TODAY'S PVAF AASHRAM NEWS STORY ABOUT ........THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE REFORM STRUGGLE .......... .....a test of true dynamic democratic governance of the people, by the people and of the people... is less about medical treatment than about THE HUMAN STRUGGLE OF FEAR OF ....power of government vs power of its citizens.. .....TO  CHANGE...... ....AN UNHAPPY TODAY TO A HAPPIER TOMORROW .... The human struggle against CHANGE is born of ANGER BORN OF IGNORANCE AND MISINFORMATON ..... Anger creating Resentment and Fear of CHANGE ......and humans not understanding through ignorance POWER OF CHANGE TRHOUGH TRUE KNOWLEDGE for a happier tomorrow than today.... .... .......and humans failing to understand the power of anger born of ignorance and creating resentment and fear of change TO DESTROY HUMAN PROGRESS TO WELL-BEING AND PROSPERITY THROUGH DEMOCRACY.... ........because humans without CHANGE BASED ON TRUE KNOWLEDGE cannot progress and prosper without a changed and new tomorrow... .....STAYING IN THE PAST IS SLOW BUT SURE REGRESSION OF LIFE LEADING TO DEATH..... (The above contributed as part of  PVAF's primary mandate of continual sharing with the entire humanity on this planet Earth of .... DAILY LIVING LIFE WITH KNOWLEDEGE AND NOT IGNORANCE.... by Champaklal Dajibhai Mistry of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada... as part of his acquiring understanding  of LIFE, CREATIONS AND ITS CREATOR through his continuing study of SCIENCES OF vED....) To understand PVAF's message on the news story....by reading  today's news story which is an excellent take on the subject matter, filtered of the noise, misrepresentations and ignorance created thereof by those WHO FEAR CHANGE IN LIFE...this writing from the Pulitzer winning writer endeavours to bring out the KNOWN TRUTH of the happening...please click on the next line to go to the next webpage which has today's news story......

......Health care: magnet for anger..... .....the struggle is less about medical treatment than about power....   (From Canadian Globe and Mail: Saturday, September 19, 2009: By David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and winner of Pulitzer Prize for his writing on U.S. politics. David Shribman is known for his astute assessment of national politics as well as the political scene throughout USA. His outside-the-Beltway reporting takes him to cities and towns around the U.S., where he has the enviable ability to assess political temperament.) It's not about kidney transplants. It's not about the uninsured. It's not about keeping the family doctor. It's not about Canadian-style waits for MRIs. It's not even about life-and-death decisions. In fact isn't really about health care at all. For the past two months, the United States has been in upheaval as its politicians, physicians and members of the public debate whether to       -  overhaul the country's health-care system,       -  battle over what to do about 46 million people who don't have health insurance,       -  and  struggle over whether to restructure one-seventh of the U.S. economy. But amid the studies and the screaming, the hand-wringing and the histrionics, is something far bigger than even the billions Americans spend on health care. -    It's a question of the role of government in American society. -    It is an issue about ethics and equity. It is a debate about the power of the individual in a mass society. -   It is a magnet for anger, resentment and fear. -   And it has created divisions that are more substantive and deeper than perhaps any domestic public-policy question since the fights over the civil-rights and women's movements four decades ago. These divisions, moreover, are not the usual ones of Republicans against Democrats, or of liberals against conservatives, or the young against the old, or even the rich against the poor. These divisions are almost impossible to plot on the usual graphs of politics and they defy the usual chemistry of politics. But these divisions, like most important fissures, are not about what the principals, agitators and commentators say they are about. They are, instead, about power. AND WHO HAS THE POWER? In this case, the word “power” has many meanings.      - There is, of course, the power to make life-threatening or life-saving decisions about an individual at the uncertain outset of a disease or at the grim fatal end of disease.       - There is the power to distribute health care and its technological abundance and the power to deny it.        - There is the power to enhance the economic security of the individual or, by keeping an entire class of Americans uninsured, the power to undermine that security.        -  And there is the power to impose health insurance on the public and the power to keep health insurance a private matter, mostly tied to employers. “This issue is dividing not only Democrats and Republicans but the whole country,” says John Kenneth White, a political scientist at the Catholic University of America in Washington. “There is a disquiet in America. The debate is about power, and who has it.” That disquiet – that debate about power – comes at a time when the political system is peculiarly vulnerable to civic insurrection, some of which was evident during the midsummer congressional recess, when legislators returned home to their districts and found their town meetings transformed into angry shouting matches. Not since the Vietnam War has the emotion at meetings between members of Congress and members of the public been at such a high pitch and prompted such high drama. Right now, Americans are worried about their economic security, their lifestyles and their prospects for retirement. They are uneasy about the new role Washington is playing on Wall Street, in the automobile companies and in the banks in their own neighbourhoods. They are concerned about the growing power of foreigners, especially the Chinese, in their economy. They are worried about terrorism, two increasingly unpopular wars, the federal deficit and the national debt. And they are worried that so