Ret. General Wes Clark gave a killer speech to the New America Foundation on monday and along with taking Bush and the Repubs to count, he called for single payer health insurance.
This seems to be big news to me, considering single player plans have only seemed to be introduced by the likes of Dennis Kuccinich. Well I could be wrong...
Read or watch the entire speach at
http://securingamerica.com/...
-In health care, we need to take better advantage of modern technology to practice evidence-based medicine, in which treatments and practices are based on statistically proven results -- not commercial advertising -- and doctors and hospitals are held accountable for their performance, not just by the threat of malpractice but by the day-to-day quality of their results. ......
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And inevitably this will mean transitioning over time from a work place centered, private payer system toward greater reliance on some form of single-payer system to ease administrative burdens and reduce costs.
More Highlights
We Americans can no longer hide behind our oceans, or pretend that the dialogue of politics should be confined to disagreements about domestic policy alone. And as for the partisan charge that Democrats are living in a pre-9/11 world, let us be very clear: the policies followed by this Administration since 9/11 - the belligerent tone, the unilateralism, the excessive reliance on military force are not making us safer; they are increasing the dangers we face abroad and distracting us from the most important challenges here at home.
And then, four and a half years ago this nation was viciously attacked in a serious of terrorist hijackings of airliners that resulted in three thousand innocents' deaths. 9/11 was an act of war.
Action was required. America struck back at the terrorists who attacked us and the Taliban government in Afghanistan that supported them.
And we should have.
But, soon the errors began:
Letting Bin Laden slip thru the noose at Tora Bora, in December, 2001 and failing to commit sufficient forces to Afghanistan to finish the job there gave the terrorist movement continuing stature and enabled a host of local imitators to ride his coattails of impunity.
Naming an "Axis of Evil" helped drive the North Koreans and Iranians to accelerate nuclear weapons efforts and probably spurred a deepening cooperation, even as the term itself offended allies and convinced millions around the world that a just American effort against those who attacked our country was being transformed into a self-righteous moral crusade against those of different religious convictions or geostrategic alignment.
Invading Iraq, neglecting North Korea, and ducking the diplomacy on Iran -- and labeling it all with a bellicose-sounding strategy of preemption left us concentrating the greatest resources on the least urgent strategic problem and doing so in a way that has exaccerbated the threats we face.
Ignoring our European allies and sidelining NATO left us bereft of the strong Allied support necessary to succeed in Iraq and simultaneously meet challenges elsewhere.
Pushing through a series of deep permanent tax cuts using the pretext of a temporary recession have prevented us from addressing urgent issues at home and shoved the nation into long term and unsustainable budget deficit.
And in the press of partisan politics, the governing party has elevated the role of money in American politics higher than ever before, encouraging a "pay to play" culture of corruption and aiming to control the political agenda with a ferocity almost unprecedented in American history, undercutting the common good and threatening the very Constitutional principles which guard our most precious freedoms.
What's gone wrong? In the last five years we have seen leadership without vision or foresight, a backwards look to tough talk and excessive unfair tax cuts, and a misguided idea from the 1990's that uncooperative Middle East regimes could be "cleaned up" by American military action.
And at the same time we've seen such partisanship that many believe that this Administration lacks the basic decency to respect its political opponents, and the fundamental integrity to adhere to common standards of transparency, honesty, and ethics in government.
Enough is enough!