Progressive Opinion

truthdig.com — The leadership of the Catholic Church has launched what amounts to a holy war against President Barack Obama. Archbishop Timothy Dolan appealed to church members, “Let your elected leaders know that you want religious liberty and rights of conscience restored and that you want the administration’s contraceptive mandate rescinded,” he said. Obama is now under pressure to reverse a health-care regulation that requires Catholic hospitals and universities, like all employers, to provide contraception to insured women covered by their health plans. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said, “This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets.” In the wake of the successful pushback against the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood, the Obama administration should listen to the majority of Americans: The United States, including Catholics, is strongly pro-choice.

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huffingtonpost.com — You can't see them. They're hidden from view and probably always will be. But the health insurance industry's big guns are in place and pointed directly at the citizens of Vermont. Health insurers were not able to stop the state's drive last year toward a single-payer health care system, which insurers have spent millions to scare Americans into believing would be the worst thing ever. Despite the ceaseless spin, Vermont lawmakers last May demonstrated they could not be bought nor intimidated when they became the first in the nation to pass a bill that will probably establish a single-payer beachhead in the U.S.

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prospect.org — Not only has Romney escaped any serious harm for his (huge) role in setting the template for “Obamacare,” but his constant denunciations of the law have given him credibility with actual conservatives, who now endorse the former Massachusetts governor’s logic on Romneycare. It’s simply incredible to me that conservatives would buy Romney’s ridiculous logic. But it seems that they trust Romney enough on health care repeal to let the issue slide. Which should put a damper on liberal hopes that, if elected, Romney won’t try to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. For as much as the public is skeptical of politicians, presidents genuinely try to fulfill the promises they made as candidates. If you want to know how Mitt Romney will govern, all you have to do is listen to him. And in that case, a President Romney would cater to the rich, return to the bellicose foreign policy of George W. Bush, and dismantle the social safety net, Obamacare included.

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huffingtonpost.com — "It shouldn't be this way," read the subject line of an email I received Friday morning from a conservative friend and fellow Southerner. "People shouldn't have to beg for money to pay for medical care." At first, I thought he was referring to my column last week in which I wrote about the fundraising effort to cover the bills, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, that the husband of Canadian skier Sarah Burke is now facing. Burke died on January 19, nine days after sustaining severe head injuries in a skiing accident in Park City, Utah. I noted that had the accident occurred in Burke's native Canada, which has a system of universal coverage, the fundraiser would not have been necessary.

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newdeal20.org — With Mitt Romney’s hold on the Republican nomination looking secure, the Tea Party will soon have to face the reality that despite pushing the Republican Party and its nominee to the right, they’ll wind up losing the fight in the end. This isn’t the first time. The Tea Party leapt to national prominence in August 2009, when its activists held angry and often ugly protests in town hall meetings held by Democratic members of Congress. But in the end, the biggest impact was to stiffen Republican resolve to refuse any compromises on health care while the legislation continued to make its way through Congress.

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thedailybeast.com — Remember Tim Pawlenty, the corn-pone-ish ex–Minnesota governor who surely wishes he hadn’t dropped out of the presidential race when he did? Remember his coinage “Obamneycare,” which he used in debates starting last June? Of course you remember. And if you don’t, I would expect and hope that this fall, the Obama campaign will start reminding you, because a moment in Thursday night’s debate brought into stark relief just how the issue of health care — which on paper ought to be an absolutely galvanizing issue for conservative voters this November — could instead damage for Mitt Romney this fall. The moment was, of course, the exchange between Rick Santorum and Romney when Santorum was aggressively challenging Romney about health care.

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huffingtonpost.com — In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama said very little about health care reform, but what he did say was a reminder of how tight a grip the insurance industry has on the U.S. health care system — and will continue to have if the Affordable Care Act is not implemented as Congress intended. And it is largely up to the president to make sure that it is. "I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny your coverage or charge women more than men," he said. That comment drew applause, although certainly not from the insurance industry's friends in Congress, who continue to call for gutting the law. That's because when and if it's fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will make many of the most egregious practices of insurers a thing of the past.

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guardian.co.uk — Chances are you've probably never heard of Amelia Rivera, a three year-old from New Jersey. Chances are better you have heard of 29-year-old Canadian, Sarah Burke, one of the best freestyle skiers in the world. Burke and Rivera don't have a lot in common, but tragically, their families do. Both have been borne the scars of a callous and broken U.S. healthcare system. Burke, the six-time X Games gold medalist, was training in Park City Utah, 20 January, when she crashed and suffered major brain trauma. Burke spent nine days in neuro-critical care before, sadly, she died. As if the grief of her death was not enough, Burke's husband had to start a website to ask for donations to help pay the massive medical bill, estimates ranging as high as $550,000. Amelia Rivera, meanwhile, has reportedly been denied a kidney transplant by a Philadelphia hospital because of mental disabilities she was born with from a rare genetic defect.

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politics.salon.com — One benefit of the prolonged campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been the revelation that most of the 20 or 30 percent of Americans who describe themselves as conservatives live in a fantasy world. In their imaginations, Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat with roots in Eisenhower Republicanism rather than Rooseveltian liberalism, is a radical figure trying to take America down the path of “European socialism.” The signature healthcare reform of Obama and the Democratic Congress, modeled on Mitt Romney’s insurance-friendly Massachusetts healthcare program and closely resembling a proposal by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is described as “statist,” “socialist” or “fascist” (as though Hitler came to power with the goal of providing subsidies to private health insurance companies). How can otherwise sane people believe such lunacy? The answer is that members of the right-wing counterculture are brainwashed — that is the only appropriate term — by the apocalyptic propaganda ground out constantly by the conservative media establishment.

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huffingtonpost.com — Mitt Romney has taken a lot of heat since he said during a discussion about health care shortly before the New Hampshire primary that, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." While Romney's opponents had a field day with that comment, in the context of his tenure at Bain Capital, what bothered me most was the former Massachusetts governor's naïve suggestion that anyone but him and his rich friends could actually do what he was suggesting — fire a health insurer on a whim and hire another one that might provide better service. Come to think of it, I'm betting that even Mitt Romney might find it difficult to switch from one health insurer to another because of a bad experience with a customer service rep — unless, of course, he bought his own insurance firm.

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