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DESCRIPTION:With the legislation on healthcare reform coming to a head, President Obama 
 has left no doubt about what is at stake. He has enjoined his colleagues in 
 the House and the Senate to “seize the moment,” reminding them that 
 “this is the moment of our legislative lifetimes. This is why people run 
 for public office, to be here at the creation of something really 
 big.”\n\nIndeed, for all the rancor of the debate in Congress and the 
 media, there is overwhelming agreement on the need to overhaul America’s 
 healthcare system. And the ruling elites – from President Obama and 
 politicians on both sides of the aisle to a slew of Nobel Prize winning 
 economists – have been kind enough to tell us why they regard healthcare 
 reform to be so urgent. Without far-reaching change, two things that are 
 much more important than the health of individual citizens will face 
 impending doom: the nation’s economy and the solidity of the national 
 budget. On that basis, the population’s poor bill of health raises some 
 urgent questions for the ruling class: Is the health of the nation’s 
 competitiveness in danger? Does the illness of broad swathes of the 
 population represent a disadvantage in international competition that 
 America can no longer afford? That requires a solution, and controversy 
 abounds. How to extend basic care to a greater portion of the population 
 without imposing unbearable costs on “the economy”, i.e., the profits 
 of employers, while making sure that America’s premier growth industry 
 can emerge stronger than ever.\n\nAnd average citizens haven’t been left 
 out of this crucial debate either. On the contrary, they get to follow the 
 ups and downs of the negotiations in Congress, listen to the pleas and 
 arguments of big and small business, weigh the options and come to a 
 conclusion about which is worse: their current inability to pay for the 
 most basic care or their inability to pay for compulsory insurance, the 
 risk of financial ruin posed by a serious illness or by unbearable 
 healthcare costs on the companies that employ them?\n\nThis gives us no 
 reason for joy or even “cautious optimism,” but raises some unwelcome 
 questions of a more fundamental kind: \n\n* Why, right in the middle of the 
 free market economy, is healthcare such a thoroughly governmental 
 affair?\n\n* What does the state take care of when it takes care of the 
 “health of the nation” and why?\n\n* Why is healthcare always 
 considered too expensive and in constant need of reform?\n\nThe answers to 
 these questions illustrate why the hopes for a “historic moment” in the 
 history of American healthcare are not only woefully modest, but hopelessly 
 wrongheaded. We invite you to come and find out why.\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/18/18633069.php
SUMMARY:US Health Care Reform: Another Historic Moment in the Administration of Poverty
LOCATION:Time: January 3, 2010, Sunday, 1:00 pm\nLocation: Niebyl-Proctor Library, 
 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA 94609-1113 Ph: (510) 595-7417\nSpeaker: 
 Joseph Patrick, co-editor of GegenStandpunkt (Germany)
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/18/18633069.php
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