By: CLR Co-Founder Makani Themba-Nixon
I’ve always wanted to love this country. To feel that unalterable sense of home that no matter what it does, it belongs to me. I know people from Chile, Palestine, Rwanda, for example, who have literally lost everything – their parents and siblings murdered, their homes burned to the ground. Still, they fight for their homeland with a sense of ownership, a sense of deep connection that separates the place from the people who run it.
As a Black woman, I have always envied this sense of home-land. Although I changed my name among other things to try to make real my sense of Africa as my imagined home, I, like many others in this country, have long felt homeless in this respect.
Last night, for the first time in my life, I saw people gathered to say unequivocally that they finally feel at home in this country. |
By: Rose Ann DeMoro
The recent splash of news and internet coverage for the new Health Care for America Now coalition of labor, progressive and liberal groups is a reminder of the critical importance of health care reform. And a reminder that partial solutions, such as those proposed by the coalition, will only perpetuate, not end the health care crisis.
The groups behind the new coalition are working in concert with the Obama campaign and Democratic leaders in Congress to build "consensus" around a plan that would presumably be introduced in the first days of the next administration, and pushed through to a quick vote before opponents can mount a "Harry and Louise"-style counter attack.
But, in search of a supposedly politically viable plan, the advocates of this approach have surrendered in advance on the only overhaul that will actually cure the disease, a single-payer, expanded and improved Medicare for all reform.
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By: Jenny Brown
…the plan espoused by the HCAN coalition seems to be very close to what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton advocated all through the primary-regulate private insurance companies more, provide a mind-boggling patchwork of income-based subsidies (creating another layer of paperwork, tests and qualifications), and provide a public insurance alternative as a last resort. Worse, it continues to waste the money that could cover everyone…
"The private insurance industry, as it functions today, clearly must be replaced with a system that works" says Don McCann, Senior Health Policy Fellow with PNHP. "So what is the solution proposed by the HCAN coalition? Let`s replace the private insurance industry with the private insurance industry."
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