Thirteen years ago, my husband was diagnosed with liver failure, was placed on the organ transplant list, and approximately nine months later was fortunate enough to receive a transplant. Had our story been only about the care he received medically, and the fact that he has survived fourteen years with no complications or rejection, it would be a brilliant example of why the world admires American healthcare. However, our story is about insurance coverage, job loss and pre-existing conditions.

When the economy collapsed in 2008, my husband was laid off from his job as a semi-conductor engineer. No individual health coverage plan will cover him due to his pre-existing condition, even though he has been the picture of health for over a decade now. The fee for "high-risk pool" insurance coverage in our state is higher than our unemployment benefits, and still has a huge deductible to meet. Fortunately, the president's stimulus bill provided the means for us to go on COBRA, to insure that the medication necessary to sustain a transplanted organ remains available to us. On its own, the cost of this medication is higher than the cost of our COBRA, and even the copay has quadrupled in the last two years! We’ve sold our car, moved to a smaller home and shaved off as many expenses as possible. Then, this month we received notice that his former employer was sold in an "assets only" sale, meaning their healthplan is discontinued, and we will no longer be able to even purchase COBRA. We are at a loss for what to do next. Let me be clear: without this medication, my husband will die. Contrary to what some skeptics are saying about those of us who are uninsured, or underinsured, we’re not asking for handouts. We are just like any other average American. But jobs, especially those that come with health coverage, are still not to be found. To those skeptics, naysayers, and strategy players who are clamoring for Washington to slow down the process of health coverage reform, I have one thing to say: How much longer do you think we can wait?

Without health coverage reform I am afraid of my husband needlessly losing his life because we can no longer afford his medication. I fear losing my home if faced with a choice of medicine or a roof. I cannot accept the idea that Congress will put this off once again. I believe availability to quality healthcare through affordable health coverage should be separate from employment, and available to all.

Jacqui Mekias

Dallas, TX

My husband and I haven't had "real" health insurance since 2003; we purchased a catastrophic plan in 2003 --$10,000 deductible, no doctor visits included, no prescription plan--and were priced out of that in 2006. Since then, we have had no insurance. My husband developed kidney stones in 2009 and had to have non-invasive surgery or he would have lost the use of his kidney. Twenty-two thousand dollars later, we are paying off his bills monthly after paying out $7,500 outright (let it be known, though, that some hospitals take up to 50 percent off of bills for uninsured people and doctor's offices will take off 20 percent if you ask and pay upfront--we did). The diagnosis and treatment of two large kidney stones cost $22,000--on what planet does this make sense? And he's got five more in those kidneys but we're crossing our fingers that they are small enough to pass on his own; he may have passed three of them, but we can't afford to go back to the urologist to find out.

Health insurance reform is not healthcare reform; insurance needs to be taken out of the equation. Medicare for All--where only 1 percent of the payments go to administration--is the only answer to the nation's healthcare catastrophe. If we all pay into Medicare, someone will use the money we pay in for healthcare, and when we need to go to the doctor, we can use it, too. No profit, no premiums to the Mafia (a k a health insurance companies). Paying billions into a system "just in case something goes wrong" is stupid, fiscally irresponsible, and 45,000 deaths per year because a person can't go to a doctor proves it doesn't work. If planes carrying nearly 4,000 people in them crashed into building monthly around the country, we'd do something about the problem; so why not with healthcare?

Ann Merriman

St. Paul, MN

We are in a deep hole. The economy has tanked and the tankers are still running the show--the show being our so-called people's democracy.

Read and weep: “Goldman stood to gain from the housing market’s implosion because in late 2006, the firm had begun to make huge trades that would pay off if the mortgage market soured. The further mortgage securities’ prices fell, the greater were Goldman’s profits.” (From today’s New York Times (2/7/10), "Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Edge," by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story.)

Goldman-Sachs placed bets that the housing market would tank, made a fortune when it did tank, and then took billions more in the government bailout. Who is this beast?

Goldman Sachs--a k a Government Sachs, a k a the place that does God's work, bled AIG dry? And then the government gave them even more money? It all proves one thing: GS runs the government and probably the world. They make their money selling illusions and bubbles. They make nothing real. These illusionists control our economy, and since they own the royal road to riches and are holding on tightly, they are leading the rest of us lemmings over the cliff.

