Tom Daschle's correct email address should be tdaschle@americanprogress.org or tom.daschle@alston.com.

I'm pretty sure this is right. I sent in something to the other address and got error message. This should be
right-- thanks for everybody's consideration.

An Interview with an Emergency Room Doctor and the "Inalienable
Right" to Health Care vs the Heath Insurance Industry Tyranny


Paul Hochfeld, MD who is an emergency room doctor in Corvallis
OR spoke with me on January 11th this year in an interview about
the need for single payer, as it provides quality health care for all
at less expense and provides for "someone" to run such a system, and
we now have no system, but a complete mess insuring a shortage
of primary care doctors. Dr Hochfeld has made a documetary on
the health care crisis in this country and what should be the solution
with single payer. I have to add with some person or persons in
charge of such a system in the federal government, we could have
accountability which is now completely and absolutely lacking.

Now the Wall Street Journal, the voice of big business in this country
no less says we have a shortage of surgeons so severe that people
are now getting surgeons who are temporaries going from one town
to another. The American College of Surgeons condemns this practice
The media mouthpiece for big business says this shortage of surgeons
has been going for 25 years and is most pronounced in rural area. This
has literally then become a matter of life or death, and especially in
these rural areas.

Most doctors, most health economist, and most of the American people
back single payer, Dr Hochfeld has said in an article which came out
December 30th last year in the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Why hasn't this country adopted single payer which would, as it
should, establish health care for all as an "inalienable right" as Thomas
Jefferson would so aptly put it?

Start with what ought to be clearly and absolutely obvious to everybody.
The health insurance and pharmaceutical insurance industries having it
so good riding a gravy train and making piles of money, and thus aren't
the least bit interested in single payer, which is so predictable. They
just want to keep their gravy train going.

It's greed trumping need as I would hasten to add.

AARP is right in there with the health insurance and pharmaceutical
industries fighting single payer, while putting on act of being a good
guy as Dr Hochfeld says. They makes a pile of money from the profit
side of the organization and talk as if their non profit and profit side
are completely separate, but AARP is in this fight, not for anybody's
but for the money.

Furthermore, AARP's influence is pervasive as successful as it at passing
itself off as the good guys as Dr Hochfeld points out. Dr Hochfeld also said
that AARP has even threatened legislators in Oregon who vote for single
payer that AARP will make sure they're defeated. This organization, Dr
Hochfeld says, has been spending piles of money lobbying to stop single
payer for years. Dr Hochfeld tells how AARP seeks to demonize single
payer with the "socialized medicine" label.

This is the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries' line as well
along with all the talk about people losing their choices, which health
care as the health insurance now runs it, means no choice. The health
decides who can see which health care provider, what health care that
person can get, how much, the amount to pay, the amount of coverage
by the health insurance industry, and this includes pharmacies to go to
get prescriptions, which ones are allowed, which amount of coverage,
the payment, and right on through-- no choice. With Single payer, all
the people any damn health care provider they want to see, when they
want to see that provider as long as that provider is available and it's
for needed health care, and nobody goes without health care. Add to
that a good estimate is that it would save a third of trillion dollars. But
that would take money away from the bean counting, parasitic health
insurance industry and its welfare program for itself.

AARP along with the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries want
the kind of "change" they can believe in, change in their pockets which they
line with our money. They just want to have funds.

Having joined this outfit just as I retired years ago when I thought it was
an advocate for retired people, I just continued my membership, but the
things AARP says in its magazine show what it's all about, and that's good
to know to insure I know how phony it is and how this outfit puts its greed first.
Then it's "divided we fail" if the hierarchy in AARP doesn't get what it wants.
As a member of AARP, I happen to know first hand how this organization,
these "good guys" pressed for a "compromise" resulting in cuts in Medicare
coverage of prescriptions, and after that happened AARP was right there
to tap into this new involuntary market to make lots of money. This shows
how much of an axe those running AARP have to grind to make sure single
payer doesn't pass. It would substantially, if not overwhelmingly cut down on
their revenue. Thus we have AARP alligned with those who put greed over
need. AARP has been able to play this role of being an advocate by the US
mainstream media playing right along and passing this off as the gospel truth.

Thomas Jefferson, for all his faults put it so well when he said, "Greed degrades."

