Dennis Kuchinich has been unjustly treated by mainstream media because much of what he stands for is populist, progressive, and contrary to the will of powerful existing controlling interests. They gang up on him, yet he fights on for the people.
Contrary to the screw-the-states approach in the first link, Kucinich has fostered an amendment floating around in at least one bill draft to allow the states with the will and good sense to raise the bar higher for insurer behavior, to have the statutory authority - vs - the Michele Bachmann championed one-lax-size-fits-all mischief.
Follow this Google, for several links about the Kucinich effort to allow states to protect their citizens from rapacious insurer greed, even if both houses of congress have been bought to deliver else wise.
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Here are links to the Kucinich house homepage, and his page on the healthcare issue.
Here are links to the McDermott house homepage, and his page on issues - healthcare and social security lead his list - and you can see he is a leader on extending support for the unintentionally unemployed.
Have a look. It cannot be anything but a helpful experience. You have to know who the really good guys are.
And, you are boosted when idiots criticize; here.
__________UPDATE____________
This is a wakeup call to the good folks at Alexandra House, doing good and necessary things, but perhaps unaware of a looming injustice which the Michele Bachmann position on healthcare "reform," Bachmann style, poses to their main efforts:
- September 11, 2009
Domestic violence victims have a "pre-existing condition"?
BY MARIA TCHIJOV
Insurance companies have used the excuse of "pre-existing conditions" to deny coverage to countless Americans. From cancer patients to the elderly suffering from arthritis, these organizations have padded their profit margins by limiting coverage to patients deemed "high risk" because of their medical condition.
But, in DC and nine other states, including Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming, insurance companies have gone too far, claiming that "domestic violence victim" is also a pre-existing condition.
Words cannot describe the sheer inhumanity of this claim.
Indeed!
An SEIU online item is the source of that quote.
The inhumanity is so offensive, I almost want to doubt the claim, to think it is somebody's internet hoax effort. I ask readers to email or comment if they have any information on this shameful situation.
Taking it as factually accurate, it is a wakeup call for action. Taking it as hoax, why then is it so believable? Because we know who we are dealing with when we look at folks like Hemsley, at UnitedHealth Group; and when we look further, at that insurer cabal's ongoing pattern of abusive "preexistent condition" practices. And we are aware of the misdirection our own Ms. Bachmann has done, and is doing, on the killing of healthcare reform, an effort she pursues as much as she believes herself capable of doing. She hears and follows the master's voice.
Tarryl Clark, energize the district. Touch base with Alexandra House personnel to flesh out this thing. Elwyn Tinklenberg's spouse has been on the board at Alexandra House, and presumably would assist a DFL effort to get to the core truth of this SEIU post alleging wholly inexcusable insurer behavior. There are SEIU people in the Sixth District, some who in the past ran for office, and ask them to bring authenticating detail to the table. Then make the effort to get the word out, how "helpful" the Bachmann position is for women of Minnesota. For families. For family coherence and well being. Inform and energize. We need reform, and it starts by reforming the representation we have been getting over the past few years.
Who would have ever thought anyone could make us look at Mark Kennedy with nostalgia.
________FURTHER UPDATE_________
For those unfamiliar with my view of Alexandra House, read here, and here re Tinklenberg's support of that cause, stating [among much else, this is the one Alexandra House context instance]:
One bottom line, I respect Alexandra House and what it does, and I respect Elwyn Tinklenberg's participation in its efforts. I regard much of what it does as a public responsibility of government and not a matter of discretionary private charity. I regard it as false for those who would say one can substitute for the other. However, I see parallel help to families in distress as positive, and I commend without qualification any time Elwyn Tinklenberg has dedicated that way.
Here, for GOP sensitivities.
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This is not to say mistakes under Minnesota anti-abuse statutes do not occur. They do, and unprincipled people have abused the process, that is fact.
I know of one instance where one of the most unprincipled persons I have ever met or known of did exactly that; using the statute as a weapon against justly earned criticism by an unrelated individual, as "harassment," and not at all a domestic abuse situation. It was raw, uncalled for, cheap, indeed extremely cheap and characteristic of the individual, but that one instance does not undermine the need and value the statute carries in its far, far greater percentage of proper and non-abusive uses.
Divorce lawyers who have abused this remedial tool, take special note, you are unabashedly and irredeemably evil, when doing so. And you should be stopped.
Judges with courage would do exactly that. Enough contempt citations, and that mischief would screech to a final clear halt.