reed writes

Michael Ignatieff is making a concerted run to grab the leadership of the Liberal Party. He believes it’s hi “time”.

I am working on a piece of my own about why he is a “natural” choice for the “natural governing party”.

Stay tuned.

For all the Liberals contemplating a leader, before you vote for Ignatieff read this

ignatieffsucks

Stephen Harper has in mind the destruction of our healthcare system, through the implementation of private health insurance, similar to that which now exists in the United States. The propaganda surrounding this issue is insidious to say the least. I am shocked at the apathy Canadians have been showing toward this issue which is so terribly important to us and to our children. I’m shocked by the willingness of the public to allow this to happen, with virtually no protest.

The very idea that the system now in place in the U.S. is in any way helpful to the public in that country is laughable. It works…as long as you don’t get sick.

A new study by Harvard University shows that nearly 50% of all Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical problems, which they can’t afford.

It’s a shocking study, which shows clearly that a good job, a good education and a private health insurance plan, are no guarantee that a family won’t be wiped out by an illness or a serious accident.

Professor Elizabeth Warren, who helped conduct the study said that “We discovered that about 2 million men, women and children were snared in the bankruptcy system even though most of them had health insurance when they first got sick.

Many lost their jobs — and their insurance — because they got sick, while others faced thousands of dollars in co-payments and deductibles and for services not covered by their private insurance.

One person cited in the bankruptcy study, for example, broke a leg, missed a couple of months of work and then had $13,000 in unpaid medical bills, though his employer-based health plan had already paid for much of his care, Ms. Warren said.

Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School said that “We found that too often, private health insurance is an umbrella that dissolves when it rains”.

Hundreds of thousands of middle class Americans file for personal bankruptcy each year because of medical bills — even though they have health insurance, according to the study.

Even when people remain insured, the study also notes that many health plans have limits on certain kinds of coverage, like physical therapy or prescription drugs.

”If you’re sick enough long enough, you’re in deep trouble in our society,” said David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, another of the study’s authors.

While some policies do offer catastrophic coverage, which pays for care after costs reach a certain threshold, Dr. Himmelstein said that coverage ”often kicks in after people are bankrupted” because they must incur high medical bills to qualify.

And employees, who often have little choice of plans and frequently do not understand the differences among plans, are increasingly offered policies with less and less coverage, some policy analysts say.

”There’s a race to the bottom in terms of what health insurance means today,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer advocacy group in Washington.

This area is ripe for additional research, said Uwe E. Reinhardt, a professor at Princeton University, who said that there had not been enough hard evidence about working Americans who became ill and then went broke. ”We put together vignettes, but they are not powerful enough,” he said.

The findings raise questions about the effect of asking employees to bear a greater share of health cost through higher co-payments and the like. Many employers are shifting the increasing cost of care onto their employees, arguing that that trend gives workers an incentive to make judicious use of health care. But the researchers say higher co-payments and deductibles may well exacerbate the problem of medical bankruptcies.

If Harper has his way, this is the direction we are heading in.

There’s a sense of futility surrounding Canadian governance these days. The last bit of real leadership we’ve seen was back in 2003, when Jean Chretien declined to participate in the illegal U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Since then, we’ve seen the wishy washy, scattershot policies of Paul Martin, and subsequently, the syncophantic meanderings of our present Prime Minister, who represents about 35% of the Canadian people, if that.

While the Americans and British flounder in Iraq, Canada and Nato are pissing in the Afghan wind. There is no one who seems to have a handle on what to do or how to do it.

Surely Stephen Harper is headed for a fall because of his dearth of ideas and his slavish acquiescence to the out-of-control General Rick Hillier. It’s just a matter of time until Harper is hoisted on his own petard and brought down.

The international community needs real leadership on a whole variety of issues, ranging from the genocide now being perpetrated in Sudan, to the impasse over nuclear research being carried out in Iran.

The Conservatives have no policies, the Liberals have no leader and the NDP are making mouse-squeak noises in the corner.

Never in our history has Canada been so rudderless.

The leadership Hamas is in Russia meeting with a wide variety of politicians, business people and religious figures. This is the beginning of the transformation of Hamas from an extremist group to a more normal, governing body. The indications are that Hamas is indeed prepared to reach some sort of accommodation with Israel, as can be seen from the Agence France Presse story below. The story is dated Friday February 3rd, 2006.

Hamas will not reach peace with Israel until the Jewish state withdraws from Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, the radical movement’s leader said after landmark first talks with a world power.

Khaled Meshaal said that only if Israel declared its readiness to pull out of occupied land, return refugees, break down the security fence and free all prisoners, “then our side will take serious steps toward securing peace.”
He made it clear he was in no rush to enter any kind of talks with Israel, which considers the group a terrorist organization, and hinted that Hamas was in no mood to end its armed struggle.

Meshaal’s comments came after talks in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that marked the Hamas leader’s most high-profile appearance yet on the international stage.

It follows the movement’s stunning Palestinian election victory in January and as it prepares to form its first government despite being isolated on the international stage for refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

The visit was held under intense security — at Meshaal’s press conference, eight bodyguards wearing black trenchcoats stood on the platform directly him and his Hamas colleagues.

The delegation had earlier been given the rare protection of elite Kremlin secret service personnel, a measure usually only accorded top dignitaries.
Lavrov told Hamas it had to respect the views laid down by the Middle East quartet of mediators — Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations

“That means above all the need to stick by all existing agreements, the need to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a partner in negotiations, (and) the need to reject all armed methods of settling political questions,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

But Meshaal said Israel bore the blame for the Middle East impasse and had “always turned away from its responsibilities.”

Asked about a truce Hamas has largely observed over the past year, he said Israel “has not stopped its aggression” and, “for that reason, we have not got a special interest or enthusiasm in that kind of ceasefire.”

Earlier, Meshaal had told AFP his group was ready to “move forward” in its relations with Israel. “Hamas is fully ready to go forward as much as this is possible. Everything now depends on Israel’s policies,” he said.

The group is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States and Europe but not by Russia. As well as refusing to recognize Israel, Hamas has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings against Israeli targets.
Meshaal told reporters that he wanted to use the invitation to Moscow as a springboard for wider dialogue.

“Cooperation with the international community is important for us and we regard our visit to Moscow, the capital of a great power, as the beginning of this type of contact,” he said after arriving in the Russian capital.

Putin caught the other members of the quartet by surprise when he invited Hamas leaders to Moscow.

Lavrov and other senior Russian officials have stressed the invitation was designed to underline to Hamas the need to align itself with the principles of the quarter trying to broker peace.

Israeli officials have described Putin’s invitation to Hamas as a “knife in the back,” although the Europeans have signalled the talks could be useful in breaking the impasse.

The United States, however, said Thursday its strategy continued to be to isolate Hamas financially and to try to make it “enormously difficult” for the radical group to govern.