Posted on 02/11/2010 2:33:36 PM PST by Fred Nerks
Despite little public clamor for government controlled health care, the US Senate is looking increasingly likely to pass some kind of Healthcare Bill in the near future.
How did this happen? Where did the pressure for change come from?
The blunt truth is this. The push to socialize US Heathcare came, not from from the "people", but from small clique of Marxists, led by a man with close personal ties to president Barack Obama.
This group's goal is fully socialized, government run "single payer" healthcare-as long promoted through Congressman John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act, or HR 676.
The leader of this Marxist clique is Quentin Young-a retired Chicago physician, a life long Marxist activist and long time friend and political ally of Barack Obama.
Physicians for a National Health Program National Coordinator Dr. Quentin Young with Sen. Barack Obama at Dr. Young’s 80th birthday celebration in 2003.
Young has known and worked with Obama for years, in Chicago and has reportedly directly influenced Obama's views on socialized medicine.
According to radical journalist John Nichols writing in The Progressive;
Obama...learned about single-payer health care from his old friend and neighbor Dr. Quentin Young, the longtime coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Quentin Young told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, that while an Illinois State senator, Obama was a strong supporter of "single payer"
Barack Obama, in those early days—influenced, I hope, by me and others—categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion.... ''
Physicians for a National Health Program
Who is Quentin Young and what is Physicians for a National Health Program? What influence do they actually have?
PNHP claims to be a national organization of 14,000 doctors advocating single-payer national health insurance.
In reality it was long a phonebox size operation run by Quentin Young and a handful of Marxist comrades.
Quentin Young is one of America's most committed socialists, beginning with his time in the Young Communist League in late 1930s Chicago.
After WW2, into the mid 1970s, Young was closely associated with the Communist Party and was accused of belonging to the Bethune Club (a communist doctor's club) by a US Congressional Committee investigating the riots at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
In the late 1970s Young was associated with the pro Marx/Gramsci, New American Movement and in 1982 helped found the also Marxist, Democratic Socialists of America-to which he still belongs.
In 1972, in the dying days of the Vietnam War Young led a small radical delegation to Communist North Vietnam.
In 1995 Young attended the famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn where Barack Obama was introduced as chosen successor to Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer.
Young was a founder and National Chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which originally provided provide medical care for civil rights workers in the South, but later morphed into a "single payer" advocacy organization.
In 1987 Young and Peter Orris founded the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the US's oldest existing "single payer" advocacy organization and is currently the organization's National Co-ordinator.
Peter Orris is the son of Communist Party member and physician Leo Orris. His sister is Maxine Orris, a New York physician who received her medical training in Cuba.
Peter Orris was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society at Harvard, before going on to join the Communist Party. He was still a Party member in 1987 when he helped Quentin Young form PNHP.
In 1992 Peter Orris both joined the Communist Party splinter group Committees of Correspondence, in which he remains a leading activist.
Peter Orris is also a strong advocate of "single payer", through PNHP and also through his associations with the International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, SEIU, the American Public Health Association, the Public Health Committee of the Chicago Medical Society, the Illinois State Medical Society and the American College of Physicians.
On June 25 2009, Peter Orris was one of several doctors from the the Doctors Council of SEIU who traveled to Washington, D.C. for a massive day of action for real health care reform.
The healthcare providers met with their Members of Congress and participated in a rally on Capitol Hill.
Today Peter Orris serves on the National Physicians Advisory Board of the National Physicians Alliance alongside Quentin Young
Joanne Landy is another key PHNP activist and like Young is a prominent member of Democratic Socialists of America.
In 2005 Landy wrotea pamphlet for PNHP, “Why Labor Needs Improved and Expanded Medicare for All”. The pamphlet was focused on mobilizinglabor union support for U.S. Representative John Conyer’s National Health Insurance Act (HR 676).
In 2008, Joanne Landy and PHNP President Oliver Fein wrote, "We Can Do It! The Case for Single Payer National Health Insurance" a chapter in a book entitled "Ten Excellent Reasons for National Health Insurance".
The time has come for single payer National Health Insurance in the United States. We have excellent hospitals, skilled practitioners, the technological infrastructure -- and we're already spending enough money to insure everyone and to improve access to care for many who are covered today by inadequate plans. All we need is the political will.
Mark Almberg is PNHP communications director has been a prominent member of the Illinois Communist Party, since the 1970s.
PNHP President Oliver Fein and Secretary Steffi Woolhandler, have both advocated "single payer" at the annual Democratic Socialists of America run Socialist Scholars Conferences in New York City.