Howard Kaplan

Belmont, MA

My thoughts on Howard Zinn are very personal. Like some, I had the memorable experience of having him testify at a trial I was part of. And as many activists know, being a defendant, even for a noble cause, can be hard. Suddenly one's acts are being publicly scrutinized; one may doubt whether they can ever be adequately explained. One contends with long-held assumptions and the staunch defenders of the organized system. And even after hours of organizing, strategizing and marshaling resources prior to trial, one is still forced to plead before a jury. Or find those who will do so with more credibility and clout. Still, court outcomes are uncertain, and one's fate totters.

In this case, scores of us had occupied a campus building at UMass-Amherst in the fall of 1986 after Abbie Hoffman delivered a scathing speech enumerating the crimes of the CIA. The agency had caused a stir trying to recruit students on campus. And Amy Carter, President Carter's daughter, then matriculating at Brown, also joined the sit-in. But riot police ended all that, unceremoniously evicting and arresting us, while injuring a few in the process. We organized to put on a so-called "necessity defense," claiming our trespassing was needed to call attention to the far more serious crimes of the CIA. But would a jury believe us? We needed authoritative voices to state our case. And Howard Zinn, for one, came. In his signature eloquent and personable style, he told a staid middle-class jury in Northampton, Massachusetts, that nonviolent direct action has a venerable history in this country. And that they should examine the standard view that protesters are automatically guilty and deserve full punishment.

Like the scholarly story-teller he was, Zinn intrigued jury members explaining the rationale of various aggrieved groups in history, the underdogs in our legal, economic and social order. How activists have long used principled protest to bring attention to larger issues--to cast light on what George Orwell called "the smelly orthodoxies," structures and habits that rob people of their prospects, their dignity and sometimes their lives. And after a lengthy trial featuring several other "expert witnesses," the jury went to deliberate. After what seemed days, but was only hours, we were acquitted. What a relief to feel the criminal justice system's weight lift; yet even as we exulted, we knew our win was fleeting, and the struggle long. Still, it was a victory. And Howard Zinn proved himself to truly be "a friend in need," a man drawn to progressive ideas and willing to defend them in every aspect and court. His writings and lectures, but moreover his life, was lived with verve and grace in opposition to virtually every tenet of mainstream American thought. For besides his prodigious intellectual acumen, life taught him that victims are worth heeding and conformity to an unjust social order is hardly noble. For anyone who still yearns for a saner, more just and more peaceful country, we have indeed lost a remarkable mentor and a guide. And it is an immense loss. So with his characteristic gleam in his eye, he has left the stage. And it is we who must go on.

jay allain

East Greenwich, RI

It is the nature of the Taliban and Al Qaeda that they rely on violence to obtain their goals. Since mainstream Islam is peaceful, it is not surprising that most Muslims react negatively to such attacks. The sheer scale of the Pakistani Taliban's attacks within Pakistan pushed ordinary people to support the Pakistan army's operations against them. The Pakistan army already has more troops on the ground than we could currently deploy in that country. They do not need US troops on the ground.

They may need some training or technical support, but such aid should be a "white" operation. The people of Pakistan have a right to know, and make their opinions known about a relationship between the Pakistani and American military forces.

There is a deficit in trust between the US and the people of Pakistan. Our relations with Pakistan must be open and transparent in order to regain that trust. Any military actions involving cooperation between our respective military forces must rest on the consent of the Pakistani people. As Chairman Mao noted, "The people are like water and the army is like fish"!

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA

I fully agree that our government is and has been purchased by the caviar and Pinot Noir crowd. The Supreme Court decision only clarified and legalized for the final time Buckley v. Valeo, and for the average voter has essentially gone unnoticed. Not because they are stupid, dumb, don't care, but because they have realized that the government doesn't care about them and doesn't work for them. They have been labeled protectionist, parochial, populist, uneducated etc. They have watched their sweat equity being traded to China on some grand scheme that China would become a democracy and improve its human rights, "rising tides lift all boats"; instead, we have ended up with a super-rich minority. Ten percent of us own 80 percent of the country's wealth and we have a political swamp for a country. The reality is that both political parties have been doing this kabuki dance for public consumption knowing full well that doing nothing is much safer than risking the ire of the powerful. The verdict on Obama is still out, but you are correct, he seems to have fallen into the same Washington swamp.

james l. pinette

Caribou, ME

Katha Pollitt imagines a husband at a graveside mourning his wife who refused to get an abortion. Remember that the Catholic Church has canonized Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian pediatrician who refused both an abortion and a hysterectomy when diagnosed with a uterine fibroma during a pregnancy in 1962. The child was successfully born by Caesarian section (and survived to become a physician herself who attended her mother's canonization ceremony in 2004), but Molla died a week later of septic peritonitis.

