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Recent
Stories
July
9, 2003
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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July
9, 2003
What a Fraud!
Washington's
"Compromise" on Medicare
By LEE SUSTAR
It's A Medicare massacre under the guise of "reform."
George W. Bush's proposed prescription drug benefit program for
Medicare recipients would funnel billions of dollars to the giant
health insurance and pharmaceutical companies--and do nothing
to stop skyrocketing drug prices from bankrupting millions of
seniors.
A plan is urgently needed. Some 30 percent
of Medicare beneficiaries lack prescription drug coverage--and
those who have it face increased co-pays and deductibles and
ever-rising prices. But with their high premiums, gaps in coverage
and 2006 starting date, both versions of the Medicare "reform"
legislation passed separately by the Senate and the House of
Representatives last month fall far short of what's needed.
"It's a shameful and tragic scam,"
said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for
a National Health Plan. "Seniors will spend $1.8 trillion
on prescription drugs over the next 10 years," he told Socialist
Worker. "The most generous interpretation of the bill on
the table is $400 billion [to help seniors pay for drugs]--not
an insignificant amount, but not enough to address the total
problem."
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center
for Economic and Policy Research, agreed. "Even once the
plan kicks in, the average person over 65 will be paying more
after the plan is in place than they did in 2000," he said.
"That's because it does nothing about the growth in drug
prices."
Both the House and Senate bills would
set Medicare prescription drug premiums at about $35 per month,
and both propose deductibles of $275. The Senate bill would pay
half of all drug costs up to $4,500, all costs beyond that point
to $5,813, and 10 percent on costs above that amount. The House
plan would pay 80 percent of costs beyond the deductible up to
$2,000.
But beneficiaries would have to pay anything
beyond that amount up to $4,900, at which point Medicare would
pay the rest. The result is that seniors at the poverty level
could end up paying 41 percent of their income on prescription
drugs, according to Families USA, a health care consumer watchdog
group.
In other words, the "donut hole"
in coverage in both the Senate and House plans could still allow
seniors to be wiped out financially. There's no logic for this
gap in coverage--except that it allows Congress to meet its goal
of limiting the cost of the plan to $400 billion.
Moreover, the House version would also
promote personal medical savings accounts and means tests to
qualify for coverage--big steps away from Medicare's tradition
of universal coverage. Even more threateningly, the House wants
to allow private plans to compete with Medicare, but would use
those private bids as a benchmark for payments for all services.
Wherever Medicare payments are lower,
beneficiaries in the traditional plan would have to pay the difference.
This would pressure seniors into joining the private plans--leading
to what Baker called "the destruction of Medicare."
And since private plans target healthier
people whose costs are lower, those with greater needs would
pay more. "It's a totally rigged competition," Baker
said. "The one thing the private sector is good at is getting
low-cost beneficiaries.
Even that's not good enough for the health
insurance companies. In a repeat of the negotiations on Bush's
tax cut giveaway to the rich, corporate lobbyists are scheming
with congressional leaders before the closed-door conference
committee negotiates the details of the final Medicare bill.
Unless the government agrees to greater
subsidies and market flexibility, "few private plans will
enter the Medicare market, and the legislation will not work
as intended," the New York Times reported July 1. In fact,
a previous attempt to introduce private HMOs into Medicare has
already proved to be a failure. The number of private plans covering
Medicare patients fell by half between 1998 and 2003. The reason?
Medicare just wasn't profitable enough for the HMO bosses.
Actually, HMOs--which spend 9.5 percent
of outlays on administrative costs--are more expensive than traditional
Medicare, which spends just 2.5 percent on administrative costs.
And since HMOs charge the government for every beneficiary, whether
or not that person actually uses medical services, the HMOs got
21 percent--or $5.2 billion--more than what the government would
have spent on enrollees in traditional plans, according to Families
USA. But that won't stop Bush's attempt to wreck the system.
Bush has gotten political cover from
an unlikely source: Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), long considered
the Senate's leading champion of health care reform. Kennedy
claims that whatever its shortcomings, Bush's Medicare prescription
drug plan should be passed to establish a benefit that can be
improved on later.
"My feeling is that this is the
central copout of liberal leadership," said Quentin Young.
"Ted Kennedy was the author of an excellent single-payer
[universal insurance] bill of 1971. But now, since it's not considered
feasible, they don't even push for it."
Even without a universal health care
system, Young estimated that if the government purchased prescription
drugs for resale--as is done in other countries--prescription
drug costs for seniors could be cut in half, to $900 billion
over the next 10 years. Use of generic drugs over expensive,
patented brands could save another $100 billion a year, he said.
"But if you do this," Young said, "you attack
the source of profits in the system, and you get enormous resistance."
If the big insurance and pharmaceutical
companies have their way, they'll stick vulnerable seniors with
an even bigger financial burden. That's why we need to fight
for a universal, national health care system--one that puts human
needs ahead of profits.
Lee Sustar
writes for the Socialist
Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
Weekend
Edition Features
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
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