"Roy Roger's Horse Saves Health Care!" (a Message from Dennis Kucinich)

[KoKo]

Roy Roger's Horse Saves Health Care!


Dear Friends,

The Senate cannot pass a health care bill with a public option. The House cannot pass a bill without one. The public wants a public option. The insurance industry wants a private mandate. The White House is in trouble on this and is calling upon the Senate to find a way out of this dark passage.

So, Boys and Girls, return with us now as the Senators will take a page from out of the old West. They are going to do what cowboy hero Roy Rogers did when he got in a jam: Call for Trigger, the Golden Palomino. Trigger, the trusty steed who road to glory against those phantom cattle rustlers who sold insurance against physical harm, provided however that the small town marks bought the stolen beef.

In this scene Trigger will come off his mount of glory at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri and gallop to the mount of glory on Capitol Hill, rear up a dazzling 24ft, and by his sheer electrifying presence rescue the US Senate and the Administration from today's rustlers.

It is Washington, DC, so they promptly slap on a confused Trigger a corporate blanket with corporate logos from insurance companies: Pre-Existing Trigger. Lower Cost Trigger. Patient Access Trigger. The Senators will jump on this horse and ride straight for the sunset. Giddy-up Trigger, past that broken down Public Option dray horse. Gallop into the conference committee with full force. Charge!

I am carried away by prospect of rescue by the one horse I can believe in. Sadly, Trigger will never save us from the rustlers. He'll just stand there, mounted, in all of his spectacular equine power ever poised to spring into action, ever ready to hustle out the rustlers, or something like that.

Thank you.

Dennis Kucinich



While the political process in Washington suffers through its grotesque pantomime on health care, let us prepare our neighborhoods, our communities, our states for the eventual triumph of single payer health care.

He has a Petition to Sign, here at......................
http://healthcare.kucinich.us/petition/

[kenny blankenship]

1. Put Triggers on Mandates. If anything should be subject to a trigger it's the giveaway to Insurance

Admit It: A Robust Public Option Is Dead
Miles Mogulescu, Huffington Post, Sept.15, 2009[br />
< snip >
With a robust public option dead, what we're left with is a massive Democratic-sponsored taxpayer bailout for the insurance and drug industries and a back-door tax on the uninsured middle class. The plan may ban insurance companies from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions (a good thing), but it places no limits on how much they can charge.

Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed by 87% over the past 6 years and now average $6,000 for individuals and $14,000 for families. 94% of insurance markets are highly concentrated and monopoly/oligopoly pricing have enabled the largest insurance companies to increase their profits by 428% from 2000-2007 while paying their CEOs an average of $11.9 million apiece. If the government mandates that the nearly 50 million uninsured buy private insurance or be fined as much as $3800 a year by the IRS (while providing hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded premium subsidies to the less well off), insurance companies are all but certain to jack up their rates even further, keeping health insurance unaffordable to the middle class and breaking the federal budget with ever-increasing subsidies.

< snip >
...are there other alternatives--as Obama said in his Congressional speech that he's open to considering--that could make a health reform bill worth passing? As a long-time Medicare-For-All advocate, I'm tempted to say "no". But as a political pragmatist I've got some key suggestions:

1. REGULATE INSURANCE RATES:

2. PUT A TRIGGER ON IMPLEMENTING INDIVIDUAL MANDATES UNTIL INSURANCE PREMIUMS ARE AFFORDABLE:

3. GIVE MEDICARE THE POWER TO NEGOTIATE FOR LOWER DRUG PRICES:

4. ENSURE THAT DENNIS KUCINICH'S AMENDMENT ALLOWING INDIVIDUAL STATES TO EXPERIMENT WITH A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM STAYS IN THE FINAL LEGISLATION

[KoKo]

2. Kucinich's Sublime sense of humor comes through here as he "throws up his hands."

Sad thing is that many DU'ers don't really remember Roy Rogers and Trigger to get the humor, I guess.

:D Still..for those of us who do...Dennis wrote what's called in the Dem South a "HOOT" of a post with this one!

:rofl:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

3. A fantasy of mine when a kid was to live with Roy, Dale, Trigger, Bullet and

Buttermilk!

Dennis did himself proud here!

[KoKo]

4. Thanks...I remember much of that, too. n/t

[David Zephyr]

5. Enthusiastic K&R. Great stuff!

Dennis! Thanks, KoKo.

[rug]

6. The Lone Ranger rides again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM-5tTLz9_E