This group is for a single payer national health plan. What the Democrats have come up with now is so compromised that in their opinion it should be voted down. The insurance companies among others have so influenced the shape of the plan that it is not really a reform at all. The article details some of the msot obviously flaws in the present bill. Usually news reports are of right wing critiques of the present health care bills but many on the left also do not think what will come out of all the negotiations will be worth passing. Change is US health care it would seem will result in deform rather than reform. Any type of universal care in the US is regarded as socialised medicine a boo word in the US even though every other advanced capitalist country has some form of universal system. The US has managed to develop the most expensive system in the world with gross inequities and so dominated by well heeled corporate players that it seems incapable of being reformed.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dec. 22, 2009
Contact:
David Himmelstein, M.D.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
Oliver Fein, M.D.
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org
To the Members of the U.S. Senate:
It is with great sadness that we urge you to vote against the health care reform legislation now before you. As physicians, we are acutely aware of the unnecessary suffering that our nation's broken health care financing system inflicts on our patients. We make no common cause with the Republicans' obstructionist tactics or alarmist rhetoric. However, we have concluded that the Senate bill's passage would bring more harm than good.
We are fully cognizant of the salutary provisions included in the legislation, notably an expansion of Medicaid coverage, increased funds for community clinics and regulations to curtail some of private insurers' most egregious practices. Yet these are outweighed by its central provisions -- particularly the individual mandate -- that would reinforce private insurers' stranglehold on care. Those who dislike their current employer-sponsored coverage would be forced to keep it. Those without insurance would be forced to pay private insurers' inflated premiums, often for coverage so skimpy that serious illness would bankrupt them. And the $476 billion in new public funds for premium subsidies would all go to insurance firms, buttressing their financial and political power, and rendering future reform all the more difficult.
Some paint the Senate bill as a flawed first step to reform that will be improved over time, citing historical examples such as Social Security. But where Social Security established the nidus of a public institution that grew over time, the Senate bill proscribes any such new public institution. Instead, it channels vast new resources -- including funds diverted from Medicare -- into the very private insurers who caused today's health care crisis. Social Security's first step was not a mandate that payroll taxes which fund pensions be turned over to Goldman Sachs!
While the fortification of private insurers is the most malignant aspect of the bill, several other provisions threaten harm to vulnerable patients, including:
* The bill's anti-abortion provisions would restrict reproductive choice, compromising the health of women and adolescent girls.
* The new 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans -- deceptively labeled a "Cadillac tax" -- would hit many middle-income families. The costs of group insurance are driven largely by regional health costs and the demography of the covered group. Hence, the tax targets workers in firms that employ more women (whose costs of care are higher than men's), and older and sicker employees, particularly those in high-cost regions such as Maine and New York.
* The bill would drain $43 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the 23 million who will remain uninsured even if the bill works as planned. These threatened hospitals are also a key resource for emergency care, mental health care and other services that are unprofitable for hospitals under current payment regimes. In many communities, severely ill patients will be left with no place to go -- a human rights abuse.
* The bill would leave hundreds of millions of Americans with inadequate insurance -- an "actuarial value" as low as 60 percent of actual health costs. Predictably, as health costs continue to grow, more families will face co-payments and deductibles so high that they preclude adequate access to care. Such coverage is more akin to a hospital gown than to a warm winter coat.
Congress' capitulation to insurers -- along with concessions to the pharmaceutical industry -- fatally undermines the economic viability of reform. The bill would inflate the already crushing burden of insurance-related paperwork that currently siphons $400 billion from care annually. According to CMS' own projections, the bill will cause U.S. health costs to increase even more rapidly than presently, and budget neutrality is to be achieved by draining funds from Medicare and an accounting trick -- front-loading the new revenues while delaying most new coverage until 2014. As homeowners seduced into balloon mortgages have learned, pushing costs off to the future is neither prudent nor sustainable.