Fein, representing PNHP, addressed the 1992 Socialist Conference, attended by members of Democratic Socialists of America , the Communist Party and Committees of Correspondence, on "The movement for a national healthcare program"
At the 2000 Socialist Conference Steffi Woolhandler, co-founder of PNHP and Harvard Medical School professor cited "single-payer" health care as probably the only issue in politics where the Left and the American people are in agreement.
Healthcare Now!
In 2004 PNHP joined several other socialist, labor, church and community organizations to form a wider coalition, Healthcare-NOW!
Healthcare Now! holds annual national strategy meetings with volunteer organizers and health care activists around the country, including John Conyers.
In 2007, Healthcare-NOW launched traveling Road Shows promoting "single payer" reform and also co-sponsored an Annual Health Care Justice Vigil held each September in Washington D.C.
Healthcare-NOW! worked with the California Nurses Association, to initiate the National Day of Protest Against Health Insurance Companies.
Quentin Young is an Healthcare Now! co-chair, as is Leo Gerard, President of United Steelworkers of America and Rose Ann DeMauro, Executive Director of the California Nurses Association.
Incidentally, Quentin Young was honored by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America at their annual award dinner in 1992. Leo Gerard was honored in 2007 and Rose Ann DeMauro, was to have been keynote speaker at the 2008 dinner, until an inter-union dispute caused her appearance to be cancelled.
The Healthcare Now! Board of Directors includes representatives from the Muslim Women's Institute for Research and Development, League of Young Voters, Ruckus Society, Labor Party, International Brotherwood of Electrical Workers, Progressive Christians Uniting, National Health Care for the Homeless Council, National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, United Mineworkers of America,Industrial Unions Council, Women's Economic Agenda Project, Latinos for National Health Insurance, National Black Women's Health Project and four leaders of PNHP-Oliver Fein, Ida Hellander, David Himmelstein and Quentin Young.
Other key board members include;
Medea Benjamin, right, with Hugo Chavez
Medea Benjamin of "peace" group Code Pink. In 1992 Benjamin endorsed the foundation conference of Committees of Correspondence with Peter Orris-mentioned above, and in 2002 spoke at a 2002 Committees of Correspondence conference national conference with John Nichols-also mentioned above.
Michael Lighty is Director of Public Policy, California Nurses Association. Lighty is a long time member of Democratic Socialists of America and a former National Director of that organization.
Flavio Casoy is a San Francisco based doctor and representative of the Medical Students Association. Casoy is also a prominent member of the Communist Party USA.
Flavio Casoy, revolutionary medicine T shirt
In March 2009 the National Education Commission of the Communist Party USA, circulated a podcast by Flavoy to Party Clubs, as a Club Educational/Group Discussion Guide on healthcare reform.
Your club/group should invite guests to participate with you in a discussion of the fight for national health care reform. The podcast and reading links provided below should be distributed well in advance of the meeting. The Political Affairs podcast features an interview with Flavio Casoy on the present struggle for national health care reform...
Rev. Lucius Walker is a representative of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization.
Walker is a long time supporter of radical and Communist Party USA causes.
He has been an organizer of several Pastors for Peace Caravans to Cuba and enjoys a cozy relationship with Cuban leadership.
Applications from US citizens to undergo medical training in Cuba are administered through Walker's New York City-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization.
The British Experience
Obama's Healthcare Bill is the cornerstone of his Presidency.
Should the Bill pass, in almost any form, it will pave the way for more and more legislative changes, which will change American health and political culture beyond recognition.
The Marxist left looks to the British example. They believe that "single payer" will lock the stubbornly conservative US worker, into near permanent support for the Democratic Party-just as it did for the British Labour Party after WW2.
Leading Communist Party member Norman Markowitz wrote in the Party journal Political Affairs;
A “single payer” national health system – known as “socialized medicine” in the rest of the developed world – should be an essential part of the change that the core constituencies which elected Obama desperately need. Britain serves as an important political lesson for strategists. After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments.
Radical journalist John Nichols writes that Obama told an Atlanta town hall audience in 2008;
I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care.
Nichols also went on to discuss prospects for "single payer" under an Obama Administration;
Perhaps most impressive are the moves made by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Progressive Democrats of America to ensure that the option of single-payer is not forgotten as Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi establish their domestic policy priorities.
To that end, sixty activists from these and allied groups met one week after Election Day at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington with Michigan Congressman John Conyers, an early Obama backer and the chief House proponent of real reform, to forge a Single-Payer Healthcare Alliance and plot specific strategies for influencing the new Administration and Congress.
John Conyers, is not only an Obama ally and "single payer" zealot. The Congressman from Michigan has a long record of supporting Communist Party fronts and was an honored guest at the founding of Democratic Socialists of America in Detroit in 1982 and at DSA's 2003 National Convention in the same city.
