"Ferdinand Pecora was a tough-nosed, street smart prosecutor who had learned about corporate abuse taking down stock fraudsters and predatory lenders as a New York City Assistant District Attorney in the 1920s. He was hired as chief counsel for the Senate Banking Committee in 1933.

"A little history is in order.

"The American health insurance system is based on the avoidance of the elderly and sick so insurers didn’t care much when Medicare was created: seniors have complex and costly health care needs that cut into profit margins. Let the government and taxpayers foot the bill for old people. Plus, people aren’t eligible for Medicare until they turn 65 so the vampires would have decades of opportunity to bleed Americans into medical bankruptcy. A similar dynamic was at work with Medicaid: poor people tend to have chronic health problems and that cuts into profit margins. Let the government and the taxpayers take care of them, but the minute they are healthy enough to work, kick ‘em out of the program and into the clutches of the vampires or the ranks of the uninsured. Whose left? Everybody in between. That’s what is driving the insurance industry and Karen Ignagni, the Chief Evil Officer (CEO) of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), into a frenzy. They fear a public plan will snatch away “their” market: the millions of people who don’t fall into the above categories of old and poor, especially the young and the healthy. It’s the profits, stupid! 

“As we roll out new products we will continue to price businesses for appropriate margins. We will not sacrifice profitability for membership.”

– Angela Braly, Wellpoint CEO

1. It doesn’t make health care a human right that can never be taken away.
2. It continues to divide, devalue, and define people by their health status.
3. It can’t address the endemic racial and gender disparities in the system, including the 12 million undocumented.
4. It leaves the employer based system of health care provision intact. That link has to be broken so workers are free to change jobs, go on strike and not fear loss of coverage.
5. The system would continue to have multiple payers and therefore the complexity and gaps in coverage that are inevitable when there are numerous bureaucracies to navigate.
6. Where will the money come from to finance the plan, especially in a time of economic recession, like right now? A public plan is not fiscally sustainable because it’s rooted in a multiple payer system that foregoes at least 84% of administrative savings.

"Single-payer on the other hand, would immediately inject 400 billion into the system by eliminating bureaucracy, billing apparatus, administrative waste, advertising, corporate profits, and CEO compensation. That’s enough money to bring everyone into the system with no co-pays or deductibles.

"We don’t need any more feasibility studies or examinations of  single-payer in other countries. It’s a proven fact that a single-payer system can cover everyone and control costs. Period, end of discussion. 

"Employment-based health care is collapsing and employers want to get out of the business of providing health care to workers: it costs too much. Millions of laid off workers now realize tying insurance to employment status is a disaster; lose your job, lose coverage. Those with jobs are paying staggering premium increases for less coverage. Single-payer legislation has been introduced into the House HR 676, and SB 703 in the Senate. There is a grassroots movement, including unions, all over the country organizing and fighting for single-payer. And most significantly, people are ANGRY and want change.

"HCAN and Democrats like Schakowsky are deceiving and leading people down yet another dead end alley of incremental reform. We’ve had decades of incremental reform and now there are 50 million uninsured, 25 million underinsured and between 18,000 to 100,000 people die every year because they lack access to health care. For spineless Democrats like Schakowsky and HCAN, the day will never come when single-payer is “politically feasible,” because if now isn’t the time, when will it be?"

"The Philadelphia Museum of Art has become an unlikely backdrop to the national campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), legislation that would make it easier for workers to form unions.

"The museum’s guards, a majority of which signed union authorization cards in November 2008, find themselves in an unusual bind: They are unable to find a union willing and able to push their employer, security industry giant AlliedBarton, to recognize them as a legitimate bargaining unit.

"In part, that’s because federal law has specific provisions making it difficult for security officers to organize; guards can join a union that also represents workers who are not guards only if their employer chooses to recognize it. (The rule exists because companies wanted to ensure that guards would be loyal to bosses, and not workers, during strikes.)

"But although over 50 percent of the museum’s workers have signed cards authorizing the Philadelphia Security Officer Union (PSOU) to represent them, they still cannot negotiate for better working conditions. That’s because under current federal law, workers lack the right to organize solely through the “card check” process. (PSOU has not requested a federally conducted workplace election because it has no staff and few resources with which to counter potential AlliedBarton anti-union efforts before the vote.)

"Clean coal is a dirty lie," says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it "indentured servants" of the coal industry.

"Despite a series of expensive false starts and failures, President Obama proposed $3.4 billion in stimulus legislation to fund continued research on "clean coal" projects.

" 'Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes, it does not exist,' says former Vice President Al Gore.

"The coal industry has been running a multi-million dollar advertising blitz to promote the theory that coal can be made clean, using one of Obama's campaign speeches in its television commercials.

" 'You can't tell me we can't figure out a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States and make it work,' says Obama in the commercial, which ends with on-screen words: Yes We Can.

"The "clean coal" theory is that coal's dangerous global warming gas, carbon dioxide, can be captured and sent by pipeline to be buried deep in the earth.

" 'It is the dirtiest of all fuels that we know of,' said Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club, which says talk of "clean coal" is designed to put off efforts to wean the country off coal.

" 'Today in the United States, most of the pollution is coming from coal burning power plants,' said Nilles.

"After 24 years and billions of dollars spent trying, there is still no operating coal power plant using "clean coal" technology.

" 'How many such plants are there?' asked former Vice President Gore at a the Clinton Global Initiative last year. 'Zero. How many blueprints? Zero.' "