The fascist corporate intervention of Big Pharma, Hospitals, A.M.A., and insurance industry in the health care reform effort has made it emphatically clear that recovering our Democracy must precede any other efforts at progressive reform. The American public has made it clear that they want affordable, accessible, quality health care. The politicians are giving us unaffordable, inaccessible, poor quality health care. We the people will be paying more, be able to afford less, and can expect no improvement in quality of health care given the current health care reform proposal.
With current reforms, politicians receiving big bucks from medical industry corporations will force Americans to give big dollars to insurance companies for inferior coverage. Current reform will not guarantee these insurance companies will keep premiums, deductibles, or co-pay rates at affordable levels. Our health insurance premiums may well exceed our mortgage payments. There is no guarantee that you will not pay in and then have benefits denied. Restrictions against denials will be fazed in at best years from now, providing enough time for further revisions that will leave us with the mandatory payments/taxation with no effective (accessible and affordable) access to care. Given the way things have gone so far, and the reasons they have gone the way they have, leaves us with no reason to believe that “reconciliation” efforts with operate to serve the public interest.
There is no reason to expect that any other effort to serve the public interests over corporate profits will fair any better than health care reform. Rather than health care, we get mandatory health insurance. As went health care reform, so we can expect every effort at reform to go so long as corporate interests shares greater influence over our “elected” officials than the public interests.
Without the influence of corporate interest, changes such as health care reform would serve the interest of the voting public, rather than the campaign financing corporations. If political campaigns were publicly funded, and Corporations were not afforded personhood deserving of “free speech” status, we could get health care reform that serves the interest of public health rather than corporate profits. If corporations were not provided the rights of individuals, and if individuals were held responsible for the truth of what they say, lies and propaganda would not dominate our elections rather than substance. If we return the voting machines and sue the manufactures, and make hand counts a constitutional requirement, then we might manage to recoup our democracy, or government by and for the people.
Until then, we can expect every effort at reform to take the same path we have seen with health care reform. Something that as a liberal I can no longer support as it has evolved.
You can start by going to http://www.movetoamend.org/ where they give you many ideas, chances, and means to take action.