much has changed in the way Americans conduct business – so much change, so fast and so profound. The irony – a historic irony – is that Barack Obama's health-care overhaul may actually be endangered by the Bush administration's economic bailout. “Obama is the unwitting victim of a lot of pent-up anger over George W. Bush,” says Craig Shirley, a leading conservative spokesman. “The anger last fall over the bailouts – and Bush saying the free market was broken – was palpable among conservatives. And conservatives are worried about loss of power, loss of control over their own lives.” Much of that emerged in the wake of the huge Washington bailouts for investment and insurance firms in the very last breaths of the Bush administration. Economists and commentators have praised the former treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, for efforts that many scholars and insiders believe prevented an economic catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression. Historians eventually may confirm or dispute that view, but for the time being many Americans remain deeply unsettled by what it took to keep the system going, and offended by the bonuses that still are an important part of Wall Street culture. “There is outrage at the bailouts and bonuses,” says Michael Sandel, a Harvard University political theorist. “It is as if the established order essentially held a gun to the head of the American taxpayer and said, ‘We don't deserve it, but if you don't pay up, everybody's economic well-being could become a hostage to our recklessness.' It felt like extortion, and that sense of outrage and injustice has not been addressed, and that anger has spilled over.” In many ways, it doesn't matter that the bailouts began under a different administration and that they occurred in a different corner of the economy from health care, where Mr. Obama is trying to deal with a crisis. All that matters is that Washington was the agent of the bailout – and that Washington seems to be poised to be the metaphorical physician for the health-care system. The usual separation between economic health and personal health has been blurred, and if government was the villain in the economic bailout, then, according to this line of thinking, government is so much the worse equipped to ameliorate the health-care crisis. Dramatic evidence of that appeared earlier this week, when the latest Washington Post/ABC News Poll showed the public opposing, by a 48 per cent to 46 per cent margin, the proposed changes in the health-care system. But those polled said, by 50 per cent to 42 per cent, that they would support the plan if it did not include a government-sponsored health-care plan. Not that there is impeccable logic here. One of the great forces in the American health-care debate is concern over the future of Medicare, which does not mean what it does in Canada, but rather is a health-care system for those 65 and older. Hardly anyone dislikes Medicare, which of course is a government program. So popular is it that one of the concerns about any overhaul of the broader U.S. health-care system is that any change might imperil Medicare – which may be why fewer than a third of Americans over 64 approve of Mr. Obama's handling of health care, according to the latest CBS News Poll. The anger that began in the summertime town meetings accelerated this week with an Internet sensation prompted by a constituent complaint about the health-care measure. The angry taxpayer told Representative Fortney Stark of California not to “pee on my leg and tell me it's raining” – only to be told by Mr. Stark, a California Democrat, “I wouldn't dignify you by peeing on your leg, it wouldn't be worth wasting the urine.”  It surfaced, too, when Representative Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, screamed from the floor of the House during a presidential address that the president was a liar. These outbursts are in part an echo of the anger that ended the Democrats' 40-year control of the House 15 years ago. That dramatic event occurred just after the collapse of the last effort, in the Clinton years, to overhaul the health-care system. A STANDARD DEBATE? And yet there is not contention everywhere. The health-care effort has an important supporter who has changed sides in the fight, former Senate majority leader Robert Dole of Kansas, who was the Republicans' 1996 presidential nominee. Mr. Dole, who credits government hospitals with saving his life following his near-fatal injuries on an Italian hillside in the Second World War, is urging Republicans not to be obstructionist. And one health-related element is curiously absent from the public square during the health-care fight: abortion. Many years from now, graduate students may examine this period in American history and conclude that it may not really be so different from other eras. There are many resemblances, for example, to the fight that created the U.S. Constitution, which came into effect 220 years ago. “This is the standard debate about the role of government in ensuring fundamental rights and equal opportunities for all citizens,” says Prof. Sandel of Harvard.      “But it is also a frustration with government that goes beyond the debate about markets and gets to a sense of powerlessness.       People sense that the forces that govern their lives are beyond their control, and I think this sentiment – a persistent theme in American politics – is not ‘right' or ‘left.'       It was reinforced in recent times by the financial crisis and the bailout and the sense of outrage about the help given to the wealthiest institutions and the wealthiest Americans.” So there may be nothing much new under the American sun after all. But with 18 per cent of Americans under age 65 without health insurance and with fresh concerns about the intrusion of government, important historic forces now are at play – and a presidency is on the line. (David Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing on U.S. politics. ) ........Share with friends........

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