We ask that you defeat the bill currently under debate, and immediately move to consider the single-payer approach -- an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All program -- which prioritizes the advancement of our nation's health over the enhancement of private, profit-seeking interests.
Oliver Fein, M.D., President
David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Co-founder
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Co-founder
Physicians for a National Health Program
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Harper appeals Khadr verdict
Harper has been consistent all along in his kissing U.S. ass to much applause of many of his reactionary supporters. This will delay any attempt to return Khadr to Canada. Khadr was a child when he allegedly threw the grenade that killed a US service person. No matter. He may have been tortured. No Matter. The system of military tribunals under which Khadr is to be tried is widely regarded as unjust and certainly does not meet the standards of the US civil legal system. No matter. Khadr is faced with a serious charge and the U.S. is a great beacon to the Free World and the trials represent our Free World values of no habeas corpus and torture as part of a justifiable legal system.
In all this Obama has been completely silent. I guess it is because it has nothing to do with the U.S. reform of health care.
'We will not make it easy for the government': lawyer for Guantanamo Bay detainee
Ottawa will seek to overturn an appeal court ruling that it must demand his repatriation. (Janet Hamlin/Pool/Associated Press)
The federal government will appeal to the country's top court to quash a ruling forcing Ottawa to press for the release of Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, the Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed Tuesday.
The Federal Court of Appeal earlier this month upheld a lower-court ruling that required Ottawa to try to repatriate Khadr, the only Western citizen still being held by the U.S. at its military base in Cuba.
"After careful consideration of the legal merits of the ruling ... the government has decided to seek leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court" of Canada, Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The government has filed a motion to stay the Appeal Court's decision pending its application to the Supreme Court, the statement said.
Dennis Edney, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, said he will argue that the country's top court should not hear the case.
"We will not make it easy for the government," Edney said from Edmonton. "The ruling indicated this was a unique decision, a one-off decision, based upon the particular circumstances of Canadian conduct and Omar Khar's situation. It's not an issue of national security, it's not an issue of national importance, and we will be telling the court that."
Toronto-born Khadr, 22, was captured by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15, and has been held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years. The U.S. accuses him of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. soldier Christopher Speer, but leaked documents have called into question the Pentagon's murder case against Khadr.
On Aug. 14, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a Federal Court ruling that ordered Ottawa to press for Khadr's return from Guantanamo.
In a 2-1 judgment, the Appeal Court found that Khadr's rights under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the rights to life, liberty and security of person — had been breached when Canadian officials interviewed him at the prison in Guantanamo in 2003 and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities.
Other countries have intervened
Some other Western countries have intervened to get their citizens out of Guantanamo, but the Canadian government has maintained that because of the seriousness of the charges, Khadr should face military proceedings in the United States.
"Our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged," the Foreign Affairs statement said. "Omar Khadr has been accused of serious crimes, including murder."
With the swearing-in in January of U.S. President Barack Obama, who vowed to close Guantanamo and repatriate all but its most serious prisoners, it seemed the issue of Khadr's detention would soon be immaterial. But the Obama administration has never laid out its intentions for Khadr, and it now seems the Guantanamo tribunals might still proceed.
"President Obama has not communicated any decision to the government of Canada with respect to the case of Mr. Khadr," Foreign Affairs said Tuesday, adding "it is in our interest to wait for the outcome" of the White House's decisions on the Guantanamo tribunals.
The military commission process, a cornerstone of former president George W. Bush's approach, has been hobbled by court findings that it violates the American constitution, as well as by allegations that it breaches international law and that crucial evidence was extracted under torture — which Khadr's lawyers say happened to him.
Deprived of sleep
A Canadian official visiting Khadr in 2004 in Guantanamo Bay was told the U.S. military was depriving the then 17-year-old of sleep for weeks to make him "more amenable and willing to talk."
Human rights advocates say that because Khadr was 15 when captured, he is entitled to protection under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. has signed. The convention’s Optional Protocol says anyone under age 18 in armed conflict are to be treated as victims needing rehabilitation, not hostile agents to be imprisoned.
