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Warren Beatty Speech If we don't act to do something about this and make the world economy work for everybody, we're going to see a reaction that will make Pat Buchanan look like a choir boy. Which I'm told he once was. Why aren't the Democratic candidates addressing this? They offer their devotion to globalization as if these markets were made by God rather than investors. Why? Could it possibly be the leading candidates in both parties are, by definition, those who have raised the most money from these same sources? We don't need a third party. We need a second party. And what has happened to the labor movement? What would Walter Reuther say today? Is there no protest anymore? We have another tumor: Health care is a basic human right. And it's the responsibility of the federal government to guarantee that human right for everybody. The only two governments in the developed world that don't guarantee it are the government of South Africa and the government of the United States. I think the best way ever proposed for accomplishing health care in this country was the Health Security Act S3 -- drawn up by Walter Reuther and Ted Kennedy, among others. It was a single payer system that gave everyone access to care and had quality standards for the practice of medicine. And because it had only one payer, it made it cost less. That bill was buried over and over again in the 70's by the insurance industry, the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry. They spent whatever it took to keep it from coming out of Committee. Although the same group had opposed Medicare in the past, old people study the issues and get out and vote. So Medicare passed. Poor people, minorities and children don't vote. So the big money was able to kill the Health Security Act and every other proposal ever made to guarantee this basic human right. Now does anybody in either party advocate the repeal of Medicare? Of course not. It's a single payer system. It costs the government much much less to do the same thing as the insurance companies do. And it works. A little while ago we heard the Vice President make some incremental proposals regarding child health care that were good. And yesterday, Bill Bradley offered a thoughtful plan for universal health care that the insurance industry should be very happy with. But the next President of the United States should call a special session of Congress and, no matter how much the insurance and pharmaceutical industries spend to make him unpopular, do everything he can to not let that Congress go home until every American has health care. Does anyone doubt the role of campaign contributors in keeping the defense budget as high as it is? Or trying to privatize Social Security? Or stifling gun control? Or hampering environmental protection? Does anyone doubt that campaign contributions help buy subsidies for nuclear, coal and oil while solar and wind energy go pretty much unattended or that campaign contributions set ridiculously underpriced fees for private grazing, mining and lumbering on public lands, or cause the 70 to 80 billion dollar digital spectrum to be given away to the broadcasters for nothing in the telecommunications bill that both Democratic candidates supported? Broadcasters are not only among the biggest campaign contributors, they have the power to decide the candidates you see and for how long you see them. |
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© Janette Rainwater 1997-2004 All rights reserved.
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