Today's Stories

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

August 3, 2009

Pam Martens
Millions of Americans Pushed Into No-Law System by Colluding Banks

Anthony DiMaggio
Media Backlash: Obama and the Settlements

Udi Aloni
And Who Shall I Say is Calling? A Plea to Leonard Cohen

Mike Roselle
See the Mountains of WestVirginia ... Before They're Blown Up!

Dr. Susan Block
Beat It! Sex, Death and Michael Jackson

Roy Bourgeois / Margaret Knapke
School of Coups

Joe Bageant
A Yard Sale in Chernobyl

Dina Jadallah
Hiding the State

Dave Lindorff
Of Blue Dogs and Jellyfish

Martha Rosenberg
Grand Closings in Evanston: How the Recession is Hitting Illinois

Website of the Day
Why We Can't "Afford" Health Care

July 31 - August 2, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

Gabriel Kolko
Searching For Enemies

John Prados
The Intelligence Oversight Mess

Joe Bageant
The Bastards Never Die

Tim Wise
Rationalizing Racial Oppression

Carl Ginsburg
Frist First: Follow the Money (and Find the Plump Heart of "Health Care")

Michael Fox
The Honduran Coup as Overture

John Lindsay-Poland
Revamping Plan Colombia

Michael Winship
Pay-to-Play: Washington's Sport of Kings

Rev. William Alberts
White Men Can Jump ... to Conclusions

Andy Worthington
Judge Orders Release of Tortured Gitmo Prisoner

Steve Breyman
Counting the Unemployed

Cyrus Bina
Racism, Class and Profiling

Missy Beattie
Promises Ignored

Ron Jacobs
Into the Vapid: Consuming the Cultural Product

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Party of Concessions: Democrats Never Learn

Lucia Alvarez
Fall of the House of Kirchner? Return of the Right in Argentina

Dave Lindorff
David Brooks' White Guy Nightmare

Lawrence R. Velvel
Madoff: What Should be Done Now?

Omar Barghouti /
Sid Shniad
United for Freedom and Universal Justice

James L. Secor
The Name of the Game is Wipe-Out

Belén Fernández
Zelaya in Nicaragua: Has Another Constitution Been Violated?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frank Lloyd Wright in Hollywood: the Ennis House as Imperial Ruin

David Yearsley
Beauty in Dark Places: Berlin's Olympic Stadium

Brian J. Foley
Pre-Eating: a Threat to Restaurants Everywhere

Alan Cabal
Onward, Into the Fog: Thomas Pynchon's
"Inherent Vice"

Kim Nicolini
The Way War Feels

Lorenzo Wolff
The Way It Felt the First Time: the Jump Rope Magic of the Shangri-Las

Poets' Basement
Four Poems From the Chinese

Website of the Weekend
Obama's Ex-Doc Knocks ObamaCare

July 30, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

Gareth Porter
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

Greg Grandin
Honduran Coup Over?

Diane Farsetta
Pentagon Pundits Get a Pass

Stephen Soldz
The King Case, the APA and the Missing Ethics Investigation

Alan Farago
Learning How to Survive in a Depression From "Weeds"

David Macaray
Cops and Labor Unions

Mike Howells /
Jay Arena
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

Christopher Brauchli
Oatmeal Envy

Website of the Day
Changing the SOFA

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

August 18, 2009

Progressives Abet Obama-Fraud
Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

By MARY LYNN CRAMER

Whether intentional or not, the liberal “single-payer” promoters have greatly confused the public by equating single-payer, universal health care coverage with “Medicare For All.”  Ironically, it looks like they will get what they have called for; again, unintentionally.

With the long predicted demise of any “public option” or government sponsored program that would compete with the private sector, plain vanilla Medicare-for-all is targeted to become the gold standard for coverage under the basic private policies to be offered to all Americans (whether you like what you have now or not).  Take a good look at what that means in practice.

As I have attempted to explain in previous articles (“The Myth of Medicare for All ", (see counterpunch.org/cramer08052009.html)Medicare, by itself, does not cover annual physical exams, dental care, routine eye exams or eyeglasses. There is no coverage for hearing aids, annual physical exams, or foot care. Medicare participants must pay 50 per cent of an outpatient therapist’s charge for mental health services.  Other services and supplies not provided by Medicare include acupuncture, chiropractic services, several laboratory tests, long-term care, orthopedic shoes, prescription drugs, shots to prevent illness, and some surgical procedures given in ambulatory surgical centers. (You can see the entire list of “What’s NOT Covered by Part A and Part B” in the US Department of Health and Human Services booklet entitled “Medicare & You.”)  For those items that are covered, there is a charge of at least 20 per cent of the medical provider’s costs, and a deductible that must be met.

