[lbo-talk] Short-Term Tactics at Odds with Medium-Term Needs

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Feb 10 13:04:55 PST 2006


Nathan Newman wrote:


>I didn't say public health insurance is far left; in fact, I said it could
>end up being reactionary depending on how it's implemented. My point was
>that I actually find a concrete assault on corporate profits via the
>Maryland Wal-Mart bill to be more inspiring than a theoretical discussion of
>a health care plan. It's not even a question of preferring the moderate
>solution to the radical solution, but of preferring the actual existing
>fight to the theoretical.

This is some of the weirdest stuff I've ever seen from you. Public health insurance could be reactionary? Please. The Maryland bill isn't an assault on corp profits in general - it's an assault on Wal-Mart in particular, and if you confiscated all of WMT's profits, you could cover 2 million people. But I'm not opposed to the Maryland bill, or similar efforts. Like I said, you could support that as part of a long-term fight for single-payer. But your disparagement of the only serious solution to the US health care crisis as "theoretical" sounds like pure know-nothingism. There is a real movement for single payer already, and it could bet a lot bigger and more serious if organized labor would join it.

Doug



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