Meanwhile the country's mainstream media also fails to or virtually fails to cover
Dr Hochfeld and the majority of doctors favoring single payer. The same is true
of other health care providers who favor single payer. The same media if it does
cover single payer, always comes up with BS put down that could easily be
knocked down by Dr Hochfeld or many other health care providers, but lack
of coverage insures that never happens-- more on this and reasons for same
later.

As someone who has experienced this country's health care first hand, I have
personally had to wait at least an hour and a half to see a doctor in an emergency
facility in metropolitan Minneapolis/St Paul. That's long enough that I or anyone
else could easily have died. It's worse in other major metropolitan areas, and the
Nation even had an article showing that at times people would be moved from
one emergency room to another due to the shortage of doctors. Do believe some
have surely died as result of this health care mess. Others have done without care
they need due to the shortage of primary care doctors and often to not having any
health insurance coverage at all. This was years ago, and things are definitely worse
now.

This country thus has endured as Jefferson would say, "a long train of abuses"
It has health care of, by, and for the health insurance industry with the drug industry
and AARP getting a piece of the action and big time money at our expense. The
health insurance industry, though, is the primary ruler here, with other two simply
being along for the ride. But tyranny it surely is, for none of these institutions with
all their power or recognizes they should "derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed." With that in mind, as Jefferson said "governments (institutions
in this case) are instituted to secure "the inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness." With Jefferson also referring at one point to health as being
"essential" for happiness, thus it should be an inalienable right, and when "governments
(again in this institutions) "become destructive" of such rights, then the people have
"a right to alter or abolish" them, and replace them with "new governments" (in this
case a new institution, single payer) providing proper "safeguards" for the people.
This single payer would definitely do, providing health care "of, by, and for the
people" as Abraham Lincoln would say, and thus end the current health insurance
industry tyranny over the people's health care with that industry's arbitrary authority
and abuse of such power in determining who gets to see which health care provider,
get what health care, what coverage, charging as it so chooses with no accountability
nor consideration of those it rules over and consideration of "deriving its just powers
from the consent of the governed," treating these "subscibers" as lowly subjects, making
victims of them victims of this same tyranny. It' time to stop this nonsense of letting the
health insurance industry while the people pay the price.

The US health insurance industry controls health care and maintains it tyranny by
divide and rule strategy of playing off heath care providers against patients. When
talking to health care providers, the industry blames the patient for abusing the "system"
which really isn't a system, by using when they don't need it, thus causing high costs.
When dealing with patients, the industry will blame the health care providers for charging
too much. AARP takes the line that the health care providers are at fault with its members,
overwhelmingly patients, but never gets at the real cause of the problem, the health insurance
industry, as AARP is gettting piles of money off this "system," which puts the quid pro quo
back in the status quo, stressing as it does the buying of politicians to get what they want
monetarily.

With the pharmaceutical industry, the key to their piles of
money lies in the fact that with full private control, the industry
can charge what it likes, as long the federal government, once the
people's government, isn't negotiating prices for prescriptions.
This is the conclusion I'm forced to on this.

We need a system Dr Hochfeld is saying. Currently it's clear we don't
have a system, but hodgepodge and complete mess is the conclusion
I'm forced to.

Now as to the media not covering those health care providers including
doctors who favor single payer. Why would that be? Hey, how about
the huge amount of MONEY these media types get from big business
especially the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, which they
might lose if they covered such topics as single payer, which one professor
of mine in a University of Oregon journalism program referred to as thematic bias-- certain
topics are just off limits, and this tends to be due to advertising the media
get from certain sources. These media types know which side their
bread is buttered on.

Then the fact that the media itself tends to be a big business anyway, with
the same interests as the rest of big business. Interests overwhelmingly will
determine which side people come down on once push comes to shove,
and the media is no damn exception. That's just plain institutional analysis
or prostitutional analysis. Thus we have what Edward S Herman and Noam
Chomsky would call the media "manufacturing consent."

Dr Hochfeld has said single payer isn't getting discussed at all from what he's
seen.

A grass roots progressive movement has to speak up and speak truth to
power on this one.

What can we do about all this? A start might well be lettting Tom Daschle know
just how much and how strongly the people support health care of, by, and
for the people-- also known as single payer. After all Barak Obama has
put Daschle on the job to reach out to folks to get their input. Hey, let's
do some inputting. With that in mind, the following contact information
is provided, as that University of Oregon journalism professor would say
as mobilizing information. Damn it, I would just love to see some mobilization
on this, and therefore here's the good old mobilizing information to let folks
start putting in with the input. Do keep in mind, Daschle has probably getting
a lot of hot air and misinformation about single payer blown his way and
definitely needs the fresh air of those advocating health care of, by, and
for the people. It's time fight back against the "power of concentrated wealth"
with the people power of a strong nation wide grass roots movement. Let's
do it!

Tom Daschle's email address-- tom.daschle@americanprogress.org.

While Stephen Harper and his Canadian Conservatives have no unitary executive
authority though the current governor general seems to be legitimizing it in seeking to
bring a hidden agenda of disaster capitalism to Canada, Minnesota's governor and mouthpiece
for North Oaks, the main concentration of the state's super rich and defender of class war on their
behalf against the folks, does have some legal unitary executive authority acting as an official in
part of separate branch of government and elected separately unlike the Canadian chief
executive with that parliamentary system, and he's seeking to bring same disaster capitalism
to the state, exploiting the current economic crisis to carry out class warfare on behalf
of the super rich against the rest of the people. With the help of spineless Democrats
doing their impression of the Key Stone Kops, he can do just that and take the nice
out of Minnesota nice. By doing this the GOP governor and head neo con thug with
Democratic enablers in the legislature can impose what has been a secret far right/
loony right agenda on the state clobbering public education, public transportation,
and other essential services for the people while handing over tons of taxpayer
dollars to the super rich by turning public assets over to the private sector selling
off to same, meaning to the super rich and by tax breaks for same rich parasites
off the working people of Minnesota and meanwhile increasing taxes on public
education and public transportation, for taxes they are, but calling these "user
fees" with all the Orwellian language of slavery to the rich and super rich is
really freedom, and class war on behalf of the super rich is really peace, and
neo constipation of the system is really regularity is just plain BS.

If Canada can get disaster capitalism so aptly referred to and discussed so
well by Naomi Klein, then Minnesota is now getting ready for same courtesy
of not just the GOP governor, but you guessed it, those "wonderful" go along
to get along, follow the line of least resistance "Democrats" right here in the
Minnesota Legislature, at least the "leaders." We're talking about such
enablers as the House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelleher and House
Majority Leader Tony Sertich. No word is officially available yet from the
senate majority leader who may be thinking about actually acting like
a voice for the people of Minnesota, but don't hold your breath on that just
yet. The economic crisis it appears is bring together the "strange bedfellows
of politics," and just in time to get things back to the old trickle down/give
everything away to the rich and super rich after taking away everything
from the rest. Hey, it's class war by any other name, but that really is
what disaster capitalism wherever it plays out really is using crises to as Edward
Herman and Noam Chomsky would say to "manufacture consent." These "Democratic
leaders," if they would be real Democrats and leaders they must regain their backbone,
realizing and recognizing the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, when he said "greed
degrades." They must stop their triangulating, refusing to stand for anything but
the power and privilege of holding office, and start standing up in the spirit of
Paul Wellstone and Hubert Humphrey. This is an imperative. They need only
look at their party nationally in the 1990s to see how with the triangulation and
lack of standing for principles got them into minority party and almost minor
minority party status across this country except in presidential politics and
was bad public policy as well. Otherwise these Democrats will have not only
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for themselves, but handed this state
a disgraceful version of what Klein rightly refers to as disaster capitalism which
destroys, but doesn't build anything. With that being the case, they might soon
find they those who stand for nothing, soon have nowhere to stand. For this
dangerous dogma of disaster capitalism will yield a scorched earth for all
and with its smashing of the public sector to hand over rule or really misrule
to the rich and super rich. This isn't "government by the consent of the governed"
nor "government of by and for the people" in the least.

Crises, as Klein so astutely points out, are weapons of disaster capitalism.
So it is here in this once progressive state. But Democrats in the legislature
need not let this happen. They can learn from opposition parties to their
north in Canada, who now have decided to become true opposition parties
and hold those neo con thug Conservatives there accountable for their lack
of consideration of the real needs of the people. That's what opposition
parties are for, to make democracy work for the people. It's why such people
as Thomas Jefferson founded the Democrat Republicans, whom the Democrats
are descended from, to force accountability on politicians. They weren't afraid to
think outside the box of "bipartisan politics."

