John Marty may have the key element to a successful race by championing the cause of providing health care. John Marty champions single payer health care which lowers health care costs by using a single insurance plan, run by the government. By using cross country comparisons, we know that private market health care insurance adds a roughly 50% burden to health care. Before the economy blew up, health care was listed as the second most important issue behind Iraq for Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. Corporate media has mostly treated this issue as invisible. With the economy taking jobs, that means missing or very expensive health care coverage. With the economy needing more jobs, the high burden of health care insurance is huge discentive to add jobs.
In choosing a candidate, people look for representation on the issues, for trust and integrity to keep one's word, for the ability to do the job of governor well and for the ability to run a campaign well. John Marty is correct in saying that the values and issues that he has championed have now become popular, John Marty has a long record that demonstrates trust and integrity, with long experience in the legislative process, including oversight of the executive branch work. People who work with or for him, have spoken well of him as a leader. So the place where John Marty should be making his case is proving that he has the ability to run a campaign well.
"I have got the courage and the integrity to do what's right, to stand up for making sure that we get health care for everyone. even if the insurance industry fights it, even if the pharmaceutical industry says they are not going to accept it!
We need to look at what people need, what is important in people's lives:
good jobs, healthy communities, safe communities
a good health care system, a good education system, a clean environment!
Those are basic basic! essentials that everyone of us needs. And our kids are going to need them. And our grandkids are going to need them.
We can't have a governor who says. "Well. you know - we'd like do that, someday, we would like to give health care for everyone." We have to recognize the time is now! We have to fix the problems now! We don't need a tinkering governor, we need a Floyd B Olsen!
A business should be competing at being the best at what it produces. In other countries, businesses do not bear the cost of health care, the government does! Business owners, just like other people, are also facing that inadequate health insurance means bankruptcy or no health care. Minnesota's businesses are now saying health care is the biggest issue. Kudos to Lori Sturdevant, Star Tribune for great coverage:
•On Monday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty told an audience of manufacturers that he knows just what they need: a batch of tax cuts totaling more than $270 million over two years. The biggest piece of that proposal would slash the corporate income tax rate from 9.8 percent to 4.8 percent over six years.
•Moments after Pawlenty left the podium, results were unveiled of a survey of 400 Minnesota manufacturing CEOs commissioned by Enterprise Minnesota, the former state agency formerly known as Minnesota Technology. The poll asked, what's your biggest business problem? No. 1: high health care costs.
General Motors was the first business to call for government directly providing health care in the Washington Post:
"GM is the canary in the coal mine for Medicare and everyone else," said Sean P. McAlinden, chief economist at the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research. "There are many, many more companies out there in trouble because of health care costs than just the auto, steel and airline industries."....
But the figure that prompted Wagoner to raise his voice is $1,500. That is the amount of money added to the price of every single vehicle to cover health care, a cost that his foreign competitors do not bear.
At a time, businesses need a boost, shifting the burden of health care to government could be the best boost of all. The real punchline is that by taking out the high administrative cost of private health insurance, we would be able to provide universal health care with the same amount of money that we are paying now:
