All Americans deserve affordable healthcare. There should not be children in this country whose parents cannot afford to take them to the doctor. Some families have insurance and still can’t afford to go the doctor. The healthcare industry should be ashamed that there are families that have insurance with a $5000 deductible and $600/mo. premiums, while insurance industry CEO’s make millions of dollars a year. Ron Williams of Aetna, had a total compensation in 2008 of $24,300,112. Does anyone really deserve 24 milliion dollars while children go without healthcare? I don’t think so.
      Now I’m a single-payer guy, I think Medicare for everyone is the way to go. It works for our parents and our grandparents and I don’t hear any complaints that it’s a government program and should be dismantled. I think my parents deserved low cost healthcare in their old age and I’m glad they got it. I don’t hear anyone at the townhall meetings this summer saying we should abandon Medicare because it smells like socialism. 
      In 2008 we voted in the Democrats because we wanted change. But corporate America is going to resist change. When the Congress began to debate a public option that would create competition for the healthcare industry and cost savings for Americans, corporations pushed back. They went into action and mobilized the right wing with money and rhetoric and we sat back while they took control of the debate and killed any effective change. We let them do it. I don’t think we are going to get the change we voted for. Instead I think we a going to get what we deserve. 
      For 20 years as a union steward I fought the apathy of the general membership that believed that once they joined the union, they no longer needed to participate and could go to sleep because the union would fix things. A good example of this is how the union has attempted to use the Internet to strenghten its collective voice. How many of you have joined the IBT email activist list? How many of you send an email to your Congressman when the IBT or your Local asks you too. When our Local tried to set up an email activist list, they got less than 100 participants out of 5000 members. People are lazy and they want someone else to do the work.
      On the healthcare reform issue, the corporations are going to do the work and we are going to pay the bill. We are too lazy to get involved. We won’t stand up and shout out that we want change. We expect our elected President to do it. But his voice is only so loud and when big money shouts him down and we remain silent, then we are going to get what we deserve. I’ve never seen a for-profit corporation that was set up and run for the good of the people. They are in business for profit. Profit before people. 
      If we let corporations run our government, then we are going to get what we deserve and we are going to  get it good and hard.