Perhaps Focus on the Family, being an Evangelical Protestant organization, would not make a laudatory ad about St. Gianna's sacrifice, but I can imagine a Catholic prolife organization doing so. Would such an ad get a spot during the Super Bowl, though? I doubt it.

Katheryn Gallant

West Covina, CA

"Some see our troubles as tied to the arcane rules of the institution, particularly the Senate. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, for example, has tied the failings of Congress to the filibuster and argues that the first step of fundamental reform has got to be to fix that."

If you want positive change, it's crucial to keep in mind that it's far, far easier to pass a great increase in public campaign finance and other reforms if only fifty votes (plus the VP) are needed,than if sixty are needed. The Republicans will always vote as a block against this--they're the party of moneyed interests--making passage virtually impossible if sixty votes are required. Ending the filibuster, which can be done with just fifty determined senators and the VP, is just a necessary first step if we want to have strong campaign finance reform anytime soon--if we don't want to wait fifty to a hundred years until skill, luck and circumstances are just right that we can get it by Republicans armed with the filibuster.

A constitutional convention is a way to bypass Congress, but with two-thirds of the states required, it's not going to happen soon. But abolishing the filibuster could happen anytime, and it's important that it happen anyway, even if we did get strong campaign finance reform.

Richard H. Serlin

Tucson, AZ

The best place to force a filibuster is on extension of the Bush tax reductions. Obama and the Democrats want to extend the reductions, but only for people making less than $250,000 per year. Republicans threaten to filibuster any extension of the tax reductions that don't include everyone.

Let the Republicans filibuster the Democratic proposal, and see what the country thinks.

Jonathan Ryshpan

Oakland, CA

Phelps's descriptions of the area where I was bred and buttered are accurate and thought-provoking. His overall history of the area from agricultural hub to industrial town highlights the effects of what companies provide when they are booming and the vacuum they inevitably leave when they are concerned only with profit. By our acceptance of profit over people we accept our lives on the companies terms.

Sadly, while we need labor unions now more than ever to curb the tide of multinational corporations, they instead mirror the dictatorial structure of top-down hierarchy. Phelps demonstrates that decent-paying jobs were not given voluntarily by GM; they were fought for by the rank and file. He also clearly shows that democratic actions such as the wildcat strikes of 1967 were seen by the UAW leadership as a threat .

Many unions believe that contracts should be negotiated behind doors and without involvement of rank-and-file workers. Do unions believe we can really have a resurgent labor movement without the involvement of workers?

This article reveals Mansfield, Ohio, as a microcosm of the nation as a whole. Many of my generation think we have to accept these terms of losing wages and benefits to help companies stay competitive. Hmm... during the years when we have seen the average worker's salary shrink, we have seen CEO pay and compensations blossom exponentially. He reminds us that decent-paying jobs were not given, they were won by democratic rank-and-file militancy.

Randy Voss

Wooster, OH

The argument is made by the investment banks that repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was important for US growth and economic prosperity, and that reimposition of Glass-Steagall rules would hamper the markets' recovery and our climb out of recession. OK, so what does history tells us about economic growth and market performance in the periods prior, and subsequent to, passage of the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999?

If we look at the twenty-five years before repeal of this act, we measure a 1,750 percent increase in the Dow, a 2,145 percent increase in the S&P and a 6,804 percent increase in the Nasdaq index.

In the more than one decade since Glass-Steagal was repealed, we have gotten a 9.7 percent decrease in the Dow, a 25 percent decrease in the S&P, and a 46 percent decrease in the NASDAQ.

GDP growth over the past thirty-five years would tell the same story. Indeed, its remarkable that, despite the usual business cycles, overall the twenty-five years preceding repeal of Glass-Steagall were characterized by such strong market and GDP performance, while the decade since Glass-Steagall was repealed has been characterized by a sputtering, if not stalled, economy and market that has simply failed to return for its investors.

Of course, coincidence does not prove causation, but the investment houses that say that a return to Glass-Steagall rules would damage the markets and our economic recovery should be compelled to defend that argument in the light of this historical data.

Rui Sousa

San Antonio, TX

I feel cheated by not actually meeting Howard Zinn in person. From what everyone has written about him, he was a great man. I only know him through his writing. Even then though the force of his personality comes out. In reading his writings I feel as though I'm being personally addressed, especially when it came to the class issues that no one wants to talk about. When I read his writings I remember feeling cheated. I had been lied to all the way through college--only, as Zinn would say, the lying was in footnotes. I wanted my student loans canceled. I wanted the money that I and my parents had spent putting me through college back, and I definitely wanted the best years of my life that I spent there back. I learned more through Zinn's works about life, society, history and all the rest than from all the education I've ever had.