According to the original U.S. military version of events, Khadr ambushed American soldiers with a grenade following a four-hour firefight against al-Qaeda militants at a mud compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pentagon officials later backtracked slightly after it was revealed nobody witnessed Khadr throw the grenade. Military officials said an eyewitness wasn't needed, because Khadr was the only militant left alive and the only person who could have thrown the grenade.
But a classified Pentagon document inadvertently released to reporters in February 2008 suggested otherwise. The document, a sworn first-hand account of the gun battle from an American soldier, said two combatants were left alive in the compound when Speer was killed.'We will not make it easy for the government': lawyer for Guantanamo Bay detainee
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 12:00 PM ET Comments39Recommend25
CBC News
Omar Khadr is shown in a sketch from a hearing at Guantanamo Bay in January. Ottawa will seek to overturn an appeal court ruling that it must demand his repatriation. (Janet Hamlin/Pool/Associated Press)
The federal government will appeal to the country's top court to quash a ruling forcing Ottawa to press for the release of Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, the Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed Tuesday.
The Federal Court of Appeal earlier this month upheld a lower-court ruling that required Ottawa to try to repatriate Khadr, the only Western citizen still being held by the U.S. at its military base in Cuba.
"After careful consideration of the legal merits of the ruling ... the government has decided to seek leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court" of Canada, Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The government has filed a motion to stay the Appeal Court's decision pending its application to the Supreme Court, the statement said.
Dennis Edney, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, said he will argue that the country's top court should not hear the case.
"We will not make it easy for the government," Edney said from Edmonton. "The ruling indicated this was a unique decision, a one-off decision, based upon the particular circumstances of Canadian conduct and Omar Khar's situation. It's not an issue of national security, it's not an issue of national importance, and we will be telling the court that."
Toronto-born Khadr, 22, was captured by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15, and has been held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years. The U.S. accuses him of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. soldier Christopher Speer, but leaked documents have called into question the Pentagon's murder case against Khadr.
On Aug. 14, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a Federal Court ruling that ordered Ottawa to press for Khadr's return from Guantanamo.
In a 2-1 judgment, the Appeal Court found that Khadr's rights under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the rights to life, liberty and security of person — had been breached when Canadian officials interviewed him at the prison in Guantanamo in 2003 and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities.
Other countries have intervened
Some other Western countries have intervened to get their citizens out of Guantanamo, but the Canadian government has maintained that because of the seriousness of the charges, Khadr should face military proceedings in the United States.
"Our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged," the Foreign Affairs statement said. "Omar Khadr has been accused of serious crimes, including murder."
With the swearing-in in January of U.S. President Barack Obama, who vowed to close Guantanamo and repatriate all but its most serious prisoners, it seemed the issue of Khadr's detention would soon be immaterial. But the Obama administration has never laid out its intentions for Khadr, and it now seems the Guantanamo tribunals might still proceed.
"President Obama has not communicated any decision to the government of Canada with respect to the case of Mr. Khadr," Foreign Affairs said Tuesday, adding "it is in our interest to wait for the outcome" of the White House's decisions on the Guantanamo tribunals.
The military commission process, a cornerstone of former president George W. Bush's approach, has been hobbled by court findings that it violates the American constitution, as well as by allegations that it breaches international law and that crucial evidence was extracted under torture — which Khadr's lawyers say happened to him.
Deprived of sleep
A Canadian official visiting Khadr in 2004 in Guantanamo Bay was told the U.S. military was depriving the then 17-year-old of sleep for weeks to make him "more amenable and willing to talk."
Human rights advocates say that because Khadr was 15 when captured, he is entitled to protection under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. has signed. The convention’s Optional Protocol says anyone under age 18 in armed conflict are to be treated as victims needing rehabilitation, not hostile agents to be imprisoned.
