progrimm
09-04-2010, 11:35 AM
Or better said, it's failure in messaging.
From a progressives perspective.
For the last several decades the Democratic Party has completely failed to effectively express it's positions, and more importantly, properly attack the policies of their opponents, and in their failure to do this they have created even bigger, seemingly unrelated problems for themselves.
Take the healthcare debate as a prime example, the act of recission has killed, "Or as I would say murdered by spread sheet" thousands of Americans, Americans like 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who died after CIGNA denied her a liver transplant calling it "too experimental"
As while all other developed countries governments throughout the world either rigorously regulate healthcare, or completely control it, eliminating the sick idea that there should be some middle man (In this case private health insurers) that can (more efficiently?!) manage and decide who gets what treatment because they are motivated by profit! "Because to keep your company growing and profiting you need to keep your customers happy" so it all works out in the end.
But it doesn't work out that way, as while our government run Medicare program spends an efficient 98% of every dollar on actual medical care, the private insurance industry spends a mere 70 to 85% of each dollar on actual medical care (With instances where it was as low as 50% of every dollar in the individual market) (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/)
So why does the free market fail here?
A lack of regulation, if you are paying 3000 dollars a year for healthcare and you need some thyroid pills to stay alive, no problem! The cost of those pills is far less than the cost of your annual payments for your healthcare, but if you get an expensive form of cancer that will costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat, well recouping that, and then some over the course of your remaining life, will probably be impossible. Which is where regulation comes in, because if a health insurer concludes it's more profitable to let you die, (lawsuits and all things considered) why not!
And what do you know! The Republican Party in it's Ayn Rand, deregulation, free market wisdom doesn't believe in the laws, rules, regulations that would stop these corporations from essentially taking an Americans money and leaving them for dead when it appears they will no longer be profitable.
Hence you get the case of Nataline that I mentioned earlier.
To be blunt, the Republicans vision for healthcare in this country promotes murder, or I should say "attempted murder" as most people who are denied a life saving surgeries, treatments, families go into medical bankruptcey to get their loved ones the treatment they need,
which is why in 2007 the United States of the 1.6 million bankrupceys 60% of them were Medical bankruptcies (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/) while in countries like France there were virtually no medical bankruptcies, and here's the kicker, 80% of those who filed for medical bankruptcey HAD health insurance!
My point is from any rational point of view is, that the Republican Party's vision of a low regulation, for profit, private health insurance industry is both nonsensical and evil (and the rest of the developed world overwhelmingly agrees) yet the Democrats, in my opinion, failed miserably in the healthcare messaging war of last fall, and several other messaging wars of the last several decades, simply because they have refused to call a spade a spade.
With the exception of Alan Grayson and a few others the Democrats that can call it like it is are nowhere to be found.
To Quote Robert Reich
The Democrats are reactive at best – notwithstanding the worst string of corporate outrages since the robber barons rampaged in the late nineteenth century. Consider what the public has witnessed over the last year -- the greed and wild recklessness of BP, Goldman-Sachs, Big Pharma, health insurers, and large profitable businesses that continue to lay off millions. Where are the political thought strategists that connect these dots and illuminate these stories and thereby shape a Democratic agenda for the future? Nowhere.
And this, in turn has created for them an even bigger problem, corporatist Democrats, better known as Blue Dogs and New Democrats who completely undermind what the democrats base wants them to stand for, (the middle class!)
How so? Well think about it, if you can't even attack and define your opponents on an issue like healthcare how are you possibly going to do that with politicians within your own party that are far to the right of your base?
You simply won't be able to, and they haven't been able to.
Now I've pointed out that I believe they failed miserably in messaging, but you still don't see where I'm going or perhaps just want a clearer picture of what I mean.
Well just take a look at this healthcare ad I wrote, read it, and think back to the fall 2009 healthcare debacle and how differently it may have turned out if the Democrats messaging was this harsh.
Death Dealers
_
I refer to them as death dealers
(((Camera looking at a gravestone: a card of death falls in front of grave))
Narrator:
You pay for your health care for years and they cover the cheap stuff without much hassle, prescriptions, check ups, but then disaster hits. Your child gets leukemia, your wife gets breast cancer.
They deny your care, cancel your policy, it's called rescission and it has resulted in far more deaths than nine eleven, left millions of families ruined, bankrupt.
Because the Republican party doesn't believe in the regulations that would have stopped insurance companies from rescinding care.
Doesn't believe in the rules that stopped Wall Street greed
-that kept oil companies in check
So they removed them and
-Our economy collapsed
-Unmeasurable environmental damaged ensued and
(((Camera pans up - Reveals narrator as family member of person whose grave he is standing in front of (lays flowers?") )))
My Son died when his operation was denied by our health insurer
disaster, death it's what happened when they put the wealth of a few before the safety of the rest
It's what happens when you vote Republican
END
So how do they solve this problem? Well they don't, they won't because that corporatist wing of the Democratic Party I talked about is today, such large part of their party, that the leaders of the Democratic Party are unwilling to address the problem.
Hence the only way this problem will ever be solved is if the activists take control of the messaging from their inept leaders and start running ads like this one I spent alot of time producing
Republican Deregulation Attack Ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gclEjjCDTZA)
From a progressives perspective.