This new bottom line for benefits, much lower than anything I ever had with my “employer-provided” insurance plans, will be this basic Medicare plan offered to all, served up with blarney that now all Americans have access to the same excellent Medicare that the elderly are so “happy” with. If that isn’t good enough for you, anyone who can afford it will be able to purchase additional coverage, at a much higher price than seniors now pay for the government-subsidized supplemental programs (sometimes called Medicare “Advantage”).  According to repeated pronouncements by the President and Congress, these government-subsidized, supplemental programs (that seniors have depended upon to expand their Medicare benefits and make basic medical services affordable) will be eliminated. They constitute the “waste” in the system that the President and Congress repeatedly refer to. They also represent “chicken feed,” compared to the enormous profits the private sector is going to accumulate when we all have to purchase private health insurance policies.

This is what Grampy meant, when he protested that he did not want the government messing around with his Medicare.  In spite of the chortling and demeaning commentary by noted liberals on NPR talk shows, Democracy Now, The DR show, and others, Grampy does know that the deduction he agreed the government should take directly from his monthly Social Security check is his premium payment for the government-run Medicare plan.  He also knows he could never afford decent medical coverage if he did not make an additional monthly premium payment for the private supplemental  (“Advantage”) program.  Grampy knows that these supplemental programs that give him the “advantage” of being able to afford the basics of medical care, are on the chopping block and that their elimination (as Obama brags repeatedly) will play a major part in the cost-cutting needed to pay for the new health reform program.
Another cost-cutter Obama often cites is reduction in funding to those hospitals that provide services to the uninsured and poorest citizens.

Of the 165 seniors living in my elderly housing project, I know no senior who has been asked by any pollster how they like Medicare.  However, I am sure that no senior who was actually polled ever responded “Do you mean am I happy with my Medicare parts A & B, or do you mean am I happy with my Medicare plus the medicare supplemental plan provided by my private insurer?”  Seniors know the difference.  Unfortunately, pollsters, as well as most activists and journalists do not.  Recently, on a local FM radio program (“Sounds of Dissent, WZBC), a nurse from California, who has been organizing for single-payer health insurance for over 30 years, was asked why she did not explain to the public the difference between Medicare and the “expanded/enhanced Medicare-For-All” she actually wanted to see realized.  She responded that it took “too long to say all those words.”  She and the rest of the politicians continue to deal in sound bites, often making fun of Grampy’s ignorance and plans to “kill Grammy.”

The blitz and propaganda on both the left and right leave little room for a clear picture of what an alternative health care plan would look like.  The worse contribution to the BS I have heard to date came from the President himself.  He told the citizens at a New Hampshire town meeting that he wants “all Americans to have the same insurance programs that members of Congress have!”  Just how ignorant does he think we are? (If you don’t know what isn’t covered by Medicare, I bet you don’t know what is covered by congressional insurance programs.)

Obama’s healthcare reform is no more a response to the needs and wants of citizen supporters who worked to get him elected, than was his increasing the military spending and expanding the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is, however, a response to an economic crisis that has been growing in the “real economy” for decades. The remedies and options open to Obama are the same as those of his predecessors in similar situations: transfer as much as possible of the wealth, income, labor and resources away from the “consumer” (a/k/a workers, low income and middleclass citizens, elderly, disabled, children, the poor, et. al.) over to the private sector through wage and benefits cuts, through inflation, through outright “bailouts,” through government spending in industrial sectors that could not survive without that intervention (e.g. military weapons, aircraft, corporate agricultural industry, etc.)---all with the great “hope” of returning profitability to real (not bubbles reflecting inflated worthless paper)economic/industrial production. (For more details on this process, please see some of my previous articles in Counterpunch, e.g. “The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question” and  “Greenspan’s Higher Power.”)

The point being, that within the context of the “worse depression since the Great Depression,” we are not going to see a health reform plan designed to meet the needs of citizens for affordable, comprehensive medical services.  We will see a plan designed to increase profits in the private sector at the expense of the health and welfare of the majority of Americans, with particularly disgusting consequences for the poor and elderly. 