According to the original U.S. military version of events, Khadr ambushed American soldiers with a grenade following a four-hour firefight against al-Qaeda militants at a mud compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pentagon officials later backtracked slightly after it was revealed nobody witnessed Khadr throw the grenade. Military officials said an eyewitness wasn't needed, because Khadr was the only militant left alive and the only person who could have thrown the grenade.
But a classified Pentagon document inadvertently released to reporters in February 2008 suggested otherwise. The document, a sworn first-hand account of the gun battle from an American soldier, said two combatants were left alive in the compound when Speer was killed.
In all this Obama has been completely silent. I guess it is because it has nothing to do with the U.S. reform of health care.
'We will not make it easy for the government': lawyer for Guantanamo Bay detainee
Ottawa will seek to overturn an appeal court ruling that it must demand his repatriation. (Janet Hamlin/Pool/Associated Press)
The federal government will appeal to the country's top court to quash a ruling forcing Ottawa to press for the release of Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, the Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed Tuesday.
The Federal Court of Appeal earlier this month upheld a lower-court ruling that required Ottawa to try to repatriate Khadr, the only Western citizen still being held by the U.S. at its military base in Cuba.
"After careful consideration of the legal merits of the ruling ... the government has decided to seek leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court" of Canada, Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The government has filed a motion to stay the Appeal Court's decision pending its application to the Supreme Court, the statement said.
Dennis Edney, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, said he will argue that the country's top court should not hear the case.
"We will not make it easy for the government," Edney said from Edmonton. "The ruling indicated this was a unique decision, a one-off decision, based upon the particular circumstances of Canadian conduct and Omar Khar's situation. It's not an issue of national security, it's not an issue of national importance, and we will be telling the court that."
Toronto-born Khadr, 22, was captured by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15, and has been held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years. The U.S. accuses him of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. soldier Christopher Speer, but leaked documents have called into question the Pentagon's murder case against Khadr.
On Aug. 14, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a Federal Court ruling that ordered Ottawa to press for Khadr's return from Guantanamo.
In a 2-1 judgment, the Appeal Court found that Khadr's rights under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the rights to life, liberty and security of person — had been breached when Canadian officials interviewed him at the prison in Guantanamo in 2003 and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities.
Other countries have intervened
Some other Western countries have intervened to get their citizens out of Guantanamo, but the Canadian government has maintained that because of the seriousness of the charges, Khadr should face military proceedings in the United States.
"Our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged," the Foreign Affairs statement said. "Omar Khadr has been accused of serious crimes, including murder."
With the swearing-in in January of U.S. President Barack Obama, who vowed to close Guantanamo and repatriate all but its most serious prisoners, it seemed the issue of Khadr's detention would soon be immaterial. But the Obama administration has never laid out its intentions for Khadr, and it now seems the Guantanamo tribunals might still proceed.
"President Obama has not communicated any decision to the government of Canada with respect to the case of Mr. Khadr," Foreign Affairs said Tuesday, adding "it is in our interest to wait for the outcome" of the White House's decisions on the Guantanamo tribunals.
The military commission process, a cornerstone of former president George W. Bush's approach, has been hobbled by court findings that it violates the American constitution, as well as by allegations that it breaches international law and that crucial evidence was extracted under torture — which Khadr's lawyers say happened to him.
Deprived of sleep
A Canadian official visiting Khadr in 2004 in Guantanamo Bay was told the U.S. military was depriving the then 17-year-old of sleep for weeks to make him "more amenable and willing to talk."
Human rights advocates say that because Khadr was 15 when captured, he is entitled to protection under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. has signed. The convention’s Optional Protocol says anyone under age 18 in armed conflict are to be treated as victims needing rehabilitation, not hostile agents to be imprisoned.
According to the original U.S. military version of events, Khadr ambushed American soldiers with a grenade following a four-hour firefight against al-Qaeda militants at a mud compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pentagon officials later backtracked slightly after it was revealed nobody witnessed Khadr throw the grenade. Military officials said an eyewitness wasn't needed, because Khadr was the only militant left alive and the only person who could have thrown the grenade.
