Health Care Reform Summit: Women spoke truth

I watched all seven hours, tweeting my way through it even though there were times where I seriously wanted to damage the little electronic heads bobbing around spewing forth on my screen. But there were some highlights, and most of them delivered by women.

Rep. Louise Slaughter summarizes the discriminatory practice of pre-existing conditions:

"If you were unlucky enough to get beaten up once, you might go back and do it again."

She goes on to point out that all research at NIH through the 90s was done on white males, ignoring women's health issues.

She then reminds the legislators that changing these practices "takes legislation. It cannot be done without legislation." When she's done with that, she takes Rep. Ryan to task for his "voucher system" idea, reminding us all that "we're better people than that." She closes with a story of a woman who died wearing her dead sister's dentures. Maybe TMI, but still...we ARE better people than that, aren't we?

In the afternoon, Rep. Boehner makes the specious claim that federal funds will be used to pay for abortions.

Patty Murray argues for a public option, says that this bill at least gets "people out of that box of no choices." (starts at about 2:37:50)

And in the same video, at 2:53:40 or so, Nancy Pelosi reminds that the public option was the House Democrats' 'better way' of creating competition, says "it's time for the insurance companies to hear the people."

She goes on to deconstruct the John Boehner lie about public funding of abortion. She then takes Rep. Camp to task for misstating Medicare cuts as cutting benefits for seniors. She doesn't let 'em get away with anything.

There were other wonderful moments, but at the same time, the women really, really did bring it home.

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Comments

[jaelithe]

Thanks for these great highlights, Karoli. I only really got to watch about the first half of the summit closely yesterday, so I'm glad you were able to see the whole thing.

[Karoli]

I thought the afternoon session really unmasked the Republicans. I have a lot more to say about it (surprise!), but wanted to give the women their due. Without exception, the women spoke for real people. So did the President. Republicans had no women, and were consumed with ego, money, and the same tired talking points.

[Myra Shields]

Health care should be for all, just like it is in the UK with their NHS program. It is not fair for people, citizens or immigrants to not be given access to health care just because they do not have insurance cover or have a pre conditioned illness. What are the taxes Americans pay for?

[dvdbestonline]

Health care is always a heat topic in the past and at this moment. I think government should do more..