Meanwhile the mainstream US media, right here the local Star Gazer Tribune,
is big business, and as expected favors a class war for the rich and super
rich as any institutional analysis worthy of the name would predict, and its
coverage shows it. It's out there helping to "manufacture consent." "Help
is on the way," as the line from that Marx brothers movie and these media
types would say. Thus "how dare" we progressives oppose this? Why it's
"unpatriotic."

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both," as Louis Brandeis,
one time US Supreme Court justice once put it.

The problem is clearly the threat of neo constipation of the system. The solution
is for people to pour a huge quantity of the equivalent of Castor oil on the
system, thus clearing it out. A grass roots progressive movement offers the
vehicle for doing just that.

Democrats in the state legislature must decide which side they're on. If
they wish to side with those who as Martin Luther King Jr referred to in his
day as siding with the "landed gentry" in Latin America and elsewhere
in what was then a class war for the rich of the time, they can do that and get
on what Dr King called the wrong side of history and back a morally
bankrupt policy as well. On the other hand, they can choose to stand up to
be a voice for the voiceless, to stand up against this class war for the super
rich and against all the rest and back good policy and good politics as well.

Stuart Symington in the Army/McCarthy hearing would reply to Joseph McCarthy
after citing chapter and verse of his outrageous charges, "It seems some
people just want anarchy." This is just what's going on here

The partisans of this "shock and awe" of disaster capitalism live for
for crises-- the easier to scare the hell out of people to make sure the
"wonderful heroes" can ride to the rescue on their "white horses"
or some would say jack asses. Those "damn terrible liberals
and progressives" have no "respect" nor proper deference to the
proper authority of the "great trickle down" rip off tyranny and con
game of the neo cons.

The response to disaster capitalism with all its "shock and awe" dogma
shouldn't just be "aw shocks."

The US mainstream media including the local greater Minneapolis/St Paul
based Star Gazer Tribune use double standards in covering scandals such
as the one involving selling influence specifically senate seats, one in Minnesota
a GOP one by perhaps the senator himself and another one in Illinois by the
Democratic governor. Both cases are at this stage unresolved, but with the FBI
looking into both. But the one in Illinois where Rod Blagojevich, the governor is
under investigation for selling the senate being vacated by Barak Obama is getting
big time US mainstream media play, while the case of Norm Coleman in Minnesota
the current senator fighting for reelection and with the FBI looking into Coleman selling
at least some "stock' in his seat is getting virtually no national coverage by the US
mainstream media, even though the local Star Gazer Tribune, a full fledged member
of the US mainstream media has revealed that the FBI is looking into the case involving
a Texas business making payments of $75,000 to a company where Coleman's
wife is employed and by doing so funnelling money to Coleman. Obviously, news of political
corruption should get coverage no matter what party or ideology of the politician is
involved, but clearly in these relatively similar cases that hasn't been close to true.

Now why might that be? How about the fact that the US mainstream media is a big
business, and definitely includes the Star Gazer Tribune, and thus has the same interests
as the rest of big business and these interests will surely color their coverage of such
scandals, with the politicians perceived to be favoring big business getting less or even
minimal, if any coverage, as opposed to those politicians seen as being opposed to
the big business agenda, this is just plain old fashioned institutional analysis. It isn't
brain surgery.

A law school dean, who like law professors and lawyers should know more about the
law than others, has said he doesn't see that any conviction except for conspiracy is
at all likely based on what he's seen of the evidence, and that even with the conspiracy
charges, it might end up with an acquittal. In no way does he say what Blagojevich has
done is ethical. but then again how many US politicians would that be true of anyway?

On a similar note, Alexander Cockburn points out how all the screaming against Blagojevich
being such a bad example for US politics is just plain "nonsense." As he hits the old
nail right on the head, this is simply way of politics in this country outside such hard core
good government states such as the Dakotas and Washington, where a "social democratic
ethic" prevails. The whole idea of quid pro quo being so much a part of the US political
status quo is the reality, and this kind of thing as Cockburn says really is the best "check and
balance agaisnt the arrogance of power." Speaking of which the upscale neo con pimps on and
off Wall Street know how to do "arrogance of power," and their prostitutes in the mainstream US
media know how to defend same. Hell, they know which side their bread is buttered on.

