Senator Ortiz y Pino's four points about which he spoke without referencing notes on Sunday.In responding to our request for a recap, he shares his four key points with "a little bit of amplification."
1. I am astounded that we have to mobilize this level of public outrage in order to convince the Congress that the "public option" is crucial to any health care reform effort...when that public option is itself a pallid, watered-down version of what we actually need: a true single payer plan that eliminates private for-profit insurance companies' role.
2. Insurance companies should have never been invited to the table to craft health care reform because they don't contribute anything to health care, they only take our money, making our system hideously expensive and subject to corporate manipulation.
3. Earlier this week we as a Nation paused to consider and pray for the 3,000 lives that were lost on September 11, 2001 in the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. But every single year, we now know that 18,000 Americans die due to the lack of insurance coverage. And their deaths go unnoticed.
4. Democratic Congress people have received more of the insurance companies' political contributions than the Republicans have, so it should not surprise us that there is lagging support for the public option. And until we have campaign finance reform including public financing of congressional elections we will continue to see the outrageous influence of money on politics.
