As Republican freshmen head to Congress, many of them are riding a wave of promises to repeal "Obamacare." As Jamie Court noted on our show last week, one of the most unpopular elements of the bill is the mandate that Americans purchase private health insurance. But Wendell Potter, former health insurance industry insider, notes that that is the part of the bill that is most popular with the insurance companies that bankrolled those same Republicans.
Donna Smith of National Nurses United (and of Michael Moore's health care film Sicko) asks, meanwhile, if there's any value at all created by the private health care industry. We try to answer that question with Donna and Wendell in our studio, as well as the question of what luck Republicans will have with repeal, and what can be done on a state level.
Hope is in short supply these days, particularly for those in America's packed prison system. California incarcerates more women than any other state, and when those women get out of jail they often have nothing more than $200 in their pockets and hope to go on. Susan Burton was one of those women once, and now she's founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a nonprofit organization that helps formerly incarcerated women get their lives back together.
Susan has been named one of CNN's ten Heroes this year, and is in the running for the top spot, and she joins us via Skype, along with Kimberle Crenshaw, who explains just why Susan's nomination gives her hope in a bleak time.
[...] Burton and Kimberle Crenshaw talk about the issues around reentry for women of color on GritTV. Vote for Susan as a CNN Hero at [...]
By African American Policy Forum » Blog Archive » Susan Burton and Kimberle Crenshaw on GritTV on November 16th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I think it is mandatory that you EDUCATE people at the local level. Your program is great but not enough people are watching it, yet alone even aware of its existence.
These kinds of discussion must be BROUGHT TO the neighborhoods, to the working-classes, who are IGNORANT and misinformed.
You MUST coordinate with other groups to PLAN “re-education” programs. The more folks you educate, them more you bring into the liberal camps.
This is the PROBLEM, people are too oblivious and are confused. They are easily manipulated and there exists current organizations, mostly conservative and often “faith-based” that are espousing an entirely different message.
By louis r on November 18th, 2010 at 4:10 am