Ayoon Wa Azan (They,C*Are Bad for the Health of Americans).

Byline: Jihad El-Khazen

Did Barack Obama lose his Waterloo battle after only a few months at the White House? According to some Republican Senators and a number of Democrats in the Senate, the President was indeed defeated, in the same manner as Napoleon before him. This is mainly because his health care reform plan, which was one of his top legislative priorities, will not be endorsed by Congress before it goes to summer recess on the 8th of August, as Obama had promised and tried.

In fact, the United States is the only industrialized and developed country in the world that does not provide universal health care. While certain publicly funded health care programs are provided in the U.S, in particular for the elderly, the disabled and the underprivileged, in addition to emergency care services, there are no social welfare programs there - including healthcare- like in Western Europe for example. The result, however, is that 50 million Americans are uninsured, while the number may very well rise to a hundred million with the ongoing global economic crisis, leading to a potential humanitarian - and subsequently political - disaster.

Frankly, I would not have cared about the issue of healthcare in America, had not the news cycle there been preoccupied with it for the last couple of weeks, brushing aside all other news. This prompted me to set aside a little my focus on the new President's policies towards the Palestinian cause, Israel, the Arabs and Muslims, and try to somehow understand this important internal American issue.

I remember very well how Hillary Clinton tried to reform healthcare under her husband President Bill Clinton in 1993, and how she completely failed to do so by 1994. This was in fact one of the reasons why the Democrats lost the mid-term elections that year. Hillary had headed a task force that delivered a thousand page plan dubbed "Hillary Care", and what she suggested 15 years ago is actually still needed today. In this plan, Americans and permanent residents in the United States would be enrolled in a health plan, in which the poor would also receive care and pay nothing. Meanwhile - and always according to the same plan - insurance companies would be prevented from discriminating against individuals who according to genetic screening are vulnerable to certain diseases. Also, an electronic health information network would be established under Hillary's plan, which would enable American citizens to retrieve their health record wherever they go.

How can the country with the most powerful military and economy be lagging behind the less wealthy countries when it comes to healthcare? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that health in America, like the elections and everything else there, is an industry and not a service. Perhaps another answer is the fact that a pioneering country in the field of human rights and the separation of the different branches of power has developed a democratic system that inadvertently places the legislative power in the hands of special interests. In this vein, I have complained time and again about the Jewish lobby's control over Congress, while several Americans said before I did that the Capitol building has become "an Israeli-occupied territory". However, this lobby is actually part of the above mentioned equation, where congressmen need funding for their campaigns, and where the campaign financiers do not do so on charitable whims; instead, they rather expect the beneficiary congressmen to protect their interests. As a result of this practice, the interests of health insurance companies and pharmaceuticals come before the interests, the well-being and the lives of American citizens.

Meanwhile, I had written on several occasions that the Israeli Knesset is better - in what concerns Arab issues - than the U.S congress as it is far less radical than both houses of congress. In fact, both the Senate and the House of Representatives support Israel more than Israelis themselves, while a congressman or representative there is only considered honest when he or she remains loyal to you, and does not cheat on you, when you buy them.

In all cases, Americans have much more reasons to complain about their congress than I do. This is because while all my reservations in this regard are about the Jewish Lobby's influence, the American citizen also protests - along with the lobby that pledges allegiance to another country against American interests - the influence exerted by the industrial-military complex that Eisenhower once warned against.

Meanwhile, advertisement campaigns are being commissioned in America against the healthcare plan, some of which are funded by the American Chamber of Commerce. The latter has previously stood against every single reform plan. These current advertisements, which are mostly false, reminded the Americans of the 1993-1994 ad campaigns, and the "Harry and Louise" ads against Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan. I also read that the Chamber of Commerce prefers a "responsible" reform, but I believe that by that they mean responsible towards the insurance companies and the pharmaceuticals, and not American citizens.

If there's any side note I would like to add here, it would be to say that the evil gang of American Likudniks opposes healthcare plans, even when the latter seek to protect the American taxpayers. This is because this gang wants Barack Obama to fail, regardless of the possibility that this failure could result in American deaths for their lack of access to health care. In this context, the despicable Likudnik Charles Krauthammer predicted the sinking of Obama's healthcare plan, while the National Review extremist website published a lengthy article entitled "Obama's Plan in bad health".

These people - the Likudniks- along with the bribable Congress, are bad for the health of Americans. At a time when they would not hesitate for one second to hurt those who pay taxes (that go to Israel), one can only imagine what they would do to us if they could.

2009 Media Communications Group

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