We Must Demand The Medicare Option Be Put Back In Health Care Bill

THE FOLLOWING IS REPRINTED FROM AN EMAIL I RECEIVED TODAY. I AGREE 100% WITH EVERYTHING THAT IS SAID HERE AND COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF. THUS, THE REPRINT. PLEASE PASS THIS AROUND.


Don't you think it's time we started DEMANDING what we the people
want, instead of meekly and mutely rolling over while corporate
special interests have their way with us? The only thing that would
make the health care so-called reform bill more of a cruel farce
would be for the NRA to slip in a provision permitting loaded assault
weapons in hospitals.

Anything that might have actually made a real difference has been
systematically excluded or stripped out of the bill, killed off by a
lethal combination of weak-minded liberals too timid to fight for
their constituents and stubbornly corrupt industry quislings on the
other side. And those are just the Democrats. In early December they
were talking for a moment about allowing people younger than 65 to
buy into Medicare. That was before they moved with breathtaking speed
to try to kill off any hope of that either.

The Medicare buy-in option must be put back in the bill. This is
non-negotiable. This is our demand and we're sticking to it. When
will we have more votes? If not now, when?

Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1025.php

For almost an entire year Congress has been lulling us with the
promise that in the end there would be a robust public option. And
for just as long we have been telling you that it was all a knowing
willful LIE. With every alert we told you the so-called public option
was never anything more than a languaging trick, to get people to
stop talking about single payer, a way to get progressives to
preemptively compromise, only to be cheated out of even a feeble
public option in the end.

That's exactly what Nancy Pelosi said today. The senior House
leadership is prepared to surrender any public option of any kind in
exchange for a handful of legislative mumbles, some OTHER way to hold
insurance companies accountable. Oh, please, slap us on the wrist
with a wet noodle. Except that the one and ONLY thing that would
actually hold them to account would be real competition from a
righteous, low overhead public program, just like we have in Medicare
right now!!

To all of those who wrote and argued to us, "No, we have to
compromise our principles, we can't stand up for what we believe in,
we have to surrender now and hope to make it better later," that's
what you said. What has your capitulation got you? What are we left
with now but a total corporate takeover over of our public health
care system, every American forced to buy corporate insurance or pay
a federal penalty. NOW do you believe us?

Well, believe us now also when we tell you that the game is not only
not over, it has not yet even BEGUN. This bill is destined to be the
most DESPISED piece of legislation in American political history, and
woe unto the political future of any member of Congress who does not
jump up howling about this bill. But in the first instance, that is
what we must do ourselves. Jump up howling and keep howling.

Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1025.php

Our singular message is this: Put the Medicare buy in back in the
bill. We will be pumping out the alerts on this as fast as we can all
this month. But somehow YOU folks have got to find a way to generate
at least a million messages to Congress, by mobilizing everyone you
know to speak out like never before. And that's just for openers.

Sphere: Related Content