Fidel Castro: Thoughts on Obama and Health Reform in the United States

THE DOCTOR MIGHT BE IN Cubans young and old at a Havana clinic in 2004. Sven Creutzmann/Polaris

Global Research, March 26, 2010
Digital Granma Internacional – 2010-03-24

Barack Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system imposed by the United States on the world: “God bless the United States,” at the end of his speeches.

Some of his acts wounded the sensitivity of world opinion, which viewed with sympathy the African-American candidate’s victory over that country’s extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor’s genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of Americans who went to the polls in that democratic country.

Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000 soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.

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Health Insurance Industry Contributed Millions To Covert Anti-Reform Ad Campaign

Health Insurers Funded Chamber Attack Ads

National Journal Tuesday, January 12, 2010

By Peter H. Stone

Just as dealings with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats soured last summer, six of the nation’s biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.

That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions.

The companies are all members of the powerful trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans.

The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber. Each insurer kicked in at least $1 million and some gave multimillion-dollar donations.

“There’s no question that AHIP has quietly solicited monies from their members which were funneled over to the chamber for their ads,” said a source. The total donated by the health insurers, according to one estimate, was as much as one-quarter of the chamber’s total health care advertising budget.

More of the shame

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10 of the Most Obscenely Stupid Right-Wing Attacks Against President Obama

10 of the Most Obscenely Stupid Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories and Attacks Against the President

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted September 8, 2009.

Obama’s nefarious plan for the nation’s genitals? His evil designs on your children? Here are the most absurd right-wing assaults on the president — and logic and reason.

Today, President Barack Obama is slated to give a speech urging America’s schoolchildren to do their homework and stay in school.

Naturally, conservatives are extremely alarmed, because obviously the president is looking to create a vast army of adorable little zombies that will help him destroy America faster.

All last week, conservative bloggers and pundits gleefully accused the centrist president of plotting to force radical politics on America’s impressionable youth, after Florida’s Republican chairman Jim Greer said Obama’s address would “indoctrinate” children and spread “socialist ideology.”

The week of right-wing echo chamber freak-outs led to protests by conservative parents, which put school districts throughout the country in the unenviable position of having to deal with the “controversy”: Some have decided not to air the president’s address; others are requiring parental permission.

So, thanks to the right-wing saviors of America’s youth, a bunch of kids will be shielded from the president’s dangerous message that learning things is good.

Could this be the stupidest, most irrational way conservatives have tried to tear down Obama? Is it even possible to answer that question?

We’ve assembled the most absurd, logic-defying right-wing attacks on the president. Some you’ve undoubtedly encountered before, as all are incessantly blared by conservative pundits and shock jocks, while many are cynically embraced by GOP lawmakers.

Assembled together, they illustrate the absurd extremes to which right-wingers are trying to drive the public discourse in their efforts to thwart essential reforms in health care, energy policy and the economy.

The Advent of Socialism/Fascism

Most historians would agree that fascism and socialism represent vastly different ideologies and historical phenomena. But not the historians at Fox News! Since Obama took office, right-wing pundits have lobbed these smears interchangeably, not quite clarifying whether Obama is leading the proletariat to a glorious utopian future or trying to bring the master race to world dominion.

MORE HERE

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Conyers: Universal Healthcare Bill Today

Conyers To Introduce Universal Healthcare Bill Today

Huffington Post- Ryan Grim

January 26, 2009 02:23 PM

John Conyers plans to introduce his universal healthcare legislation today, a Conyers aide tells the Huffington Post. The bill – known last session as H.R. 676 – is a favorite of healthcare reformers who back a single-payer system.

The bill, which will again be H.R. 676, is one of the more elegant to be introduced in the House, clocking in at just a few pages.

The plan is simple: everyone is eligible for a version of Medicare under a new U.S. National Health Insurance Program.

The program would effectively put private insurers out of business. What to do with all those employees? Hire them, says Conyers’ bill.

“The Program shall provide that clerical, administrative, and billing personnel in insurance companies, doctors offices, hospitals, nursing facilities, and other facilities whose jobs are eliminated due to reduced administration (1) should have first priority in retraining and job placement in the new system; and (2) shall be eligible to receive 2 years of unemployment benefits.”

Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, last introduced his bill, which garnered 93 cosponsors, in February 2007. It was referred to committee but never given a hearing.

If the 647-page House stimulus bill was too much to get through, try Conyers’ out.

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