and imaginative; who, in examining this chapter of his life, had imposed upon himself—almost depersonalized himself by—the strictess obsession with truth and accuracy.

"He was, and is, aware of how much his crime is that of society as a whole; that a society founded on terror, and therefore embodying social crime, will seek its justification by castigating the crimes of the individual; and that for each and every individual crime it is itself responsible. But, though he knew this—who better?—he would not speak of it, much less plead on such grounds for sympathy or compassion. If people understand, he said, you cherish their understanding without making calls on it. The terrible thing has been, and is, the knowledge of his crime, because with that he is inescapably alone.

"2] Over twenty years after these events, his personal loneliness regarding them is, I think, the counterpart of the solitude he shared then. Alone, he looks the experience of terror in the fact, accepts it, and is reconciled to fear because, as he said, 'it is the acting-out of solitude.

"3] Fear, the acting-out, the limit of solitude: are the words his or those of my character, the architect Fontenova? Or even of someone else entirely? Or could I have invented them, to make him seen more real?

Some elements in some lives—in all lives, I would say—will raise he individual to general significance; something that will repay study, and transform him into the materials of history or fiction. And we probe this material because its probes us, each of us, to the depths—which is why I conceived this book as a novel. My 'architect Fontenova' is a literary creation. So is the major. Mena and the corporal are literary creations. They are imaginary: that is, they are distilled, imaginatively, from real people.

"Thus fact and fiction, at every step, divide and come together, independent when parallel, conflicting when they meet; and NO RESEMBLENCE BETWEEN TRUTH AND CONJECTURE IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. [EG emphasis]

"J.C.P.
September, 1982"

In the Appendix of the Book, Pires gives more details on the book's characters. The book was completed just 8 years following the end of the dictatorship when the raw revolutionary events were sill very much alive. Pires died at the age of 73 in 1998. A school has been named from him in Lisbon: "Escola Secundaira Jose' Cardoso Pires."

Saramago

I've reviewed many of Saramago's books for PA including his most recent success, "Blindness" which was made into a major motion picture.. They are all well written and understandable. But, if there is an analogy with another world renowned artist, Saramago is similar to the paintings and life of Picasso, with the exception of Guernica. That is, their artistic works were not directly political, yet both live[d] their full lives as members of the Communist Party of their respective countries.

All of Nobel Prize winning Saramago's books are available across the US and the world. Fully translated into many languages. While Pires's books are very hard to find, especially in English. This is probably no accident. This omission should be corrected by international writers organizations.

Adding the Pires book to your collection would be a revolutionary act.

Storm Troop Tactics Used by Enemies of Health Care Legislation by Norman Markowitz

There is a sinister development in the U.S. today which, if not actively opposed and defeated, threatens the Democratic rights of the people the rule of law. Rightwing groups, according to the Democratic party and the AFL-CI0 among others,are disrupting in an organized way health care forums through the nation, with shoutings, threats, occasional scuffles. CNN and other mass media which routinely highlight right-wing talking heads are also commenting on this development and the statements by the Democratic party and others that this is being done with the support of the Republican party.

But few are really calling these tactics what they are--the tactics associated with fascist groups throughout the world, that is, breaking up meetings by marching in and intimidating those who disagree with you, using threats and force in an organized way to prevent rational discussion, making people afraid to think by, in the words of Benito Mussolini, "thinking with your blood," i.e., insulting, threatening and beating down those who disagree with you.

If these storm troop tactics, which is exactly what they are minus the men in the black of brown shirts, are, are tolerated, regardless of the outcome of the votes on the legislation, they will escalate and threaten democratic political processes as they always do.

So it is important to resist them in an organized way, the way anti-fascists in many countries were compelled to do, to protect their demonstrations and rallies and general citizens meetings, to keep, in the language of the past, "the fascists from conquering the streets" and all other public venues. The AFL-CIO, which has raised the alarm over this, should help to organize and coordinate actions to provide security against such disruptions.

The "statements" that the bully boys are shouting, that Congress hasn't read the bill, which is filled with sinister clauses that will promote euthanasia, leave cancer patients to die, take away family doctors from people, destroy Medicare, are in effect big lies which can be easily answered, but the storm troop tactics are about blocking not only serious answers but scaring people into either believing what the bully boys are saying or simply withdrawing so that they can control the debate.

Why should Republicans support such tactics? Why did non Nazi conservatives aid and abet the storm troopers in Germany in the 1920s and establishment segregationists aid and abet the KKK in the South for generations while piously proclaiming that they were against the hysteria and the violence these groups promoted. Because these groups were "insurance policies" against change that the establishment right feared in the Weimar Republic, the segregationist power structure feared in the South, and the Republican party following their major defeat in the 2008 elections fears today.

The more reactionary ruling groups suspect that their power is threatened, the more they turn to fascist organizations and or groups which use fascist tactics, assuming, as they did in Italy in the early 19320s and Germany in the early 1930s that they can "control" such groups and go back to "business as usual" once progressive organizations and movements have been put down (in the case of Italy and Germany, these groups established open dictatorships and eventually brought their countries down through a world war).

