The 2010 Reforms in the House Healthcare Reform Bill

by mcjoan

Thu Oct 29, 2009 at 09:50:26 AM PST

Pelosi: Single-Payer Amendment Breaks Obama's Health Care Promise


An amendment to allow states to pursue single-payer health care without incurring insurance-industry lawsuits was stripped from the House bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday, adding that it would break President Obama's commitment to people keeping their current insurance plan if they like it.

She also said that she had yet to decide whether to allow a vote on a separate amendment from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) that would replace the entire health care bill with a single-payer system. "We are probably going to be addressing some of those issues in the next 24 hours," she told HuffPost.

Weiner is outwardly optimistic he'll get a vote. "She made a commitment back when the consideration of this bill was first contemplated. She agreed to have a vote on single payer then because we didn't have it in committee. I'm looking forward to it," he said. "She's an honorable person and she's a good Speaker and she supports single payer. She says it over and over again."

The amendment to allow states to individually implement single-payer was sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and passed the Education and Labor Committee's version of the health care bill.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/pelosi-single-...

Source: NYTimes

November 6, 2009
Suspect Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment to War
By JAMES DAO


WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/us/06suspect.html?_r=...

Source: McClatchy Newspapers @ Yahoo News

Taliban -led insurgents in Afghanistan have devised ways to cripple and even destroy the expensive armored vehicles that offer U.S. forces the best protection against roadside bombs by using increasingly large explosive charges and rocket-propelled grenades, according to U.S. soldiers and defense officials.

At least eight American troops have been killed this year in attacks on so-called Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and 40 more have been wounded, said a senior U.S. military official who, like others interviewed on the issue, declined to be further identified because of the issue's sensitivity.

The insurgents' success in attacking the hulking machines, which can cost as much as $1 million each, underscores their ability to counter the advanced hardware that the U.S. military and its allies are deploying in their struggle to gain the upper hand in the war, which entered its ninth year last month.

The attacks also raise questions about how vulnerable a new, lighter MRAP, the M-ATV, which is now being shipped to Afghanistan , are to the massive explosive charges that Taliban -led insurgents have been using against its bigger cousin.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20091106/wl_mcclatchy...

Raw inescapable LOGIC from Rep. Alan Grayson (which even a simple-minded Republican might grasp!): 

"I'm sure that if we learned that al-Qaida was going to launch
an attack on the United States and kill 44,789 Americans at any
time next year, I'm sure that we would do anything in our power
to prevent that. I submit to you we should do the same about this.
We should do exactly the same here because we face the same threat."

VIDEOS: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/alan-grayson-r...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/05-12

The Pentagon's Building Boom in Afghanistan Indicates a Long War Ahead

by Nick Turse

In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year's Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was "the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s." At the same time, another much less publicized U.S.-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.

While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year -- ranging from small-scale power plants to "public latrines" to a meat market -- the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.

Published on Thursday, November 5, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

President Obama's Credibility on the Line in Honduras

by Mark Weisbrot

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/05-1

The Obama administration has itself been divided on what to do about the military overthrow of democracy in Honduras. Hence the mixed signals and vacillation from the very beginning, when the first statement from the White House failed to even condemn the coup.

Those in the administration who think they can now wash their hands of the accord and let the coup leaders turn their back on it had better think twice. The Obama team has embarrassed itself enough by having to be pressured by the rest of the hemisphere to tell the coup government that Washington would not recognise the 29 November elections without prior restoration of Zelaya. Just a few weeks earlier, the Obama administration had blocked the Organisation of American States from passing a resolution to this effect.

But now Washington's credibility is really on the line. The Obama team brokered this accord and got a commitment from the coup leaders. If they go back on it, how much will the Obama administration's word be worth on anything else?

snip

Most tellingly, Washington refused to denounce the massive human rights violations committed by the dictatorship. These included police beatings, illegal detention of thousands, closing of independent radio and television, suspension of civil rights and even some political murders. The crimes were denounced by all major human rights organisations, inside and outside of Honduras - and by many governments - but the Obama administration maintained a deafening silence.

snip

Tuesday night, Thomas Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, told CNN en Espanol that the US plans to recognise the November elections whether or not Zelaya is restored. This would definitely put Washington on a collision course with the rest of the hemisphere, including Brazil.

Shannon's statement to CNN prompted a letter from Zelaya to Clinton, asking whether the US government had changed its position on the coup d'etat in Honduras.

Obama now has a choice. He can force the coup regime to honour the accord or lose further credibility among governments in the hemisphere and the world.

Saving Face, While Manipulating the Outcome

And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon11052009.html

The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

By NORMAN SOLOMON

In Washington, “healthcare reform” has degenerated into a sick joke.

At this point, only spinners who’ve succumbed to their own vertigo could use the word “robust” to describe the public option in the healthcare bill that the House Democratic leadership has sent to the floor.

 “A main argument was that a public plan would save people money,” the New York Times has noted. But the insurance industry -- claiming to want a level playing field -- has gotten the Obama administration to bulldoze the plan. “After House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care bill [on October 29], the Congressional Budget Office said the public plan would cost more than private plans and only 6 million people would sign up.”

At its best, “the public option” was a weak remedy for the disastrous ailments of the healthcare system in the United States. But whatever virtues the public option may have offered were stripped from the bill en route to the House floor.

What remains is a Rube Goldberg contraption that will launch this country into a new phase of healthcare apartheid.

People who scrape together enough money to buy health insurance will discover that they’re riding in the back of the nation’s healthcare bus. The most “affordable” policies will be the ones with the highest deductibles and the worst coverage.

But I will never stop having this doubt: that maybe if they had really charged in there riding the forceful energy of the historic election, and acted like it was an emergency moment -- which it was -- they could have gotten some big victories right up front, and there really could have been an historic "first hundred days" for this administration and the country. Instead of what happened, which is the Obamas got a dog.

From an article entitled: "Is This as Good as It Gets From Obama."