But a classified Pentagon document inadvertently released to reporters in February 2008 suggested otherwise. The document, a sworn first-hand account of the gun battle from an American soldier, said two combatants were left alive in the compound when Speer was killed.'We will not make it easy for the government': lawyer for Guantanamo Bay detainee
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 12:00 PM ET Comments39Recommend25
CBC News
Omar Khadr is shown in a sketch from a hearing at Guantanamo Bay in January. Ottawa will seek to overturn an appeal court ruling that it must demand his repatriation. (Janet Hamlin/Pool/Associated Press)
The federal government will appeal to the country's top court to quash a ruling forcing Ottawa to press for the release of Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, the Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed Tuesday.
The Federal Court of Appeal earlier this month upheld a lower-court ruling that required Ottawa to try to repatriate Khadr, the only Western citizen still being held by the U.S. at its military base in Cuba.
"After careful consideration of the legal merits of the ruling ... the government has decided to seek leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court" of Canada, Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The government has filed a motion to stay the Appeal Court's decision pending its application to the Supreme Court, the statement said.
Dennis Edney, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, said he will argue that the country's top court should not hear the case.
"We will not make it easy for the government," Edney said from Edmonton. "The ruling indicated this was a unique decision, a one-off decision, based upon the particular circumstances of Canadian conduct and Omar Khar's situation. It's not an issue of national security, it's not an issue of national importance, and we will be telling the court that."
Toronto-born Khadr, 22, was captured by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15, and has been held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years. The U.S. accuses him of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. soldier Christopher Speer, but leaked documents have called into question the Pentagon's murder case against Khadr.
On Aug. 14, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a Federal Court ruling that ordered Ottawa to press for Khadr's return from Guantanamo.
In a 2-1 judgment, the Appeal Court found that Khadr's rights under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the rights to life, liberty and security of person — had been breached when Canadian officials interviewed him at the prison in Guantanamo in 2003 and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities.
Other countries have intervened
Some other Western countries have intervened to get their citizens out of Guantanamo, but the Canadian government has maintained that because of the seriousness of the charges, Khadr should face military proceedings in the United States.
"Our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged," the Foreign Affairs statement said. "Omar Khadr has been accused of serious crimes, including murder."
With the swearing-in in January of U.S. President Barack Obama, who vowed to close Guantanamo and repatriate all but its most serious prisoners, it seemed the issue of Khadr's detention would soon be immaterial. But the Obama administration has never laid out its intentions for Khadr, and it now seems the Guantanamo tribunals might still proceed.
"President Obama has not communicated any decision to the government of Canada with respect to the case of Mr. Khadr," Foreign Affairs said Tuesday, adding "it is in our interest to wait for the outcome" of the White House's decisions on the Guantanamo tribunals.
The military commission process, a cornerstone of former president George W. Bush's approach, has been hobbled by court findings that it violates the American constitution, as well as by allegations that it breaches international law and that crucial evidence was extracted under torture — which Khadr's lawyers say happened to him.
Deprived of sleep
A Canadian official visiting Khadr in 2004 in Guantanamo Bay was told the U.S. military was depriving the then 17-year-old of sleep for weeks to make him "more amenable and willing to talk."
Human rights advocates say that because Khadr was 15 when captured, he is entitled to protection under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the U.S. has signed. The convention’s Optional Protocol says anyone under age 18 in armed conflict are to be treated as victims needing rehabilitation, not hostile agents to be imprisoned.
According to the original U.S. military version of events, Khadr ambushed American soldiers with a grenade following a four-hour firefight against al-Qaeda militants at a mud compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
Pentagon officials later backtracked slightly after it was revealed nobody witnessed Khadr throw the grenade. Military officials said an eyewitness wasn't needed, because Khadr was the only militant left alive and the only person who could have thrown the grenade.
But a classified Pentagon document inadvertently released to reporters in February 2008 suggested otherwise. The document, a sworn first-hand account of the gun battle from an American soldier, said two combatants were left alive in the compound when Speer was killed.
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