Join Dennis' Resolution

Now is the time for all of us who care about this country to make the same resolution as Dennis has made. We, too, will fight to restore the integrity of the Constitution. We will work to impeach the vice president and then president for the numerous crimes they have both committed. We will work to ensure greater peace among all nations by refusing to aid in the funding of the current wars. We will repeal the massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. We will guarantee civil rights for all segments of the population--gay and straight, citizens and those who want to be, workers and the unemployed, those in need of help of any kind and those able to provide it.

It is only by doing as Dennis has already resolved that we will be able to do two important things in 2008:
1. Elect Dennis Kucinich president of this country
2. Make sure that we immediately begin to improve the health and well being of not just this nation but the planet's as well.
Strength through Peace.

Assassinations, Terrorism and the lack of diplomacy

Another sad day today. Former Prime Minister, Benazhir Bhutto was assassinated today by persons thus far unknown. And for all the time and effort many of the candidates will put into saber rattling (e.,g., Rudy G. who was out with his statement first today about the terrors we face) and the kinds of pandering to the better way of life we have here (e.g., Mike H., who had not many words to say about the woman who had just died by putting her life on the line for her country) and what others will put their lips around in order to make their "feelings" known, I can say that what I would expect Dennis Kucinich to say would contain more of the context in which this killing happened and less about how great a country we have and how we are so much more expert at thwarting the killers among us.
I think it is time to think and to really consider what this woman has done by putting herself out there for her own country. It is a sad day, yes, and she was, as we all now realize, a woman who was after power in a country where Muslims were the majority. However, that doesn't mean that all Muslims were opposed to her and to her more liberal ideas. Surely her appeal to the poor and the women of Pakistan will mean that her death will be a bitter pill for the constituency of hers. She is also a strong model for the women around the world who would like to see a better world for themselves and to be able to live even in the face of fear with the hope of making things better for themselves and their country.
I just finished reading Dennis' autobiography and in some ways there is something to take from that book in the wake of the assassination. We are all given an opportunity to wake up to our connectedness. We are all given an opportunity to see that when we reach out to each other to work for our common good that we have the opportunity to instill hope in everyone around us.
We can bemoan the horrors of the violence of someone shooting that brave woman and then blowing themselves up or we can look to her life for the lessons of strength and commitment to make things better that she so believed in that she put her life on the line to try and make that happen.
Sadly, Pakistan is descending into further chaos because of the mistrust and the anger and the frustration the people there feel with their lives and the lack of choice to make things better. Here, too, we can all complain and feel frustrated that the message of courage and the will to make a better life for all is within our grasp if we are allowed to truly speak out and be heard.
Dennis Kucinich tries to do that every day and he does it without the press that doesn't want to hear what he has to say because his ideas run counter to their corporate concerns.
In his book, he describes how his life took these disastrous turns at the most inopportune times. For example, while his family sat in the church waiting for him to graduate from high school, the pastor tried to prevent him from receiving his diploma. He owed the school money and the pastor told him that if he didn't pay then and there, no diploma. Dennis figured out that if he didn't let him graduate then he wouldn't feel the need to repay the debt. So, he signed a note and received his diploma and paid his debt on time. He knew what he wanted and how to find the means to get it.
Prime Minister Bhutto wanted to help her country and to free it from the tyranny it has lived with under a military dictatorship. She has seen her father hanged and her husband tortured. She has seen other members of her family assassinated. She was a strong figure and we owe her the respect and the dignity of mourning her loss.
Yet, I feel that it is important to us to remember the context in which she lived and died and for us too to pay attention to the strong men and women among us who are there ready to lead and who deserve not just our support but our trust.
We mourn the loss of a great leader for Pakistan. We mourn the loss of a human being to death and to violence no matter who or where. We need to find the leaders here who will help us to deal with this troubled planet and heal it and which is why I keep harping on the comparisons of strengths and ideallism we have here in Congressman Kucinich.
Sometimes it takes a shocking loss to remind us what we have in abundance.