For the last several decades the Democratic Party has completely failed to effectively express it's positions, and more importantly, properly attack the policies of their opponents, and in their failure to do this they have created even bigger, seemingly unrelated problems for themselves.
Take the healthcare debate as a prime example, the act of recission has killed, "Or as I would say murdered by spread sheet" thousands of Americans, Americans like 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who died after CIGNA denied her a liver transplant calling it "too experimental"
As while all other developed countries governments throughout the world either rigorously regulate healthcare, or completely control it, eliminating the sick idea that there should be some middle man (In this case private health insurers) that can (more efficiently?!) manage and decide who gets what treatment because they are motivated by profit! "Because to keep your company growing and profiting you need to keep your customers happy" so it all works out in the end.
But it doesn't work out that way, as while our government run Medicare program spends an efficient 98% of every dollar on actual medical care, the private insurance industry spends a mere 70 to 85% of each dollar on actual medical care (With instances where it was as low as 50% of every dollar in the individual market) (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/)
So why does the free market fail here?
A lack of regulation, if you are paying 3000 dollars a year for healthcare and you need some thyroid pills to stay alive, no problem! The cost of those pills is far less than the cost of your annual payments for your healthcare, but if you get an expensive form of cancer that will costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat, well recouping that, and then some over the course of your remaining life, will probably be impossible. Which is where regulation comes in, because if a health insurer concludes it's more profitable to let you die, (lawsuits and all things considered) why not!
And what do you know! The Republican Party in it's Ayn Rand, deregulation, free market wisdom doesn't believe in the laws, rules, regulations that would stop these corporations from essentially taking an Americans money and leaving them for dead when it appears they will no longer be profitable.
Hence you get the case of Nataline that I mentioned earlier.
To be blunt, the Republicans vision for healthcare in this country promotes murder, or I should say "attempted murder" as most people who are denied a life saving surgeries, treatments, families go into medical bankruptcey to get their loved ones the treatment they need,
which is why in 2007 the United States of the 1.6 million bankrupceys 60% of them were Medical bankruptcies (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/) while in countries like France there were virtually no medical bankruptcies, and here's the kicker, 80% of those who filed for medical bankruptcey HAD health insurance!
My point is from any rational point of view is, that the Republican Party's vision of a low regulation, for profit, private health insurance industry is both nonsensical and evil (and the rest of the developed world overwhelmingly agrees) yet the Democrats, in my opinion, failed miserably in the healthcare messaging war of last fall, and several other messaging wars of the last several decades, simply because they have refused to call a spade a spade.
With the exception of Alan Grayson and a few others the Democrats that can call it like it is are nowhere to be found.
To Quote Robert Reich
The Democrats are reactive at best – notwithstanding the worst string of corporate outrages since the robber barons rampaged in the late nineteenth century. Consider what the public has witnessed over the last year -- the greed and wild recklessness of BP, Goldman-Sachs, Big Pharma, health insurers, and large profitable businesses that continue to lay off millions. Where are the political thought strategists that connect these dots and illuminate these stories and thereby shape a Democratic agenda for the future? Nowhere.
And this, in turn has created for them an even bigger problem, corporatist Democrats, better known as Blue Dogs and New Democrats who completely undermind what the democrats base wants them to stand for, (the middle class!)
How so? Well think about it, if you can't even attack and define your opponents on an issue like healthcare how are you possibly going to do that with politicians within your own party that are far to the right of your base?
You simply won't be able to, and they haven't been able to.
Now I've pointed out that I believe they failed miserably in messaging, but you still don't see where I'm going or perhaps just want a clearer picture of what I mean.
Well just take a look at this healthcare ad I wrote, read it, and think back to the fall 2009 healthcare debacle and how differently it may have turned out if the Democrats messaging was this harsh.
Death Dealers
_
I refer to them as death dealers
(((Camera looking at a gravestone: a card of death falls in front of grave))
Narrator:
You pay for your health care for years and they cover the cheap stuff without much hassle, prescriptions, check ups, but then disaster hits. Your child gets leukemia, your wife gets breast cancer.
They deny your care, cancel your policy, it's called rescission and it has resulted in far more deaths than nine eleven, left millions of families ruined, bankrupt.
Because the Republican party doesn't believe in the regulations that would have stopped insurance companies from rescinding care.
Doesn't believe in the rules that stopped Wall Street greed
-that kept oil companies in check
So they removed them and
-Our economy collapsed
-Unmeasurable environmental damaged ensued and
(((Camera pans up - Reveals narrator as family member of person whose grave he is standing in front of (lays flowers?") )))
My Son died when his operation was denied by our health insurer
disaster, death it's what happened when they put the wealth of a few before the safety of the rest
It's what happens when you vote Republican
END
So how do they solve this problem? Well they don't, they won't because that corporatist wing of the Democratic Party I talked about is today, such large part of their party, that the leaders of the Democratic Party are unwilling to address the problem.
Hence the only way this problem will ever be solved is if the activists take control of the messaging from their inept leaders and start running ads like this one I spent alot of time producing
Republican Deregulation Attack Ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gclEjjCDTZA)