Posted on 06/19/2007 12:57:34 PM PDT by PR4MRC2007
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Universal health care is the primary focus of the new "progressive" agenda for liberals now back in the political driver's seat after winning control of Congress, according to liberal leaders attending the annual Take Back America conference in Washington this week.
On Monday, leaders from the sponsoring group, Campaign for America's Future, joined representatives of other liberal advocacy groups to introduce what they called "bold reforms" for the political debate.
Propelled by momentum from the November 2006 elections, liberals are pushing for an end to the war in Iraq, political action to address climate change and increased power for the labor movement. But the pursuit of universal health care holds center stage at Take Back America, even among those whose advocacy focuses on other issues.
Providing "affordable access to health care for every American" is the "ultimate prize" for left-wing activists, Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, told a news conference kicking off the three-day conference.
Declaring that "the conservative era is dead," Woodhouse conceded that change would be difficult but encouraged liberal activists to remain unified.
Eli Pariser, executive director of the anti-war MoveOn.org Political Action, said that as the group begins to broaden its focus, members "want to see every American covered with health care."
Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called universal health coverage the "number one domestic issue" facing the nation.
"Even insured folks in this country find that health care in unaffordable," Richards said, calling the GOP's approach to health care the "biggest failure of the conservative agenda."
Elected officials appearing at early conference events also stressed government-run health care as an important goal for the movement.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) called on conference attendees to "build political pressure that is so loud, so persistent, that it can't be ignored."
"We have to win the guarantee that every person in this country will get affordable, comprehensive and high quality health care," she said.
Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the liberal Drum Major Institute, encouraged conference-goers to stop dancing around the issue and be proud of the goal.
"Damn straight it's [social] engineering," she said of policy proposals like universal health care. "That's the point of government."
Noticeably off the radar at Take Back America is the issue of immigration reform. Batista Schlesinger referred to the debate over how to deal with illegal immigrants only to say they should be offered "legal status."
The conference will feature one panel discussion on the issue Wednesday morning. It competes with a speech by filmmaker Michael Moore, who will preview and discuss his new documentary criticizing the health care industry.
The health care approach is likely to strike a chord with Americans, a majority of whom support a government-run national health insurance program, according to recent polling data.
A May CNN/Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans support a national health insurance program "even if this would require higher taxes."
A January NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 53 percent of Americans "would be willing to pay higher taxes so that everyone can have health insurance."
The same poll found that a plurality - 48 percent - think it's a good idea to "require residents with higher incomes to pay for coverage and state funding that would be used to help cover residents with lower incomes."
WHY ?
1. Surrender in the War on Terror
2. Destroy our healthcare system
3. Raise taxes
If socialized medicine passes, we are all dead.
Yes, but it will be a slow, lingering death while you wait fo a doctor to be available in 6 months to look at you.
they really are obsessed with control over our doctors and our bodies for some wierd reason!!!
Yeah, sure, Americans are willing to pay more taxes /sarc. The dumocrats just love to spend more of our money to buy votes from an ever expanding dependent class of citizens and resident aliens, legal and illegal.
It’s not weird at all. If Universal Health Care passes, what will you hear each and every election? “If you vote for republican so-and-so, he will take away your health care.”
Unfortunately, about half of Americans are NOT paying taxes. They are perfectly willing to vote for higher taxes. The rest of the Liberals will vote for taxes because its “fair.”
more legalized theft..wonderful /sarc
With the conservative backed (anti-union) corporate lobby backing the liberals it should go pretty smoothly. Funny how things work....
I actually agree with the left on this one. The central problem is that insurance works by pooling people of comparable risk. In free markets insurance providers will skim the young and healthy and put them into low-cost risk pools. What do you do for the old and the sick? They are put into high-cost risk pools and basically pay their own way. But few people can actually afford to do that. We would end out like the Eskimos, who put the elderly on ice floes when they got too old.
Our current solution is that we do risk pooling by job. That is a fairly random assembly. People that are too old to work go into Medicare. But I think everyone will agree that the current system - an ad-hoc mixture of free markets and government intervention - is not good. So the only market based solution I can see is to pass two laws. First, make it illegal not to have health insurance. This will force everyone to buy health insurance (the healthy often opt out). Second, force all insurance companies to accept everyone no matter how sick, and to force everyone to pay the same rate for coverage.
This will not get rid of medicaid because poor people cannot afford health insurance. So even the minimal government solution is suspiciously like universal health care via vouchers.
fixed
WHY ?
Because, it's not fair that they have more money than someone else. To make it fair we have to take some of their money and give it to others.
From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.
Short answer: They're all Marxists who are just sure that socialism will work this time!
We should overhaul our tax system to make sure everyone pays some taxes, even if it is 1% of income, and eliminate the give-backs, such as the earned income tax credit, which only serves as a disincentive to work.
“I actually agree with the left on this one. “
What have you been smoking? What has the gov’t ever done that was efficient?
Have you seen Hillary’s 1993 version of Universal HC? That’s what their vision is. It had fines for any doctor treating someone outside his “network”. He could be fined $250,000 and jailed for 10 years. That penalty was assessed for treating out of network and all sorts of other made-up crimes.
Healthcare is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution. It’s not a function that gov’t ought to be involved with at all.
Take your ideas over to DU. You’ll find them very popular over there.
The irony is rich. How quickly liberals go from
"the gov't can't tell me what to do with my body" to
"only the gov't can tell me what to do with my body".
The truth is that it is self-destructive to continue with the present dysfunctional system as driven by HMOs, healthcare insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies whose interests are not oriented to either public health or a healthy society at all levels. Their continuation as the force behind the delivery of healthcare will ultimately result in becoming a leading component in the evolution of our society losing its middle class characteristic and taking on the nature of a Third World African or Central American division of the very wealthy and everyone else.
There’s no way liberals will want this if they think they will have to consume this “universal” healthcare.
There must be a loophole for elitists in their plans somewhere.
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