On a Sad Note

No matter how you feel today, your thoughts and prayers should go out to the Kucinich family for their loss of their brother, Perry. It is a difficult thing to lose a sibling especially when he is younger and I do hope that Dennis is finding consolation in knowing that we cannot control what happens to people even when they reside so deeply in our hearts.
With this sadness in mind, I have been thinking about all the good that the Kuciniches do as a couple and how they have affected people and their attitudes towards politics and towards the needs of the people politicians are elected to represent.
There was an excellent article in Huffington Post by Matt Simon about a visit that Elizabeth Kucinich made in lieu of Dennis' ability to be there. He had returned to DC to vote on the war funding issue and she had gone in his place to see a young man who many in the campaign have visited. He is a very young man living in a nursing home with MD and working diligently for the legalization of marijuana. Eleziabeth spent a good deal of time with this young man, Clayton Holton, and listened to what his needs are and what his story is all about.
Compassion is a word that gets thrown about as if it were just a commodity. Or maybe something you can order up on command, when it is needed. But compassion is a way of life and it extends to everyone no matter who or what they are or what they may be suffering with or from. We had to swallow every time someone referred to GWB as a compassionate conservative as if someone hadn't just made that up in order to give him a tag line that might mean something to someone who doesn't think being compassionate is something you work at.
Looking through the resume of GWB it is hard to come up with an instance of true compassion in his past. I can't help but think of one of the things that galvanized Cindy Sheehan against this president was the way he talked to the families of service men and women who had died. It was as if she could sense in his lack of presence any of the qualities one associates with someone capable of experiencing someone else's loss.
Elizabeth Kucinich seems quite qualified to be labelled as compassionate. It is in her resume and it is in her ability to sit and listen to someone who wants to tell her about him or herself and describe the kind of pain they are in whether physical or mental or spiritual.
With all of that wordiness, I guess I am saying, thank God that Elizabeth is with Dennis now while he mourns the loss of his brother and carries on his way to the presidency.
With all the labeling of who is and who is not compassionate based on their own personal history, it is easy to forget what the word really means and where it comes from.
I wish the whole Kucinich family a recovery from the pain they are in.

When Governments Lie too much

It is now only too obvious that this current administration is addicted to lying and almost about every word that comes out of their mouths is a lie. No longer should we waste our energy worrying about whether they are telling the truth. Our default position should be that they are guilty as charged and we can stop wasting time debating whether or not to impeach or whether they will change. The answers are yes and never. They will need to be impeached so that there will never be another power grab as the one going on now.
If you aren't frightened by it then you are not paying attention. There are good people, like Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst and John Kaminski from Maine who have had really good insights into the trouble we are in and have come away with hope in their hearts. They are far better people than I am. I am frightened by what I see.
One part of me says, get rid of everyone of them. No one who has served in government and taken money from any corporation should ever be allowed to serve the public. You cannot have two masters.
If money is one of your masters, then you cannot serve the people. The people must come first and with that as their oath along with their oath to defend and protect the constitution, public officials whether a dog catcher or a postal employee or a congress person or the president, needs to take such an oath and to be held to it.
I don't care if there are complementary foundations that would like to offer help to the candidate. We should all pay for the campaigns and maybe then they will not be as long and as exhausting. Maybe they just don't serve our national good at all.
Conversely, we could decide to put all public servants on a service contract. In other words, you apply for the job, you have other candidates for the job and we all interview you and get to make a selection based on a popular vote, e.g., as in a democracy.
But the point is, could we have elected in a fair election, a president such as George W. Bush? Most likely mistakes are made but then others elections would not be tied to his and we could have impeached him 4 years ago and not let this madness continue unabated this long.
I know it is easy to place blame on all of us for not stopping them. We have been watching a very long train having a very big collision. We do not know if we are going to get hit by it so we are scared to move or to change anything. No matter what rock you look under there is damage to this country from this administration and it is just time to look and pray for those who will truly represent us and not the people looking to get even richer than they are now.
If a woman who worked in Iraq and was gang raped there by her fellow employees, i.e., Halliburton employees, and cannot be properly defended and protected, then we none of us has the luxury of going out on the streets to protest alone. We need a critical mass. The best protected still of that political mass is to vote. To vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries because you know he is right and no matter how little time he has had to speak out nationally, you know he is right.
He is right to urge you to vote your heart and give to the country the gift of a real change for the better. Not just change for change's sake but change that means the course of this country will be re-routed to conform to the rules and laws set down in our constitution.
When our government has used the obvious course of all dictators, to lie to the public, we know we are going in the wrong direction but we also need to not just be promised a change in direction but a way to get to the new goals.
I can think of no more reliable way to make sure we are heard than at this point to vote. Not just to vote but to work as poll watchers and other election day officials so we can also be assured that all the votes are counted fairly.
As a way of changing what they used to say in Chicago on election day: Get the vote out and count it fairly.

Water Cooler Talk, 12/17/07

Here is my fantasy: This Monday morning, workers in an office building in Manhattan are not working. They are standing in front of the water cooler discussing what they saw on kucinichtv.com last night. They and their colleagues are all fired up thinking about what is going on in this country and particularly in regards to what has been done to the constitution that is supposed to be the legal means by which this country is governed.

Last night, they heard the congressman as well as John Kaminski and Ray McGovern discuss what has been going on in terms of the shredding of that document. They heard these three men speak in level tones about a topic most of them probably would not have spent two hours on a Sunday night thinking about had these not been the times we are actually living in rather than the times we wish we lived in.

I mean it is just before Christmas. It is a time of parties and anticipating the break from the normal schedule. Yet, these are also the times when it is necessary to stop and talk and think about the ways in which the constitution of the United States has been perverted and shredded by an administration and followed along by a Congress only too willing to throw it out in order to gain for themselves whatever personal advancement they are interested in.

However, my fantasy cohort of office workers is really angry and unnerved by what has been happening. They listened to Gore Vidal introduce the discussion with such sadness and contempt in his voice that they were primed to really think about what they could do.

The one thing that struck all of them was how no other candidate is taking the time to educate us on what the constitution says and what the framers of it meant when they wrote it. Rather than it just being a document that sits somewhere lifeless and unread, the document is quoted, the document even sits inside the jacket of the congressman and he is able at a moment’s notice to bring it out and show you just where the constitution describes, for example, what rights we have as citizens when it comes to our privacy. He can show you the 6 instances where impeachment is mentioned and how nowhere within the document is there any mention of God granting us these rights. This was human work for humans living in the early years of this country’s beginnings. The promise of this series of discussions is that at the end of it all, there will be a white paper giving the country the results of these discussions as well as suggestions for amendments.

For many of the office workers, they are playing a new game called, “Did you know”? For example, they ask each other a question about the constitution’s description of the separation of powers and the checks and balances that is supposed to ensure. When they think about it, they are amazed to think now about what happens in their daily reading of the papers. What is in fact a signing statement? Where is that allowed in the constitution? What is the FISA act and where is the warrant authorizing the government to eavesdrop on a citizen? What is the law about torture? What is an international treaty and when we sign it, what are our legal obligations? The questions begin to outnumber the players of this game and yet, they keep spilling out of their mouths because they are just beginning to understand the serious discrediting of the laws the current administration is guilty of. Thoughts turn to impeachment and why this valid process for removing from office of persons who are lying to their country in order to start a war and to continue it is not being applied as the constitution warrants it should be.

This is the beginning of my fantasy of what could happen if more and more people would take the time to listen to the Constitutional Initiative that Congressman Kucinich has begun and will continue. Since it is free and available to anyone with an internet connection, it is a serious concern of mine that so few people tune in to listen to the discussions of these topics and how they are affecting the government that runs this country.

We need more than 500 people to tune in and to stay tuned in and to participate. We need everyone to care about and defend the constitution because if we don’t, who will and if we don’t, what will happen to it?

Do you feel the anger yet?

I am trying to stay relatively cool in my response to the Des Moines Register's stupid decision not to allow Dennis to debate. We know the reasons for it and yet, we can all be as mad as hell and wondering what to do to change the circumstances of how we receive our election coverage in order to make an informed choice when voting.
For many the chance to vote is slim to nonexistent due to the feeling of total disenfranchisement by a system that seems so geared towards the ones that the corporations and the media jointly agree will serve their own interests best. We see it all the time and it continues despite what we know to be the truth of that statement. Hardly a fact about itself that a democracy should be proud of nor that these candidates who have been annointed by the media/corporate interests should feel proud of.
I have often asked myself a question: What would I do if I were Hillary, Barack, or any of them and saw the way that Kucinich is treated during a debate and/or not let into a debate?
What would you do?
Would I sit there like a lump on the log and not even pay attention to the way he is not given equal time? Would I be thinking well that is just more time for me to say what I want to say? Would I identify with his struggle at all and decide to offer a hand and a voice so that he received an equal share? Would I stop to think, even in some kind of self-serving way that perhaps people are making judgements about me based on how I let this happen and did nothing?
I don't know but I can guess that if the tables were turned and no one was letting Hillary talk or Barack talk, that Dennis would not stand there and act as if someone were not getting a fair shake. I can feel that about him and his sense of how the world should be when I watch him talk to people.
Did you see the video clip where he asked himself a question at the Black and Brown Debate last week? Did you see how he both asked the question of himself with such politeness and then thanked himself for asking the question? Did you see Hillary laughing at it all as if the pet had just stood up and done the most fantastic trick. Well, he is not the pet, but he is the only one who knew how to ask a good question and to answer it fully.
Start getting a bit angry now because we are truly running out of time and we need everyone to get involved and do something to make sure Dennis is our next president. Start with that premise and work backwards as to how you will make that happen.
thanks.

When Enough is truly Enough

My good friend Kevin wrote to me last night because he was so angry that Dennis had been blocked from participating in the last Democratic Debate in Iowa today. Do you know why the valid presidential candidate was disqualified? The purported reason had to do with where the campaign's headquarters were located.
Perhaps another reason is at the heart of the matter. And it so happens that Kevin's anger and the reason that Dennis was denied the opportunity to speak about his ideas specfically related to health care has to do with who was one of the sponsors of this "debate."
Kevin is a good friend and his health concerns are large because not only is he on disability but his wife has MS. Her illness is a huge drain on their finances. He wrote to me earlier this month about Dennis and what he had to say about health care, that he was in favor of a single-payer, unviversal health care system that was and will never be a for profit delivery system. This bill hich he co-sponsored with John Conyers of Detroit is a vast overhauling of how we would receive our medical benefits. Kevin was quite sceptical as to whether or not this could even be passed in the congress with the kinds of money the insurance industry has and the way they would fight this.
Others too have written about this. You see, they don't ask how Dennis would fund this because that is really a no brainer, they ask how will he get the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry with their enormous lobbies to not butcher his ideas and keep them from becoming a reality?
I understand only too well too what it is like to spend and spend on insurance and to never really get what it is you need. The insurers fight you every step of the way. It is a frightening system that causes such awful problems for so many people that it could fill long ledgers of names of people who would benefit if only we could get this type of universal coverage administered the way Medicare is administered now.
But, then there is the huge stumbling block--the insurance industry. Who is one of the largest backers of the organization sponsoring the debate today? The insurance companies, in fact all of them. If you live long enough to join this organization, from the moment you give them the check, your mailbox is flooded with all kinds of insurance forms to sell you anything that can be insured. This organization's whole purpose in life is to be a shill for the insurance companies. In fact, if we all stretch our minds back a year or so ago, it was AARP that had a membership revolt when they found out how that organization that purported to represent their interests was really representing the interests of the pharmaceutical companies when the whole argument about Medicare drug coverage was proposed by the Bush administration.
So, the fact that Dennis Kucinich is in favor of and proposed, in essence, to end our servitude to the insurance companies, is it any wonder that they are in favor of thwarting his efforts to get his message out?
I watch with interest who the companies are that sponsor these debates and for the most part, not one of the companies spending their money to host these events are representative of the interests of the majority of us who work hard, try to save a little bit and are stretched financially in more ways than we care to report to anyone.
I have listened to Dennis answer questions about this plan while following him around in New Hampshire. I can tell you one important lesson I learned from his description of his health care reform ideas is that we don't sit in judgement of what people need. When a person is in need we help because that is what we are here for.
It can be applied to every social service we need to extend to the citizenry of this country and only one person is talking that way and making it clear where he stands and who he represents. That is why Dennis Kucinich is not allowed to speak--because he really does represent us and what we need.
A more humane way of dealing with all of our ills could be possible if we all get out there and elect Dennis Kucinich for president whether his name is on the ballot or not. It is like making a real investment in all our futures.

