Kathleen O’Connor, health care industry analyst and journalist, founded
CodeBlueNow! upon the belief that the public has a right to be involved
in creating its own health care policy. Involved in healthcare for 30 years, she
shares her unique ability to communicate current health care topics in
a language everyone can understand.Bipartisan
Feb 09, 2009
We're Back!
We’re Back!
Please pardon our hiatus! We moved our offices; were stranded in snow; were terribly snarled up with e-mail and server problems; were traveling to DC and back just before the Inaugural; were swept up in finding an article I wrote in 1959 on the integration of my junior high school in Arlington, VA and having a new article I wrote appear in the February 1st, Washington Post—nearly 50 years to the day Virginia schools were integrated and Obama became president.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013003440.html
This week we will be sending out a new Dispatch thanks to a grant from Democracy in Action. Nature and politics abhor vacuums, and with Daschle’s withdrawal from the HHS and White House posts, the old advocates and trying to push their “dead ideas” of single payer health care into the current vacuum. We want to paint a new picture. We will start painting that picture this week.
Pardon our long silence. We’re back!
Cheers and more later. Kathleen
Jul 02, 2008
Public Held At Arm’s Length: Usual Suspects and Same Dead End Road
Today’s Boston Globe announced Senator Kennedy’s leadership in pressing for bipartisan health care reform.
But a review of the article shows the folks working on this “bipartisan” effort are all the usual suspects looking to flawed ideas. Congress and key advocacy groups have made up their mind on what we need to do, without consulting the public.
Congress is incapable of finding a bipartisan solution. It is a bitterly partisan institution that doesn’t listen to the other side. I think the Democrats are hoping they will get a large enough majority in the House and Senate to pass a health care bill in 2009. But, to pass this bill, they will need some Republican support, especially in the Senate. The Massachusetts bill is badly flawed. There are no cost containment measures.
The public is deeply concerned about the Wyden-Bennett Bill.
What Congress and/or the Candidates should be doing is building consensus on some core elements of a plan that would have support across party lines. It clearly exists, as CodeBlueNow!’s research shows.
This should be a wakeup call to the parties and the candidates. What is the definition of insanity? “Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”
We can no longer leave health care reform to the candidates and advocacy organizations, they have failed us since 1929.
Cheers and more later. Kathleen
