He promised \u201cuniversal coverage\u201d but delivered a plan in which that was impossible. Consequently, whereas 85.4% of Americans had coverage in 2008, only 87.7% have coverage today, far short of the promised 100% \u2013 though 100% coverage is the norm in industrialized countries. The reason: Universal coverage requires that healthcare be treated as a right not a privilege, but doing that would cut billions from profits to healthcare stockholders, who include most of the aristocracy \u2013 and America is run for the aristocracy\u2019s benefit, not for the public\u2019s.<\/b><\/p>\n
Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n Obamacare started being available on 1 October 2013 and has now been available for 16 months. When candidate Obama was running for the Presidency, he promised \u201cuniversal coverage,\u201d which is what exists\u00a0<\/span>in virtually all other developed countries<\/a><\/span>: 100%, everyone insured, no citizen lacking health insurance for ordinary and life-preserving needs. (Medicare-for-everybody would have been this.) Now that his Obamacare has been available for 16 months, is every American citizen health-insured; did he provide what he had promised? Is America no longer the lone outlier that has a lousy system of funding health care \u2013 overloading emergency-rooms, which is the costliest way to deal with healthcare (and one reason why all other advanced countries pay far less and yet obtain\u00a0<\/span>better healthcare results<\/a><\/span>\u00a0than the U.S. does)?<\/p>\n When Obama ran for the Presidency and started to make this \u201cuniversal healthcare\u201d promise, the insurance-rate was\u00a085.4%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(or 14.6% uninsureds); and, today, according to the Gallup poll released on March 4th, it is\u00a087.7%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(or 12.3% uninsureds).<\/span><\/p>\n In an article at Huffington Post on 16 June 2014, I headlined\u00a0\u201cObama Lied About Obamacare, Now Wants Political Lying To Be Legal,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and there were only 35 reader-comments to it; so, it seems that not many people then thought that either part of the headline was especially interesting. The subheads summarized that report, and there were three:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cObamacare fails to come close to meeting\u00a0candidate Obama’s promises:<\/span><\/p>\n “Mr. Obama never even tried to fulfill on\u00a0them; he was opposed to them.<\/span><\/p>\n “Obama now openly supports legalizing\u00a0lying during political campaigns.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Each one of those three sub-heads was fully documented, but probably few people clicked through to the documentation. Anyway: few commented.<\/span><\/p>\n At washingtonsblog on 9 January 2015, I headlined\u00a0\u201cHow Obama Lied About Obamacare,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and provided a different account of his lying, also fully documented, but this time there were only 11 reader-comments. (That site has a smaller audience though it\u2019s perhaps the best American general-news site of all.)<\/span><\/p>\n Americans apparently don\u2019t much care about being lied-to by politicians, not even when it concerns the candidate\u2019s most-central campaign promise.<\/span><\/p>\n How can a democracy exist under such a circumstance? It can\u2019t \u2013 not really. If only few people demand honesty from their political leaders, then having an honest government is impossible. And democracy without an honest government is impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n Obama now is basing\u00a0his over-arching foreign policy<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0pure lies<\/span><\/a>; and it\u2019s bringing us closer to a nuclear war than ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 \u2013 and this time the U.S. is clearly the aggressor. Obama lies<\/span><\/a> to say that Russia is the aggressor.<\/span><\/p>\n Americans seem to accept being ruled by a psychopath who is bringing the world closer to nuclear war than in 70 years<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Similarly, George W. Bush, who lied Americans into supporting a catastrophic invasion in 2003 that produced hell in Iraq and over $3 trillion in costs to U.S. taxpayers (and that started ISIS in 2006), is a\u00a0fairly popular former President<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0to the people he deceived and cost so much.<\/span><\/p>\n Something\u2019s wrong with American values \u2013 this country\u2019s real values, not the ones that all the politicians profess.<\/span><\/p>\n Americans live in a fantasy-world of lies (\u201cequal opportunity\u201d and all the rest), until the fantasy ends, however it does, which probably will turn out to be very ugly indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n They just don\u2019t much care. They certainly aren\u2019t enraged against the liars.<\/span><\/p>\n Lying is the way to succeed in America: the most-gifted and well-financed liars rise to the top.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway: Obama has moved the insured-rate up from 85.4% to 87.7% and is nowhere close to 100% or \u201cuniversal coverage\u201d \u2013 not even in a single state.<\/span><\/p>\n And Americans tolerate a lying government. Even one that lies on big things, like Obama and Clinton and Bush do.<\/span><\/p>\n Hillary Clinton\u2019s proposed healthcare plan when she was running for President in 2008 was virtually identical to Obama\u2019s except that Obama\u2019s didn\u2019t have the individual mandate and hers did \u2013 and, as President, Obama\u2019s added the individual mandate: Obamacare is actually Hillary\u2019s plan. It was also John Edwards\u2019s plan. All three Democratic candidates offered the same \u201creform.\u201d The United States is too corrupt to allow universal coverage \u2013 healthcare as a right not a privilege. The United States is an aristocracy, not a democracy: it\u2019s rule by the monied elite and their servants.<\/span><\/p>\n If Americans tolerate lies in politics, then that\u2019s what Americans will get, because lying will be the way to win, and America will then have a lying Government. Even on the big things. It\u2019s dangerous. But for aristocrats it is very profitable.<\/span><\/p>\n Oh, and regarding that U.S. Supreme Court case in which the White House argued that lying in politics is a fundamental free-speech right, the Court agreed, 9-to-0, 100%<\/span><\/a>. (The decision is summarized there.) All 9 \u201cJustices\u201d represent the aristocracy. The Republicans merely represent it more, but all of the \u201cJustices\u201d represent the aristocracy, not the public. America\u2019s Revolution, against the aristocracy itself (which then happened to be British), has become overthrown.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s how corrupt America has become.<\/a><\/span> A nation that was founded for rule by democracy (rule by the public) has become what it was intended to overthrow: aristocracy (rule by wealth)<\/span><\/a> \u2013 it is one dollar one vote, instead of one person one vote. It is the protection of wealth, not the protection of persons. The American counter-revolution has won, the aristocracy has been restored to power.<\/span><\/a> The corruption and lies are now systemic. The work of America\u2019s Founders has been destroyed.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Obama is part of the problem, but so too are virtually all other successful politicians in this country. They protect the aristocracy, not the public.<\/span><\/p>\n All of the successful Democrats were promising \u201cuniversal coverage\u201d but denying its very foundation, which is that health care is a right not a privilege.<\/span><\/p>\n The rot in America now runs very deep.<\/p>\n ———-<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He promised \u201cuniversal coverage\u201d but delivered a plan in which that was impossible. Consequently, whereas 85.4% of Americans had coverage in 2008, only 87.7% have coverage today, far short of the promised 100% \u2013 though 100% coverage is the norm in industrialized countries. The reason: Universal coverage requires that healthcare be treated as a right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":228191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,103,526],"class_list":{"0":"post-144192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-health-news","14":"tag-propaganda"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}