Keith Olbermann has posted a brief intro to tonight's show-long Special Comment on health care

[Berry Cool]

on someone else's diary at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/7/790724/-LIVE-CHAT:-Keith-Olbermann-Special-Comment

This one's going to be a very special Special Comment.

Also, MSNBC's going to stream it live.

Remember, it's at 8 ET.

As Keith says, "Be there. Aloha."

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. It is buried as a response to the open thread. Text:

They moved my father this afternoon.

I don't mean they moved him to another hospital.

They moved him. In his bed. Into a different position.

It was agony for him.

Agony enough that he could barely see us.

Agony enough that they had to give him all the pain-killer he could handle.

Then he couldn't talk any more.

Another moment when somebody like me wonders about what it would be like if he was going through that, and I was watching it, worrying about whether we could afford the pain-killers.

Or the doctors.

Or that hospital.

Or any treatment at all.

And what kind of society we live in, where millions of us face questions like that, and politicians glibly talk about incremental improvements while they slowly re-shape new laws that are supposed to reduce the number of us faced with pain untreated due to money, into laws that take more money out of our pockets and give it to the corporations who are profiting off health care without contributing one second to the relief of pain or the curing of disease -- the pimps of the equation, taking their 20 percent off the top... the health insurance cartels.

How would our politicians react if there were millions of Americans in pain, getting insufficient care to relieve that pain, because of interference from insurance corporations -- and those millions had just been injured in a natural disaster, or an attack on this country?

How fast would they rush their portable podiums to the driveways outside the emergency rooms?

How quickly would the money come?

You know the answer.

And you know what the answer has been about rushing to help those millions of Americans in pain tonight -- attacked not by another country or a terrorist or even a flood -- but attacked merely... by life.

Half of the politicians are dedicated to protecting the corporations against having to help our relatives and neighbors in pain.

The other half are calculating how far they can anger our Insurance Over-lords before our Insurance Over-lords stop contributing to their campaigns.

Might all their CEO's, might all the wavering political frauds, get ten minutes of Dr. Sabin's pain.

Or my father's.

[Berry Cool]

2. Thanks for the dig.

I'm a bit distracted now.

[Ruby the Liberal]

3. Not a problem!

I was just over at Kos a short while ago looking to see if he had a diary about it.

I'm looking forward to it!

:hi: