I saw a press release yesterday announcing that Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.) were introducing a single-payer healthcare bill in both houses of Congress. Unless there was a drastic change in the corporate media, this news wasn’t going to be, well, news.
And it hasn’t been so far. There were mentions in independent outlets like Democracy Now!, GritTV and the Nation. But in the corporate media, next to nothing– except for one brief mention on CNN, thanks to Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel:
VANDEN HEUVEL: The progressive caucus, which put out a people’s budget which is fair, did not get attention because the media slighted it and marginalized it. That is a mainstream budget.
SPITZER: One second, you’ll get your turn.
VANDEN HEUVEL: No, but I do think, when Bernie Sanders and McDermott put forth a Medicare-for-all, that is a majority position.
The single-payer bill and the People’s Budget will likely suffer the same media fate–marginalized by the Beltway elites, despite the fact that they represent policies that are broadly popular.
Maybe media would behave differently if someone as serious, wonky and handsome as Paul Ryan was holding the press conference.
RE: “Maybe media would behave differently if someone as serious, wonky and handsome as Paul Ryan was holding the press conference.”
To tell you the truth, I believe that it wouldn’t make a difference if we DID have someone ‘…serious, wonky (sic) and handsome as Paul Ryan…” speaking up for these (or any other) good progressive/liberal ideas. I have the distinct impression that the MSM corporate media that DOES hype these right-wing points-of-view is just trying to justify the commercial basis that they’re supporting. They will look for anything — no matter how minuscule — that supports the positions that their advertisers and overseers agree with, OR (as FAIR has so correctly noted numerous times) does NOT create any real controversy concerning economic matters, giving a false sense of unanimity among ahem-hem SERIOUS commentators. If someone like Ryan was presenting ideas about single-payer, they would probably just mention his good looks (the MSM DOES like it’s sex/violence/sensationalism almost as much as it’s second cousin, the tabloids) and ignore the ideas out-of-existence as they do now.
To me, all gets back to peoples’ voting habits. If the majority of voters keep electing Reagans/W’s/Scott Walkers/etc, it’s just going to keep getting worse in this country. Just as an individual can only make so many stupid personal mistakes in his/her life before it permanently catches up with them, the US electorate can only vote ‘stupid’ so many times before it catches up with this country and results in negative effects that will last for generations, or longer.
The corp. media will only give a megaphone to their views- the rest of America be dammed! Just look at who runs these right leaning organizations- rupert
Serious and courageous!
How many times in how many ways do the people of this country, and others try to express what they want, and how many times and in how many ways are they ignored, silenced, suppressed or otherwise fragmented and kept from realizing their full power?
If this can continue to be done with every progressive issue it means that we are living in a relative dark age that has been repeating the same cycle over and over for the last 100 years … this is not a great recession, it is the culmination of a dark age that is looking for a way to progress and move on but the political powers that be have been preventing it using these same tactics.
But what if the people can’t vote for anyone representing their position because nobody like that is running? The result is this wayward, senseless, back-and-forthing between two parties that by and large represent only corporate interests. h thought Obama represented our interests (well maybe there was a bit of self-delusion involved), we voted for him, and look what’s happening.
Carol Wheeler
Careful. If you keep on speaking truths like that, you may just find yourself banned from posting at many “progressive” “news” sites.
Speaking from experience. Been banned from posting at Op Ed News, Common Dreams, TruthDig.
Daily KOS or Huffington Post? Will not even bother.
The suppression of critically needed voices of dissent on “progressive” sites has been horrifying, to say the least.
The bottom line is: Obama and the DEM party are running for re-election and they will allow no serious consideration of anything that threatens their ‘historical’ record when it comes to health care reform.
We all know that PPACA (obamacare) is NOT reform…. the insurance corps are still in the director’s chair and everyone that depends on them to fill their campaign coffers is HAPPY!
So it’s time to leave the ‘fake progressive’ forums and find and publicize those that are real.
And it’s time to look for a leader for the onslaught!
