Galesburgers for Health Care Reform Regular people working to make a reform a reality…

HEALTH-CARE reform is nec­es­sary, but what is unfolding in Wash­ington, D.C., is the wrong solu­tion to a legit­i­mate problem. Leg­is­la­tion cur­rently on the table will result in dra­mat­i­cally higher pre­miums based on costly, above-market min­imum ben­e­fits and a weak require­ment that people pur­chase and main­tain cov­erage. Both of these policy choices by Con­gress would mean more expen­sive pre­miums for con­sumers.
— Slade Gorton — Seattle Time Op-Ed

… I wonder what kind of health care reform Amer­i­cans envi­sioned a year ago.

Did they expect the health care fairy to come down and sprinkle health care reform dust over hos­pi­tals and doc­tors? Did they think drug com­pa­nies would come around and say, “Aw shucks, y’all, we’ll just give you this stuff for free?” Did people not think that securing health insur­ance for the 46 mil­lion unin­sured was going to cost some­body some money?
— Tom Bohs of The Jackson Sun

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s bid to over­haul America’s health­care system has exposed a split within his Demo­c­ratic Party over abor­tion that threatens to undercut the party’s gains in recent elec­tions.
— Ed Stod­dard of Reuters

…There is a reason both the AARP and the Amer­ican Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion have endorsed the health care bill that passed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last weekend. The bill will help fam­i­lies all across America by giving them more choices, reducing costs and stop­ping providers from denying cov­erage based on pre-existing conditions.

The other side isn’t offering solu­tions. They simply want to keep saying NO to every­thing so they can block reform and keep the status quo that ben­e­fits insur­ance com­pa­nies over us.
— Eddie L. Parks — Op-Ed Cincin­nati Enquirer

If you’re a pro­gres­sive like me, and you’re upset by the Stupak amend­ment, which bars fed­er­ally sub­si­dized insur­ance from cov­ering abor­tions, con­sider this: What if we had a single-payer health-care system and someone like Jeb Bush or Sarah Palin were run­ning the country?
— Maggie Mahar — Wash­ington Post Op-Ed

While I was talking on the phone with our son in Kabul the other day, it dawned on me that the dif­fi­cul­ties con­fronting Pres­i­dent Obama in Amer­ican health policy are not unlike those con­fronting him in for­eign policy in Afghanistan.

What is loosely called “Afghanistan” and loosely called “the Amer­ican health system” both are basi­cally tribal sys­tems that his­tor­i­cally have fiercely resisted the con­straints of any coherent national policy. In fact, our health system even has the ana­logue of fun­da­men­talist extrem­ists: the ide­o­logues who scream at us daily on the TV screen.
— UWE E. REINHARDT in the New York Times

RIGID adher­ence to an all-or-nothing phi­los­ophy in life is a recipe for missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. Same goes for pol­i­tics, as is evi­dent by the all-or-nothing bat­tles threat­ening to derail relief for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans strug­gling to afford health care in this country.
— Mar­ilou Johanek of the Toledo Blade

…The truth is that even with the Stupak restric­tions, health-care reform would leave mil­lions of Amer­i­cans far better off than they are now — including mil­lions of women. This skir­mish over abor­tion cannot be allowed to destroy the oppor­tu­nity to extend cov­erage to 35 mil­lion Amer­i­cans. Killing health-care reform would be bad for choice — and very bad for the right to life.
— E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Wash­ington Post

While the Repub­li­cans may be attempting to appear statesman-like as they plead for “bi-partisanship” in health care reform this IS really nothing more than cyn­ical manip­u­la­tion of the leg­isla­tive process. To Repub­li­cans in Wash­ington, D.C. being the minority party means obstructing all leg­isla­tive progress what­so­ever and then cam­paigning against an inef­fec­tive, do-nothing Demo­c­ratic Con­gress. This approach is all about per­sonal and party polit­ical power and says every­thing about the GOP world view.
– Mike Kroll