He is also a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus-an alliance of more than 70 Democratic Congressmen, many of who are linked to Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party, or both.
Should Obama succeed in passing any form of Healthcare Bill, that will not be the end of the matter.
John Conyers, Quentin Young , his Marxist comrades and the alliance they have forged will not rest until the US has a fully socialized "single payer" health system.
There is evidence that that is what Obama secretly wants as well.
Unless stopped, Obama , willing or not, will preside over the "Englandization" of the US health sector and the "Europeanization" of American political life.
If successful Quentin Young and PNHP will have pulled off the greatest socialist "scam" ever perpetrated on the American people.
very comprehensive, a little late but better than never.
Whose right is health care? Do you think it's yours?Congressman Anthony Weiner has said that health care is not a commodity. If it isn't a commodity then do doctors and nurses have rights? Assigning health care the status of a right makes health care workers slaves to that right who must serve it. On what ground could a health care worker refuse to provide their products and services since that would violate the patient's "basic human right to health care."
That is a direct loss of individual rights for health care providers. The collective right of the people to receive health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set fees and hours or to change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge if taken to its logical extreme. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it is a right that is created and given by the government to those it chooses to give it to. It is not a natural right possessed by each person protected by the Constitution from the government. It is also a collective/state right by virtue of the fact that it would supersede individual rights when the two come into conflict. How else would the government view a right that it created and administers vs. one it has no control over?
Of course it isn't stated in any bill that a patient's right to care supersedes a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights, as always, are adjudicated in the courts. The Health Care Reform bills simply establish the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the collective right.
Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. Collectivist because it has to be described as being a right of the many instead of the one and superior due to that fact. Fascist because ultimately the sole authority for its creation and oversight is from one entity the Federal government. Totalitarian because the Federal government is the enforcer of this collective right as well. State and local jurisdictions will have little say about it.
Congressman Weiner's view is the underlying philosophy of all of the Health Care Reform legislation in the House and Senate. Consider this section in the Senate version of the bill; the setting up of community watch dogs that will monitor citizens for various health parameters. Read pages 382 - 393.
TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS pps 382 - 393
So, even citizens themselves will be subject to Federal regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the "human right" of universal health care. It isn't the individual's liberty that is being protected by that it is the government's control over its own health care system that is being guarded. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights? Someone will be checking your lifestyle, according to gov regulations, to be certain you serve the best interests of the "basic human right to health care" ie. "the Public Option."
HCR is not just about rationing care and wealth redistribution. It's about the end of individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist "basic human right to health care" spreads throughout the legal and political systems like a virus.
I think that the main purpose of Health Care Reform (HCR) is as a direct assault on individual liberties.
Health Care is a Liberty Issue
Conservative Underground - 18 August 2009 - Tim DunkinAnother Stupid Argument: Heath Care is a Right
Obama's Authoritarian, Unconstitutional Health Care Proposal
To Americans Who Believe Healthcare is a Right
OBAMA: HEALTH CARE DESTROYING FREE SPEECH
Mandated health insurance threatens freedom, privacy
Second Bill of Rights aka FDR's economic bill of rights
(An early attempt to embed collective rights into American politics and society.)
Barack Obama and the Socialist Healthcare Scamsters
. . . . Article and #3.
[Thanks, Fred Nerks.]
Great post, Fred!
B U M P
http://www.bornagainamerican.org/index.html
Rename, repackage, rewrite it a tad smaller, and sell another pig in a poke.
Tennessee has joined several other states in trying to pass a Health Care Freedom Act. NO COLAs for granny, retired Military or retired fed employees. BIG NEW fees for Tricare for Life retired over 65 Military's secondary health ins. (DOD bill already passed, delayed but goes into effect 2011)
New Dem mantra: Woof, woof eat dog food granny....ala let them eat cake.
TRI CARE FOR LIFE This from a google search:
This option would help reduce the costs of TFL, as well as costs for Medicare, by introducing minimum out-of pocket requirements for beneficiaries. Under this option, TFL would not cover any of the first $525 of an enrollee’s cost-sharing liabilities for calendar year 2011 and would limit coverage to 50 percent of the next $4,725 in Medicare cost sharing that the beneficiary incurred. (Because all further cost sharing would be covered by TFL, enrollees could not pay more than $2,888 in cost sharing in that year.)
Bill Would Restrict Veterans’ Health Care Options 11/06/09
Buyer and McKeon Offer Amendments to Protect Veterans and TRICARE Beneficiaries
Congress plans to block Tricare fee increases
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w
By Rick Maze - Staff writer, Oct 7, 2009
Tricare fee increases imposed last week by the Defense Department will be repealed by a provision of the compromise 2010 defense authorization bill unveiled Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators.
