No Health Care Reform Yet - Blame the Democrats

Consider this.

With a Democrat in the White House, and with a large majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives, and a simple filibuster proof majority in the Senate (and the ability to derail any Republican plans to filibuster with a 51 member vote on budgetary issues) why in the name of anything you choose are we futzing around with health care reform?

Could it be that liberals and progressives have no real voice in today's Democratic party? Or could it be that we have a gaggle of Eisenhower Republicans masquerading as Democrats? Or is it that the drug company Tsars and insurance company oligarchs have our politicians firmly gripped by their financial short hairs? Or is it that the Democratic grassroots is so out of touch with its liberal, progressive and populist origins that it has become a clueless, tentative, whimpering, apologetic shell of its former self?

I would suggest that it is each and all of the above.

I have said it before and I have said it often; Republicans will continue to rule (hey, don't rank on me with the Democrats having the WH, Congress, and Senate--it is obvious the Republicans are still calling the shots, or we'd have had health care reform before school started) until progressives, liberals and populists organize and mobilize to take back the Democratic party from the Blue Dogs, Milquetoasts, and ineffectual nabobs now in charge.

You want health care reform? Do something about it. Get together as a group and get into the streets and shut it down! That's how we got civil rights. That's how we got voter's rights. That's how we ended the Vietnam War. We went to the streets, took our lumps and shut it down!

I would suggest to you that health care reform with a public option, and ending Medicare overpayment to Medicare Advantage plans, ending the insanely complicated Part D prescription program which criminalizes Medicares bidding for low-cost bulk drug purchases, and allowing Medicare buy-in to Americans 55-64 who need to re-insure or to get insurance is as important as all those other things we liberals, progressives and populists fought for so hard not so long ago.