Donna Edwards: Giving voice to the real need for health-care reform
By John Amato Monday Nov 09, 2009 10:00am
(h/t CSPANjunkie)
Donna Edwards tells her story of being a young mother without health insurance and how she is paying America back with her vote for health care reform.
Edwards: I collapsed and was taken to an emergency room. Without health care I was treated as one of those uncompensated and now it's time for me to pay the American people back with a vote for comprehensive health care reform. This bill will take the burden off of providers and Americans for paying the costs of uncompensated care and safeguards for the health of all Americans.
She's been a solid progressive voice in Congress. We need more like her. I watched the endless insanity of the Republicans in the House on full display all day and night Saturday. It made me sick, watching them line up like replicants, making sure they used the same talking points over and over again. When they talk about "freedom," all they do is smear what that word means to the world. C&L Annette emailed me and said we should start calling them the Republick Party. I like that.
You won't read much about their behavior during a crucial time in our history because the media shields the nuts who are loose in the halls of Congress.
Howie Klein writes:
I love Donna Edwards. Her short speech about why she was voting for health care reform made me cry last night-- and not fake Glenn Beck tears. Like Donna, there was a time in my life when I couldn't afford health insurance-- or health care-- either. Americans deserve better than predatory insurance companies thriving on misery. This is why America needs more members of Congress like Donna Edwards and less like Paul Ryan, Suzanne Kosmas and John Barrow
Login or Register to post comments.
When do you think Democrats will address the problem?
Go tell it to LIEberman.
/snark
The For-Profit Health Insurance Giveaway and Welfare Act of 2009.
Call it what you will and give all the speeches you like.
As Lyndon Johnson said: you can't shine a cow patty…
Or can you?
I, like Amato, was sick to my stomach on Saturday watching those jerks one after another lying and bullshitting everybody. You know Boehner was in his office handing out the checks. It was just disgusting. How can people vote for those kind of people? How can they admit that they are as much of an asshole as the congress people are?
Republicans are assholes. Let's never miss an opportunity to point that out. They too often act like scum and then demand comity and politeness from their opponents in turn. This double-standard is corrosive and unacceptable. They deserve at least as much heartache as they've caused.
we should start calling them the Republik Partei.
Fixed that for you.
Republikkk Partei. Let's pay hommage to the southern racist code speak wingers of the GOP too.
good for women?? The Stupak amendment guts women's rights...by not even allowing them to purchase private insurance with their own money:
From a NOW press release:
"WASHINGTON - November 8 - The House of Representatives has dealt the worst blow to women's fundamental right to self-determination in order to buy a few votes for reform of the profit-driven health insurance industry. We must protect the rights we fought for in Roe v. Wade. We cannot and will not support a health care bill that strips millions of women of their existing access to abortion.
Birth control and abortion are integral aspects of women's health care needs. Health care reform should not be a vehicle to obliterate a woman's fundamental right to choose.
The Stupak Amendment goes far beyond the abusive Hyde Amendment, which has denied federal funding of abortion since 1976. The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:
* Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
* Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
* Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases.
NOW calls on the Senate to pass a health care bill that respects women's constitutionally protected right to abortion and calls on President Obama to refuse to sign any health care bill that restricts women's access to affordable, quality reproductive health care."
therapy in the same manner.
Weiner dysfunction means fewer pregnancies. The Bishops can't be angry because after all, no one's taking birth control.
/snark
She should read and understand the bill before she supports it. Supporting the idea of insurance reform is not enough.
Jane Hamsher and Dennis Kucinich on Democracy Now!.
A bad bill is worse than no bill.
These skunks throw around words like "Freedom" with such empty rhetorical abandon.I don't know how you would even begin to shame people like this.As a Canadian living under a single payer system I give almost daily thanks for the life of one man:Tommy Douglas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas
I was hoping our friends and family in America would have a similar health care system to ours... it takes the health insurance companies out of the practice of who needs what health care and when they need it... it lets doctors be doctors, not administrators answering to insurance companies.
Somehow and in some strategic and big ways I hope to hell that the citizens of the USA get a much better program that it appears the slimy ba$tard politicians have signed them up for.
What is instructive is the universal gratitude Mr Douglas enjoys from ALL Canadians regardless of background or political affiliation.
What the GOP truly fears(I believe) is that a decent humane health care system will be implemented in the US by Democrats thereby winning them the eternal gratitude of our American friends.
that it's nonpartisan and all-reaching in who benefits. Nobody in Canada would willingly give up their health coverage... at least nobody I've met yet. It's wonderful to know that when you're sick or injured, you can go get the help you need without having to sign over your house, car, first-born child.
It appears politics has become a game for the wealthy... probably been this way for a very long time. I'm wondering how many people actually believe in an American dream any longer. Seriously, I seldom visit the U.S. any longer and haven't had any interest in living there for a very, very long time. Probably since I understood that they killed their presidents and spiritual leaders. I was 9 at the time I first understood that fact.
I wish we had one like Canada too! At least then I wouldn't go to an emergency room and come away with a $3000.00 bill that I can't pay and all I get for it is my doctor calling from home and not even seeing me and it costs me $1000.00 for that phone call. Then they wonder why we are angry! If we had a system like in Canada I would at least be able to get treated and not have to worry about the bills when I had a stroke to begin with that put me there from worrying about where I am going to get a job and such. Now because of the stroke I have to take early retirement and live on half of what I would have gotten from Social Security after 62 years of living and working 40 of them.
...was a national embarrassment...I couldn't take it.
Obtained: In Letter To Pelosi, 41 House Dems Pledge To Vote Against Bill With Anti-Abortion Amendment
To this I say - ONLY 41? WTF?
indeed!!
The Stupak Amendment is BS. Has no place there in the bill. Hell, the bill itself is full of holes.
Where the hell is that strong third party? That might be the only way to real health care reform.
before the full bill vote was even final. DeGette is still collecting signatures and the number is growing. Call your Rep and get him/her/it to sign on now.
Yes, Republicans call the Democratic Party, the DemocRAT Party, so now Amato wants us to be spoiled little morons too and stoop to their name calling level? What retarded advice.
This health care bill is for the birds. It's not at all sufficient reform. It's not a good start at all, it will just empower for-profit insurance. The Democratic Party is not made up of a critical mass of progressives, it has historically been and now is the conservative party in the country. And this will be proven even more when Democrats in the Senate get ahold of this health care bill and gut it, because for them, this piece of crap bill is going too far for them.
This Bill is simply more welfare for the Insurers and Pharma and it is being enabled or greased by bought and paid for legislators. For greed and campaign cash, Congress is criminally working against the interests of the people that elected them. We are seeing organized crime in real time and we are being had. Sadly, our media is also bought and paid for by the same players and there is not a thing we can do about it except vote the bums out only to be replaced by new bums.
Amato is being a shill for a piece of crap bill, because somehow this fresh steaming pile is better than the rancid one we've got.
It is true that progressives and the left have every reason to be disappointed in the final outcome of the bill, but what did you all expect? The Democratic Party is a large tent party with a sizable majority of moderates and a small but influential conservative wing. Not every piece of legislation is going to look like the glittery unicorn farts we were all imagining in November 2008.
this is turd polishing. it's a waste of time. it's a waste of money. it will hurt more than it helps. and the senate will shit can it to the curb and make it even worse.
I have been thinking sense they renamed us, we should rename them "The Republicon party, I think that somes them up.
For many months we've fought for, at a minimum, a robust public option. That is gone. This bill not only fixes in place "for profit health insurance" as the primary mechanism for paying for health care in this country it maintains, protects and subsidizes an oligopoly that has already proved to be a failure at anything other than enriching itself. This bill perpetuates and subsidizes the problem.
It is yet another corporate give away, and the line in the sand has already been crossed. Yet I sense nothing but confusion among the netroots' front pagers. It has happened: the most liberal bill possible is already unacceptable (even aside from the Stupak Amendment slap in the face).
Why are the netroots defending this bill?
A bad bill is worse than no bill.
I would like to know what asshole thought that one up! They take away the middle class peoples houses and put them out of work after doing it to the lower class (of which I have been one for most of my life) then they want to make it manditory to have insurance! How the hell do they expect anyone not working to pay for it? They are so far out of touch with reality it is to laugh!
In the first place anyone with half a brain knows the government is a giant pyramid scheme! The ones at the bottom get the shaft and the ones at the top get the gravy! This whole healt care issue is designed to make the insurance companies and the banks bigger and fatter! They keep penalizing the poor for being that way when they MADE us that way! Didn't anyone ever tell them you can't get blood out of a rock unless your God?
What are we going to do next throw the poor people into Insurance prison because we can't buy it? This is not a Democratic or Republican issue this is a humanitarian issue!!! They need to put the politics where the sun don't shine and make an insurance for EVERYONE!!! Not force people and fine them because they can't afford to pay for the already outrageous insurance premiums. We need a plan like Canada's and like Germany! At least if they are going to insist that we have insurance then give us an option besides subsidising an income we don't have! What good is a subsidy if you don't have a job and can't find one?
Ok putting my soapbox away! Sorry about the rant! I am just fed up with every important issue becoming a democratic or republican issue! I say throw the whole thing out and let the people pass a bill we could get it done and over and save about 3 or 4 trillion dollars!
Jack "Goodcrow" Souders
I want to say another thing about my nation which by the way I am still proud to be a citizen of. I just don't agree with the ongoing debate of the news media on weather or not the Democrats or Republicans are going to stone wall something.
Fact is that we have been in a Depression for the last 20 if not 30 years but the government just didn't know it or went into denial. The price of a house has gone up 1000% and everthing else along with it. Right now it costs me as much for a car as it used to for a house.
In my opinion we should let the banks and the finance companies and insurance companies and auto companies fall on their collective butts because they are doing it to us! Then at least the playing field will be leveled and we will all be broke and hungry together!
The prices of everything will come down because nobody will be able to buy anything anyway. Then we can all roll up our sleeves and go back to barter system till the fat cats get over themselves and realize the sun don't rise and set with them! Sure it would be a harsh life that way but a lot less painful than watching our children and their children have to carry the burden of muli-trillion dollar deficit that we are in now. They need to give back to the people for a change instead of giving vast rewards of millions of dollars to exectutives that have done absolutely nothing but fail the job they had and the people that believed in them! No more bail outs till they help the lower class get back on their feet and the middle class get their homes back!!
Goodcrow
Login or Register to post comments.