When I read about the class struggles that continue to this day, I felt a sense of relief, as if a burden had been lifted off my back. I said to myself, "It's not me. It's the exploiters above me." At that moment I stopped blaming myself and stopped listening to the vocies of doom who said that I was at fault for not having economic success. I've moved to the other side of the spectrum because of him. In doing so, I ended up leaving a lot of friends behind. Such is the way of things, I guess. But I've gained some new ones, even if I only see them in print or on YouTube. I've had the dream of writing a book and of having it been given a great review by Zinn as validation. Alas, that is no longer to be. But if I ever do get anything published I'd certainly dedicate it to him. We've lost the greatest warrior the fight for progress has ever known. Let us all at least try to emulate what he did, even if he is a tough act to follow.

Miguel Regojo

Miami, FL

Nice article, but a bit lacking in a couple of key terms--co-gen and "Binary Cycle."

The Co-gen part is using low-grade heat from steam turbines ("exhaust steam") or industrial heat as a heating source, so that the latent heat of vaporization can be extracted from the steam. This may involve the use of steam compressors to up the pressure of this steam, but more often a customer for this lower temperature steam (150 F [vacuum steam] to ~300 F). A great use is district heating, or heating hydroponic greenhouses that could be used to grow a region's "salad bowl" and flowers, fast-growing fruits, etc., without pesticides in a CO₂-enhanced environment, which also creates local jobs and eliminates all the petroleum associated with trucking or flying those items from far away.

The binary cycle involves using either "waste heated air" or "exhaust turbine steam" or simply unwanted low-temperature steam to boil a lower-boiling (at atmospheric pressure reference) fluid, using that to push a turbine, then condensing that fluid using colder air/cold water. Examples include ammonia, trimethylamine, methylamine, ethylamine, HFC-245fa, HFC-236ea, butane, pentane, dimethyl ether and others. You can, by matching the temperature of the heat source and "cold sink" (Lake Erie or Ohio River water, air) extract up to 25 percent more electricity from the same quantity of fuel (coal, natural gas or biomass). Neat eh? These are established ways of operating--a recent entry is the maker of "the Green Machine," which uses HFC-245fa as the working fluid.

Dave Bradley
Buffalo Wind Action Group; http://www.buffalowind.org

Buffalo, NY

I can't agree with Mr. Schell's contention that Scott Brown's election in Massacusetts reflected voter ambivalence rather than voter anger. The main reason Brown won was that he tapped into a deep vein of revulsion against Obamacare.

Voters detested the sleazy backroom deals that Obama orchestrated despite his pledge that all healthcare negotiations would be covered live on C-SPAN, and they were outraged by his insistence that the Medicare programs that retirees depend on would be cut by $500 billion in order to pay for new entitlements for younger people still earning a living in the workforce. I don't live in Massachusetts, but if I did, that Obama scheme to slash Medicare funding would have been all that was needed to persuade me to vote for Brown. Here's why. If it weren't for very costly heart surgery paid for by Medicare, I wouldn't be alive today.

In short, it's no accident that Brown's 5 percent margin of victory over Coakley exactly matches the 5 percent margin by which voters in Massachusetts and the rest of the country have told polltakers they oppose Obamacare.

As for your suggestion that Obama has been too conciliatory and needs to swerve to the left to save his presidency, you can't be serious. What voters want most today is more jobs, and good private-sector jobs can't be generated by raising taxes or increasing the size and powers of the federal bureaucracy.

As I argued in a Baltimore Sun op-ed last July, the only way to induce employers to put workers back on their payrolls is to enable cash-strapped consumers to buy their products and services by giving families tax rebates averaging about $950 per quarter for at least four quarters. This would cost the government about $400 billion (roughly a third of its individual income tax revenue over those same four quarters), but it would be well worth it. Even if only half the money flowed from consumers' pockets into employers' payrolls, it would still be enough to put 4 million people back to work.

With a twelve-month payoff like that, there's no better investment the government could make. Too bad Obama is too much of an ideologue to realize it.

John D. Hartigan

Chevy Chase, MD

Dear Mr. Scahill: Thank you for your very fine work. I hope that you stay safe.

Is there a way we can support Mr. Kinani? I would like to express my sorrow for the loss of his beautiful son.

As an American, I would like to apologize for my government, looking like it protects the thug contractors it is still in business with. Are there any petitions for justice here? I hate for Mr. Kinani to meet only silence from the American people.

Mary Lickert

Charleston, WV