Look at what happened with Massachusetts, the “model” for the national healthcare program.  As Ellen Murphy Meehan, Director of the Massachusetts Alliance of Safety Net Hospitals, points out in her Boston Globe/NYT article (The State’s Fraying Health Safety Net” 8/10/09) “…hospitals that serve the largest proportion of those newly covered and low-income populations have seen their state-funded payments diminish or be eliminated. By receiving lower rates, they have helped to subsidize health reform.  But the consequence of their diminished rates is financial losses and the prospect of the loss of critical services for poor and disadvantaged populations.”  She stresses that “as health reform has been implemented, rates have declined for many hospital, and special payments for hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of low-income patients have been eliminated…hospitals located in the state’s poorest urban communities [have been left] with no compensation from Medicaid for the vast amount of care they deliver at rates that are still well below cost.”

Meehan’s focus here is the increased number of poor on Medicaid in Massachusetts.  Obama also plans to expand the numbers of poor uninsured on Medicaid, while he cuts “waste” in services for the insured elderly on Medicare.  Although these are two very different and separate programs, Meehan’s advise to the Obama Administration in considering Massachusetts as a model is true for both of the Medicare and Medicaid: “Policy makers looking to Massachusetts as a model…[should] reconsider the wisdom of redirecting scarce Medicare and Medicaid disproportionate-share dollars away from hospitals that serve the poor.  Expanded coverage must go hand in had with financially stable providers.  In the worst-case scenario, coverage that’s financed by eliminating the payments that underpin healthcare services to the disadvantage is a roadmap to rationing of care…healthcare reform will fail in its objectives if it serves to dismantle healthcare services for the disadvantaged that it was designed to serve.” Well, as I said, we disagree on whom healthcare reform is designed to serve, but her warning about rationing is still valid.

No one I know in my elderly HUD housing project is worried about euthanasia, plans to “kill Granny,” or socialized medicine.  We do see rationing in the future with the cuts in Medicare “waste” and no proposed replacement for our private supplemental plans.  It is frustrating to listen to talk by well-meaning but ignorant “experts” about providing Medicare to everyone, with no discussion of the outrageous inadequacies of Medicare, and no apparent understanding of the pain and suffering caused by the draconian limits placed on coverage in the current Medicare program.

Recently, I graduated from “low income” to “extremely low income” according to the management of my elderly housing project.  The change in status was due to expensive dental procedures I needed (root canal and crown) that are among the many essentials not covered by Medicare or by the so-called Medicare Advantage programs.  I’ve been around too long to believe as do some, that if we increased the misery of all Americans by putting them on Medicare as it exists, we would suddenly have mass rebellion against it.  Without going into what’s wrong with that theory, or a lengthy commentary on American’s growing passivity in contrast with displeased citizens of Europe or Canada, or a reminder of the millions in US and around the world who have protested other policies supported by the Obama administration, or the newer militarized methods planned to keep unruly citizens in their place; the fact is, that is not on Obama’s table of options, yet (stay tuned). 

What is actually on the table is not going to be disclosed by the media that have created a real carnival covering hecklers at health care reform town meetings.  I do not know who put those protesters up to it, whether organized or not, but Obama is clearly enjoying telling them how misled they are. He seems to savor a real donnybrook rather than disclose what his plan consists of (other than “consumer protections,” “no single-payer,” and “cuts to waste in medicare and hospitals programs” dependent on government funding). Nevertheless, I believe that Obama will get the kind of profitable health care reform he and insurance related business interests want, based solely on what is NOT in his plan.

Barak Obama may be able to get away with that blarney.  But, for us, this is no time for sound bites and dismissive putdowns. We need to know what we are talking about, and articulate that vision truthfully, clearly and respectfully to others.  When you mess with Grampy and Granny, you cut off your nose to spite your face. Yes, we need single-payer, universal health care coverage for all Americans, as they have in the other leading developed countries.  Just don’t confuse that with “Medicare (as it exists) For All.” Or, you are going to get what you ask for, not what we need.

Mary Lynn Cramer, MA, MSW, LICSW, Senior Citizen, has a background in economics and clinical social work, and considerable personal experience with Medicare. She can be reached at mllynn2@yahoo.com

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