An Official Announcement

I am not a celebrity but I sure can spot some of them when I am in a restaurant in New York waiting for someone to join me. I cannot name the man I spotted the other day and asked to write for the Kucinich campaign. I have no idea why he refused to help us. Therefore I will not share his name. It would only embarrass him come election night when Dennis takes the presidency and he had not signed on to help. I cannot inflict that kind of pain on someone whose work I admire but who has not yet stepped up to the plate to work for a candidate.
Perhaps, and this is just a wishful thought, he will do so soon and just needs to think a bit more.
Sean Penn certainly stepped up to the plate in a big way last week. I first read the whole speech in its entirety on Commondreams.org and I can tell you, it was a big and happy surprise. The Huffington Post picked it up over the weekend. It gained a lot of peoples' attention who are hungry to hear more about Dennis and to be shown that he is on the minds of lots of people. The complaint level is rising, I think about what is not being reported and what is.
I had a nice little op-ed piece published by opednews.com over the weekend about how Dennis' backers will sink the good ship MSM. I hope that people begin to realize as the MSM does already and as the other corporate interests that back the so-called front runners that their do too that a Kucinich presidency means that business will not be as usual. It means that there will be an actual fair wage for workers and good benefits for all and that this screwy economy that rewards only the rich right now will come to a halt.
Did you ever wonder what it would mean to take on the corporate interests? Did you ever see the parallels between the lack of interest by the MSM in Dennis and the fact that he wants them to be governed the same as you and I are governed? Then, perhaps, it is not such a big mystery why they ignore him. In fact it becomes increasingly clear that his way of seeing how fairness actually does matter will wipe out the kinds of unearned but more truthfully robbed wages the corporate bullies receive while denying to the workers the same kind of largesse.
There is a corporate underbelly to this whole world's economy that no one really wants to expose. Oh, yes, Naomi Klein has been and continues to expose it. Take a good look at her new book, The Shock Doctrine and you will begin to understand why Dennis' ideas are more than an inconvenience to the powers that be. Were this new way of looking at the ultra-rich and their priorities to be revealed and what's more, ended, then there would be a real revolution again here on these shores but not against some foreign or faraway power but against the men and women who are enslaving most of us and have no scruples about it whatsoever.
It is a shame tha this does not get reported in our supposedly free press. But it doesn't and it won't. That same press is owned by these same slave owners. Yes, there are sights and sounds that many people are waking up. That is why, for example, we can read about the real reasons for the stage hands strike on Broadway that you won't read about in the New York Times but can read on alternet.org
So, it is time for us to officially announce our freedom from this tyranny and let our voices get out there and say what is needed and how to go about getting it.
We need to see more leaders like Dennis Kucinich step forward too and say the same things. More voices would be a very positive sign.

Interview with Dennis Kucinich

Are You Keeping Up with the Congressman?

I swear every day it gets harder and harder to keep up with all that there is to report on and to think through when it comes to a Kucinich campaign. I try to keep up and that is what I am supposed to be doing and I am having trouble doing that.
My recent post on the Huffington Post got a number of people excited that Dennis' campaign is both not getting the coverage it should while at the same time we are all so greedy that whenever something does appear, there is a cry for more and a cry to each other that finally someone is talking about him. I feel honored, honestly, to be in the position of being one of those with the ability to write about him.
The writing itself is difficult at times. Waking up each day to write about the campaign or where he has been or what he has said about something is not that easy. There is a certain lag time that may creep in to having to digest what has been said.
Take the Iran issue. There he was first thing the other morning, as soon as the report was made public, he had a response. His response, like most of his responses, had a lot of clarity to it. But if you go back a few days before that NIE came out, what was he saying? That there was no reason to go to war with Iran because there were no nuclear missiles coming at us. We are not a nation that should be engaged in pre-emptive war. That is not allowed. That is why he is trying to impeach the vice-president and then the president.
Let's all think this through. Whether that NIE had come out or not, Kucinich would have been saying exactly what he has been saying and saying it to the students in New Hampshire and saying it on national television, saying it on Kucinichtv.com and elsewhere. In fact, wherever they do allow him to speak.
And speaking of allowing him to speak. Did you see the clip from the Brown and Black Debate for the Iowa caucus where he asked himself a question? If that was not the purest form of Kucinich humor. Straight from the midwest with lots of dignity but a good laugh too because he did actually get to be asked a question he thought was important and to answer it as well and then, being polite, he thanked himself. Even Hillary found the formatting of it funny. Though did she find it funny that the audience went nuts over what he had to say?
That is the thing about listening to him speak. The audience loves him. Give him five minutes or five seconds and he is going to get everyone's attention and they love him.
That also says a lot about someone getting no attention and yet being the darling of so many progressives who know just what Dennis Kucinich stands for and if they are hearing him for the first time, then they are aware of hearing someone speak to them about the issues they care about too, that are about who they are and what their needs are.
More catching up to do.

Health Care Report from New Hampshire, Part 2

I am sure that most of you saw the hostage situation unfold in New Hampshire on Friday. I did a bit of reading around of the papers and the blogs to see how people responded to the situation. It is unfortunate that the sympathy by and large all goes to the people who were taken hostage and none of it goes out to this poor guy who had no other way to bring attention to the fact that he was in desperate need of real mental health workers who could work with him to end whatever was obviously disturbing him to such a severe degree.

This man, Leeland Eisenberg, didn't take a gun into the Clinton campaign headquarters and he didn't fire at anyone nor did he hurt someone. What he did was make a really bad call for help. What he got was a lot of attention for a problem that is truly huge in these states where the funding has been severely cut or is nonexistent for good mental health services as well as substance abuse programs. I don't have the figures right here but will find them as to what New Hampshire spends on such cases, but it was known to people in Rochester, NH that this man needed help. Why he didn't receive it is a mystery.

The kind of Sherlock Holmes we need right now is the one who actually sees there is no mystery involve. We all need to be covered for our mental health problems just as we need to be covered for our problems with drug abuse and anger management and our depression and our more severe forms of mental illness. Without this type of coverage in place along with the facilities and professionals who are trained to work with this part of the population, we won't have a decent and democratic form of health care. We will continue to maintain a very discriminatory form that is based solely on your ability to pay.

We cannot send our mentally ill to Bangkok for weekly therapy sessions. While many travel there for surgery, the kind of intense and personally involving care a person with a mental illness deserves and requires is quite different. It also means that we as a society must learn to value all humans no matter their ability to perform as we do.

Dennis' comments to the man in New Hampshire about there being those who do not truly deserve health insurance and the benefits in his plan were fair and would have helped Leeland Eisenberg. He would not have had to take a political ad by Clinton and turn it into a personal message to him that he could get her help if he could get her attention.

Health Care Report from New Hampshire

It has become clear to many in this country how poorly our current health care truly cares for us. While I was in New Hampshire last week, I heard Dennis speak about his plan for a single-payer, not for profit system and how it would work. But first a little scene setting.

We were at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH. The school hosted a Town Hall meeting where a few students had been chosen to ask Dennis questions, which he answered and then he answered questions from the audience. (A report on the following exchange I am about to mention is at the Exeter Times website.) An older gentleman stood up and asked about what Dennis could do for him. It turns out he was a prostate cancer survivor but now his wife was stricken with some form of lymphoma and required an injection every two weeks that cost $10,000 a shot. That is an incredible sum of money and he wanted Dennis to look into this fro him and to see just how the company making this drug could get away with these kinds of charges.

After Dennis promised he would investigate this, another gentleman spoke about what Dennis would do to make sure in his proposed system of health care that there would not be abuses by those who were either malingerers or those who just never took care of themselves.

Dennis, in his own fashion, answered the question. One of the things I came to see was how he would place in context his own reasoning. Answers to questions are not just straightforward rote recitations of facts and figures. There was this constant use of both his own personal experience and how that influenced his ideas. In this case, he spoke of watching his mother die from emphysema. He then moved on to say that of course we would always encourage people to live healthy lives but we would never penalize someone who didn't. According to the world as Dennis sees it, we all could be this woman who ended up with a disease out of the blue that requires this kind of extraordinary treatment. Plus, we are all here for each other. There are those who take excellent care of themselves and something horrible happens. There are those who don't take care of themselves. But the system is there for all of us. This is what a democracy is to Dennis and it made a lot of sense to a lot of people in the room that night.

Then today in the Boston Globe I read the op-ed piece by this doctor who had been assured that his daughter would receive two years of post graduate health insurance on her parents' policy and things didn't work out that way. He said in his piece:
Two important lessons can be learned. First, we need to sever the connection between healthcare and employment. People need continuous, portable coverage that is affordable, comprehensive, and equitable. Second, we cannot depend on the private insurance industry to provide this for us.
Piece-meal reform such as the new law will not work. Both employers and the public support the concept of single-payer healthcare. Big business is starting to realize that a single payer system will be the only affordable way to cover everyone. When will our politicians understand that their political futures will depend on supporting this kind of comprehensive reform?
Michael Kaplan is a family physician and a member of Physicians for a National Health Plan and the board of directors of the Universal Health Care Education Fund.