Blagojevich has shown he favored the employees who went on strike in Chicago against
Republic Window and Doors, saying he would back the Illinois Department of Labor bringing
the issue into federal court if the employees failed to get the $1.5 million they owned under
federal and state law as well their contract. The governor said, "We're going to do everything
possible in Illinois to side with these workers." The governor had arrived at the plant only hours
after the Chicago Tribune ran a December 8 story apparently confirming employees' fears that
the company had moved its business to a non union outlet in Iowa, hiding behind a different
name, Echo Windows which officially is listed with the secretary of state's office.

In the case of Coleman, like the Blagojevich, the FBI is investigating, and similarly Coleman
hasn't been convicted of any crime. The main objective fact which is different is the fact that
law enforcement authorities have so far failed to arrest Coleman. But to the Star Gazer Tribune's
credit it did carry a story in its December 11 issue on its front page showing the FBI was investigating
the case. For some "reason" this country's mainstream media hasn't covered any of the Coleman
scandal, and even the Star Gazer Tribune refused to call it a scandal. I have to differ on that given
the fact that the FBI is investigating the matter as the Tribune story points out makes it a scandal.
Does it prove criminal conduct? No, it doesn't, but this is likewise true in the Blagojevich case,
and an arrest by law enforcement authorities sure as hell doesn't change the fact that this country's
system of jurisprudence holds, if I'm not mistaken, that an individual is innocent until proven guilty
not the other way around, which is at least the tone of the coverage of the Blagojevich case. The
fact that no less than the Wall Street Journal is already piling on with the guilt by association
McCarthyite style hot air that the Blagojevich scandal has now touched Jesse Jackson Jr, a
prominent Democratic congressman from Illinois, as he has made it clear that he would like
to fill Barak Obama's senate seat and got the word to Blagojevich. Now that would obviously
say Jackson is guilty of wanting to be one of two senators from Illinois and having the "nerve"
to let the governor, an individual with the authority to appoint said senator know about this,
thus making him clearly guilty of wanting to be a US Senator. Yes, this is a new McCarthy
era, as has been aptly pointed out by the Progressive, but this time the new McCarthy has
been the president not just a senator. The fact that Jackson's name came up during the FBI
investigation doesn't say anything at all. The same mainstream media nationally isn't at all
shy about being all out McCarthy/guilt by association oriented by talking about how the Service
Employees Union is also "touched by this scandal." Oh, is that right? Hey, if that unions' touched
by this "shocking" scandal, it sure as hell took the McCarthyite, bought and owned lock, stock
and barrel by the upscale big business pimps, on and off Wall Street, to make it the case. A
little bit of that old guilt by association smear sewage by the US mainstream media sure goes a
long way to put out so much damn hot air. That union got mentioned in the investigation, and
presto and that union is "touched." Maybe it's the mainstream US media that's a tad touched.

In the Coleman case, Paul McKim who founded and was the CEO of the Deep Marine contends
in a lawsuit that this company funnelled $75,000 into the insurance company where Coleman's wife is
employed, a company known as Hays Companies of Minneapolis, with Nassar Kazaminy the
man who runs Deep Marine having said he was doing this as Coleman didn't get paid enough as
a senator. McKim maintains that Kazaminy made these comments about Coleman not making
enough as a senator to company executives and saying that the payments were to help Coleman
financially. McKim also says that Hays didn't provide anything goods or services for said payments.

We may not get Cockburn's type of checks and balances against the arrogance of power, but if those who
are trying to "help" Minnesota's "poor old" Coleman get their way, at least we'll get a better "balance
for Coleman's checking accounts."

Of course, I don't see why this case in Minnesota with Texas business money coming into buy Coleman
or at least some stock in him is less important than a governor, if it's true, trying to sell a senate seat,
but to those in that same state. At least in Illinois all the money was coming from within the state and
would benefit somebody in that state.

This whole tone nationally of guilt by association harkens so much back to the age of Joseph
McCarthy's as to show the "good old" US mainstream media knows how to get hysterical and
blow smoke up people's booties with the wildest of charges supported by not one solid fact to
keep their agenda, that of big business going full speed ahead

The US mainstream media by not covering the Coleman case at all and by its absolutely heavy
handed coverage of the Blagojevich case has shown it has no problems with double standards
to promote its big business agenda.