Senator Schumer gets shouted down and learns the wrong history lesson
More video from the 6-25 HCAN rally in Washington D.C. In this one, Senator Chuck Schumer, our senior Senator from New York State, is shouted down in Washington at a Health Care rally (note: I was jostled a few times, but but watch and listen).
I’ll explain after the video where Senator Schumer misses the mark or at least tries to have it both ways.
Got that? Over the objections of an activist shouting “we want single payer now” Senator Schumer delivers the standard pump up the audience speech and says:
We need to hold Congress’ feet to the fire.
It has been a long hard fight.
Past 100 years
Teddy Roosevelt
This is more than some guy disrupting a Senators speech - let’s look at what is missing from the Roosevelt reference.
What about Senator Schumer invoking Roosevelt?
OK - Teddy Roosevelt - a great New Yorker - pushed a national health plan way back in 1912. A PROGRESSIVE Republican (as we all know, parties back then are not the same as the parties are now). If you watched our 8 minute history lesson - you saw that it started with Roosevelt. But what else was Teddy Roosevelt known for? San Juan Hill, rough riders, conservation top the “off the top of my head list” but what else - wait for it - TRUST BUSTING.
See, our current system is based on insurance companies controlling the delivery of medicine/care by pulling the financial strings. We have seen where they conspire and blacklist you or control rates or services. IMHO - Insurance companies are modern day trusts -
Which is which brings me back to Senator Schumer and the rest who invoke Teddy Roosevelt.
They say we have been at it for a long time yet are willing to accept less than optimal plans.
There is all kinds of talk of co-ops, and triggers and the perceived unfairness of competition. We have Senator Schumer watering down the undefined public option. Discussion that a “public option” won’t be open to the public for 5 years. Or, from the administration, if there is even a Public option at all.
There is talk of of a uniquely American solution that somehow omits the fact that Medicare is an existing uniquely American solution. By pushing “medicare for all” plans off of the table and out of the room they they cede control to these modern day trusts.
Ironic isn’t it - Trust buster Roosevelt used to sell reform that really isn’t reform at all.
W*W*TR*D - What Would Teddy Roosevelt Do?
Related posts:
Where’s the leadership? Sen. Charles Schumer, Senior Senator from the state of New York, is exhorting the grassroots to storm the Hill and take up the fight for meaningful health care reform. Seems all right at first blush, but I wonder why the distinguished Senator, who so conveniently evokes the image of Teddy Roosevelt, hasn’t been leading the charge up the Hill himself.
Back in early May, Sen. Schumer was largely complicit when Sen. Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee on which Sen. Schumer also sits, had 8 physicians and nurses arrested and removed from the Senate Finance Committee hearing room. Their crime was daring to challenge the exclusion of single payer health care reform from the discussion that day.
When progressive activists then met privately with Sen. Schumer, and asked him to champion real reform by requesting that his fellow Senate Finance Committee members give single payer an honest hearing, the Senator’s less-than-Rooseveltesque response was to agree to ask Chairman Baucus to include a single payer expert–ONLY if the activists could get another Senator on the committee to join with Sen. Schumer in the request.
http://www.healthcare-now.org/action-alert-please-call-now-for-single-payer-national-healthcare/
Hmm. So, Sen. Schumer couldn’t take a stand against additional single payer activists being arrested for wanting single payer on the table without another Senator by his side also taking the heat. That’s not the guy I want leading the charge up Capitol Hill, much less San Juan Hill.