B, SAY IT AIN’T SO:

President Barack Obama asked Congress on Thursday for $83.4 billion for U.S. military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressing for special troop funding that he opposed two years ago when he was senator and George W. Bush was president.

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Wednesday, Washington DC: Congress was in recess, and I was early for my meeting on the Hill, so I wandered the always clean halls of The Rayburn Office Building to get a contact high, make that a contact low, with the political zeitgeist. All the offices were manned and womaned by student interns with instructions not to say anything, not that most had anything to say.

I was burrowing around to find our more about the emerging heath care debate, arguably the most important component of the Obama agenda along with climate change and of course forestalling the complete collapse of the economy. The Administration seems determined to get something through by Fall, and have already begun to compromise before the bill is introduced.

RELATED: Executive Order Establishing The White House Office Of Health Reform

Reports Politco: they see a “strong chance that a GRADUAL (my emphasis) version of his health overhaul will get through Congress this fall. “The Obamacrats have sidelined the idea of universal single payer reform of the kind championed by John Conyers and a nationwide movement of organizations who want to bring the US of A into a world with many countries providing medical care ala our federally managed Medicare system.

The Hill, the newspaper that covers Congress, reports: “Dems Face Familiar Obstacles In Health Care Debate.” It paints the old picture of a divided party trying to please diametrically opposed positions and factions. No real consensus. No real leadership.

Killing single payer seems to be part of a strategy to forge a “consensus” on a plan that will pass muster with the humongous health insurance industry. Recently, PBS Frontline, which hailed government backed health care programs in other countries, did a show on the American system dumping single payer as an option. Doing so was an editorial decision lambasted by health care activist Jerry Policoff in Pennsylvania, who berated them in a strong letter to Frontline:

“Your so-called “documentary,”Sick Around America” was a disgrace. Why is PBS so interested in helping wealthy corporate interests in the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries suppress any meaningful discussion of single-payer health care? Your own previous special, “Sick Around the World,” documented how well it works around the world, yet when it comes to dealing with the health care crisis in this country, you shut single-payer out as not even meriting mention while giving Karen Ignani, a shameless and dishonest shill for the health insurance industry, a platform for misrepresenting health care systems around the world as for-profit systems with mandates. That is the system Ms. Ignani wants for the United States, but it exists nowhere else in the world, and no other country would allow it. For her to suggest the opposite was a deliberate misrepresentation that your interviewer complacently went along with and even repeated. No wonder T.R. Reid disassociated himself from this dishonest endeavor…

PBS has become a propaganda arm for the health insurance industry, and I am disgusted with you. You owe your viewers an apology and you probably owe T.R. Reid and your viewers a do-over, but I won’t hold my breath.”

Wow.

(Not to be outdone, in another instance of mainstream media “fairness” (sic) on Thursday the New York Times gave prominent and lengthy placement on its op-ed page to a diatribe against universal health care to a writer from the right-wing National Review. No other point of view challenged him.)

Nixing A Public Option

The National Journal, a policy magazine read widely in Congress has a cover story about mounting opposition to what’s called a “public option,” a plan that would cover everyone like Medicare but from birth. The unions are for it. The people need it, especially the tens of millions without health insurance. The insurance lobbyists are against it along with Republicans.

Reports The Journal: “The current struggle is part of the long ideological tug-of-war over the appropriate role of government health care.”

I guess government administered health care is “ok” for members of Congress, and the military, and people over 65 but not younger people and people in need. (Remember: we pay into these funds. It is our money!)

What’s the problem? Money! The doctors and hospitals oppose it because they fear for their fees. The Republicans say they fear it will increase the federal deficit. Both have a message for the millions of Americans without heath care — “tough sh*t!”

The battle lines are being drawn once again. The lobbyists are working to stop effective health care reform unless their industry can control and profit from it.

And Obama????? He seems to be waffling.

Progressives are lining up behind a plan introduced in Washington when I was there. Roger Hickey, OurFuture.org, supports an approach outlined in a new report:

“Jacob Hacker’s 2006 book, “The Great Risk Shift,” helped politicians understand the economic pressures on the average family — including the rising costs and increasing loss of health insurance — or the threat. Today we are releasing an important report by Dr. Jacob Hacker. It is entitled, “Healthy Competition; How to Structure Public Health Insurance Plan Choice to Ensure Risk-Sharing, Cost Control, and Quality Improvement.” READ FULL STORY HERE

Escalating Health Care Costs, Diminishing Access to Care and Persistent Gaps in Quality — Families, business, and state and federal budgets are straining under skyrocketing health care costs. This report shows how the current system has failed millions of Americans and why we must enact comprehensive health reform this year. READ FULL STORY HERE

There are many ways to skin this big cat BUT unless the health industry lobby and its many paid spokespeople, in Congress and out, are challenged and stopped, we may end up with one more round of frustration and betrayal. That translates into change not worth believing in.

That’s why some in Congress are looking outside their hallowed and haunted halls for help in reaching and mobilizing the American people. They see a need to connect out to artists and celebrities to help make this issue THE issue, to mobilize the country with songs and more effective speechifying to get the public to realize they/we have to act if we want real health care reform.

Years ago, as part of the group that made the anti-apartheid Sun City album and video and then worked on the multi-artist,” We Are Family,” song and video in the aftermath of 911, I know that artist driven projects can be powerful. Bono’s work on behalf of debt and AIDs relief in Africa is one model for this type of advocacy.

Health care reform is too important to be left to compromised politicians committed to speaking out of all sides of their motor mouths. We need a new force and community in this debate to shake the tree of truth. Attention artists, actors, musicians: this affects you too. I hope that the “stars” will be responsive when asked to get involved.

One example in the right direction. Actor Mike Farrell, of MASH fame, has already done a video appeal to the Obama Administrations supporting single-payer. It’s a pretty good ad.

Any artists and entertainers out there who want to help? Contact: dissector@mediachannel.org