Single-Payer is silenced by the same sources that fund election campaigns. How do we get legislators who work for the people if we can’t get Campaign Reform??? // Jean Clelland-Morin
Who wants single payer?Certainly not any of us on the right.And according to people on these blogs…neither does Obama.Look we all saw the rumblings this week that the Obama healthcare is unworkable, and would put private insurance companies out of business(leading eventually to single payer?).Well why didn’t they just say it like it is.THE CONSERVATIVES WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG ABOUT OBAMA.We always felt it was unworkable on purpose.
Well it is good news that there are still voices of reason in Washington, it is no surprise, but disappointing that the corporate media neglect to offer the one of two intelligent and viable plan (the other being a completely socialized health care system lie in the UK) for reforming Medicare (namely replacing it with a universal single payer system. It is a pity we learn of problems, but are only offered corporate friendly solutions.
Maybe it’s just as well that the McMedia are ignoring the single-payer legislation recently introduced in the House and Senate. Might make it easier to pass….
michael e, single payer works all over Europe, and that’s a fact. Europe has better health outcomes for about half the cost. It’s American corporate health care that doesn’t work–you can have a “good” health plan in America, yet have the bean counters at your insurance company decide that your illness isn’t covered, or give you an industrial version of the bureaucratic runaround, with “lost” paperwork and 100 ways to deny you coverage when you need it, in order to bolster the corporation’s profit. It would be one thing if this was out of the ordinary, but it’s business as usual. Then on the for-profit medical side, you get doctors that ring up every charge they can, including overuse of expensive CAT and MRI scans, stents, drugs, etc. and outright medicare fraud.
So tell me which system works? The bureaucratic nightmare that does its best to deny you your healthcare and doctors that are more interested in their portfolio than your care, or Europe and Canada’s single payer, where in some countries doctors still make house calls, and your bill has a big is marked “Paid in Full”?
America’s health care is number 37 in the world, according to the World Health Organization. So much for American Exceptionalism.
Yuo’re wasting your time, Jeff. Really. You are. Interesting–so the dopes representing a tiny minority (the Right) don’t want something the vast majority of the country does (the Rest Of Us, including the left, the center, the middlin’ left, etc.). Because they crawl before their Corporate masters and know the taste of the boot polish, we all need to get down in the dirt with them. That’s the extent of their argument. Root, hog, and die–that’s what the Right-wing tells the whole world. You can cite truth and statistics all you want, Jeff; you might as well be barking at the moon. You’re speaking to people who are genetically wired or trained from birth to not think.
P.S.: I think you’re on to something, oudiva. Let them yammer on about Trump, Charlie Sheen, and how handsome that lunatic Paul Ryan is. In the meantime, we do an end-run around them.
Jeff Europe is a bad example.They are moving past this system.It was not sustainable.And not comparable to our medical treatment.There is little (if i were sick) that i would want to be treated in Europe for.This is still the place for world class treatment.
Also…..WHOrginization does not only look at treatment and expertise.They lump in(or don’t lump in)lifestyle.I tell patients walk 2 miles a day and avoid the majority of heart problems.In America we do a sad job in the eating and daily activity dept as compared to many european countries.Huge factor not quantified by the “WHO”.
Look into lasik eye. Doctors refused insurance ,and the left screamed.Competition exploded ,prices came way down.That is the market at work.Health care here is the only industry that cares not one wit what the consumer can pay.If it is 200 ot 2,000 it is irrelevant.Insurance kicks in.Single payer is a term most people equate with “I don’t have to pay.Im in and Im out”.Well Jeff who does pay?The rich?Paid in full…now that is funny.Paid by whom?
michael e: you don’t know what you’re talking about when you say Europe offers inferior medical care. Also, LASIK is increasingly being seen as a dangerous treatment the FDA approved without proper review at the behest of the medical lobby using their data.
I agree with brux that we are in a “dark age” of sorts, despite many so-called technological advances. It is a dark age for our republic, compounded by both corporate domination and citizen inaction as a result of a laissez faire model entrenched in our educational system from the previous century.
Mike G
I never said inferior.I said not as good as ours.And I am well schooled in “what it is i am talking about”.As far as lasik…every surgery has it’s risk and yes failures.But so far the results of this surgery are very very good.
Brux talks about reaching ones full potential.Sounds like a conservative to me.