It is important to act now to oppose the use of these tactics and those who are using them before they escalate, because if history is any judge, they will escalate if they are not effectively opposed.

Health insurance companies make me sick

From BraveNewFilms

Did Rachel Maddow just nail corporate/lobbyist backers of anti-health protests

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Union families show anti-Obama rally ‘what real Americans want’

From People's World
by Paul S. Kazocha

WAKARUSA, Ind. – In just a few hours on Aug. 5 the Steelworkers Union organized a bus load and several cars from Gary, Ind., to take the two hour trip to this small sleepy town near Elkhart and in the middle of the Amish area also known for RV and trailer construction.

More than 1,200 people from around the area gathered to support President Barack Obama and health care reform amongst other issues.

In contrast, The Young Republicans organized a smaller effort to protest Obama and health care reform efforts.

Earlier in the week many of these same protesters tried to disrupt a forum on health care with Congressman Pete Visclosky, sponsored by the Democratic Alliance group in Chesterton, Ind. The protesters are mounting “recess rallies” nationwide targeting Democrats and the president.

Read more...

A good Honduran Bishop speaks out

From National Catholic Reporter:

Catholic News Service reports that a Catholic bishop in western Honduras said members of the country's wealthy elite were behind the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya.

Bishop Luis Santos Villeda of Santa Rosa de Copan also said the country needs a dialogue between the elite and Honduras' poor and working-class citizens. "Some say Manuel Zelaya threatened democracy by proposing a constitutional assembly. But the poor of Honduras know that Zelaya raised the minimum salary. That's what they understand. They know he defended the poor by sharing money with mayors and small towns. That's why they are out in the streets closing highways and protesting (to demand Zelaya's return)," the bishop told Catholic News Service.

In a July 30 telephone interview, he said it is misleading to consider Honduras a democracy, either before or after the June 28 coup. "There has never been a real democracy in Honduras. All we have is an electoral system where the people get to choose candidates imposed from above. The people don't really have representation, whether in the Congress or the Supreme Court, which are all chosen by the rich. We're the most corrupt country in Central America, and we can't talk about real democracy because the people don't participate in the decisions," he said.

Insightful Interview in L'Humanite on the media and coups, etc.

http://www.truthout.org/080509F

An interview with Roberto Hernandez Montoya, president of the Romulo Gallegos Foundation Center for Latin American Studies (CELARG) in Venezuela.

Cathy Ceïbe for Humanité: Last April, you made a presentation at the Organization of American States (OAS) of your work on media totalitarianism. What does that concept cover?

Roberto Hernandez Montoya. That concept covers a change in civilization. Yesterday, there was an engaged press, on the right as on the left, and even religious. But it was not organized the way the big corporations are. That press had ideological and political tendencies, but it was not a global monolith in the sense that today, several media outlets - The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN - set the rhythm for the news and its contents. These are epicenters of the news that spread it. Moreover, if one pays attention, one will find that a news item is sometimes repeated with the same spelling errors. The media respond to events in extremely similar ways. It's a matter of dominance that is as much ideological as corporate. Media totalitarianism produces capitalist ideology, but also dangerous, even criminal, phenomena. The United States lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Media totalitarianism took up those lies to justify the invasion of the country, becoming in its turn a weapon of mass destruction. That invasion cost over a million Iraqis their lives. Media totalitarianism is not shared, but dictated. The milieus surrounding the military powers, the so-called military-industrial complexes, orient and decide. They carry out the creation of enemies, as during the time of the Inquisition when whoever failed to obey the Church's general orientation was accused of being a heretic. The right to a defense was abolished. At present, we are experiencing a similar situation. Take the case of the Taliban. Yesterday, they were heroes. President Ronald Reagan called them freedom fighters because they fought the Soviet Union; they were necessarily good. Today, they incarnate evil because they act for their own account. When Saddam Hussein warred against Iran, nobody had any complaints. But when he began to act for his own account, he became the enemy to bring down. Imperialism is a rather nervous master.

Read more...

CNN's Lou Dobbs problem

Is Sen. Jeff Sessions a Communist?

by Joel Wendland

In the debate now in motion over Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions just said something that makes me think he switched parties – and not to the Democrats.

In discussing Sotomayor's record, which he is using as a foundation for voting against her, Sessions said that he disagreed with one decision Sotomayor made in joining with others on the federal court she sits on regarding eminent domain. Eminent domain is a legal principle that gives government entities like a city or a county or the federal government the power to take over ownership of private property for various reasons and usually with compensation. Not controversial.

But Sen. Sessions stated that he disagrees with Sotomayor (despite the fact that her opinion was shared by various other members of the panel she is on) on this issue. Sessions said that he believes that "private property can only be taken over for public purposes."

Talk about an easy settlement of the property questions.

BTW, Sotomayor has more federal judicial experience than does any member of the Supreme Court since Reagan at the time of their appointment, including the right-wing extremists Roberts and Alito whom Sessions never ever considered to be less than qualified. It never occurred to him. Wise white men just don't bother him as much as wise Latinas.