Re: SEIU & health care
On Jan 30, 2007, at 6:20 PM, Mark Rickling wrote:
On 1/30/07, Seth Ackerman sethackerman1@verizon.net wrote:
Interesting, but I don’t get the historical analogy. The stench of Bernstein? What is single-payer - the perfume of Babel? Lenin? Sorel?
Trotsky, no doubt. Does Physicians for a National Health Program, New York Chapter, have a different position on 1199NY head Dennis Rivera, or is he assumed to have imbibed the purple kool-aid too?
I don’t want to get flame-y about this, since there are a lot of
folks working for SEIU I hold in high regard, but I gotta say this
stance that people who support single-payer are some sort of
hyperleftists or airheaded idealists, removed from the world of
praxis, is annoying. It’s a way of deflecting any questioning of
whether the union is doing a sensible thing. I don’t care what Dennis
Rivera thinks in his heart of hearts; in the real world he’s cut a
lot of smelly deals with the likes of Pataki. Stern himself thinks
you can get “universal” coverage by expanding on our present insane
patchwork; that’s economically and politically nonsensical. Could
someone explain to me how what SEIU is doing on health care actually
contributes to what really needs to be done?
Doug