Snip
The fee increases were announced on Sept. 30 and took effect on Oct. 1, but the defense bill, HR 2647, includes a provision barring any fee increases until the start of fiscal 2011.
Snip
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bill Matz, president of the National Association for Uniformed Services, said the announcement of fee increases was shocking considering that the Obama administration promised earlier this year to hold off on any new fee Tricare fee increases until fiscal 2011.
“President Obama and DoD assured NAUS and the entire military family earlier this year that there would rightly be no increases in any Tricare fees” in fiscal 2010, Matz said. “We took them at their word, and I can’t believe that a co-pay increase like this was allowed to go forward,” he added.
Was Barack Obama’s Medical Mentor, Quentin Young, an Abortionist?
Retired Chicago physician Quentin Young is the father of the US “single payer” healthcare movement.
Obama ’s slippery transition to a single-payer health care system
Culpeper Star-Exponent (VA) - Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Author: J. Michael Sharman - Editorial Columnist
Six years ago, on June 30, 2003, State Senator Obama spoke to the Illinois AFL-CIO saying: “I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. …. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” 1
On March 24, 2007, U.S. Senator Obama told the Service Employees International Union: “[A]s I indicated before, my commitment is to make sure that we’ve got universal health care for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. …I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process.” 2
Chicago health-care activist Dr. Quentin Young says he heard Obama frequently advocate a single-payer system, “As I recall, this was his categorical response, that he thinks single-payer is the way to go.” 3
But then President Obama appeared to deny those prior statements at a “health care town hall” on August 11, 2009, when he claimed: “I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter, because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system in this country, with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that, I believe would be too disruptive. …So, I’m not promoting a single-payer plan.” 4
That surprised even his Democratic friends. “I can remember when Obama agreed with me,” said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on August 4, 2009, about Obama ‘s apparent support for a multi-tiered system.
“I’m just guessing now, because we haven’t talked about it, but he wants it because of the Rahm Emanuel factor. Okay. I’m glad you asked me. The Rahm Emanuel factor, to quote him, is that, look, we want success, and we’re willing to make a deal about anything. Does that make you feel pretty comfortable about health care? And that’s the whole idea, is that he wants a bill,” said Conyers. “He wants to win in the off-year elections. He [Emanuel] wants our president reelected the next time he comes up, and so do I. But I don’t want anything that’s stamped ‘reform’ and let it go at that.” 5
But the bill will, in fact, accomplish Obama ‘s longstanding goal of a single payer system. At Section 102(A) “Limitation on New Enrollment”, it prohibits any health insurer, other than the “public option” insurer, from adding any new people after the bill’s effective date. 6 Obviously, that is a transitional elimination of private insurers.
Rep. Conyers didn’t know the health care bill is a planned transition to a single-payer system because he hasn’t read it: “I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” 7
(snip)
1 “Barack Obama on single payer in 2003”, Video and text, posted June 4, 2008, Physicians for a National Health Program, http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php
2 “NEW LEADERSHIP ON HEALTH CARE: A PRESIDENTIAL FORUM” March 24, 2007, Service Employees International Union, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, http://www.americanprogressaction.org/events/healthforum/obama_transcript.html http://www.americanprogressaction.org/events/healthforum/fulltranscript.pdf
3 http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/16/barack- obama / obama -statements-single-payer-have-changed-bit/
4 CNN Transcripts, “Town-Hall Protests Unprecedented, Lawmakers Say; Obama Speaks to Town Hall about Health Care” August 11, 2009 http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0908/11/cnr.05.html
5 Ballasy, Nicholas “Conyers Says Obama Flip-Flopped on Single-Payer Plan”
August 04, 2009, http://www.cnsnews.com/Public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=52019; see also, “Conyers: Obama suffers from the ‘Emanuel Factor’” http://www.examiner.com/x-2304-DC-Republican-Examiner~y2009m7d28-Conyers- Obama -suffers-from-the-Emanuel-Factor;
6 H.R.3200 “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (Introduced in House)” http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3200 SEC. 102. (1) “LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT- (A) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.”
7 “Why Read the Health Care Bill?”, July 29, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,535244,00.html; “Conyers Sees No Point in Members Reading 1,000-Page Health Care Bill—Unless They Have 2 Lawyers to Interpret It for Them”, July 27, 2009, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/51610 See also, http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/07/27/rep-conyers-dont-read-the-bill/
(snip)
Ok, so if there are a hundred communists at a party, consisting of members and affiliates and you’re invited as a good friend and associate on a regular basis over many years, does that make you a useful idiot, like minded individual or a communist ?
LOL I will remember that question the next time I need to cause a liberal brain freeze.
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