Zelaya supporters plan new protests in Honduras

In spite of the fact there have been continual demonstrations and two protesters killed there seems almost no interest in the big media in the U.S. If the same had happened in Iran there would be constant reports and updates.
So far there seems no hope of a negotiated settlement as long as Micheletti refuses to allow Zelaya to return as president. The U.S. looks like a paper tiger or else behind the scenes is not all that unhappy that Zelaya does not return. However, if the U.S. is seen to be secretly supporting the coup this will sabotage any attempt of Obama to portray a new attitude towards Latin America. I find it quite surprising that the coup leaders do not go along with a negotiated settlement since Zelaya would return with little power, a new president no doubt more in line with elite interests, would soon be in power and they would be granted amnesty from any prosecution while aid would flow again and the American and Honduran troops could train and party together!

Zelaya supporters eye new Honduras protests
By Noe Leiva (AFP) – 21 hours ago
TEGUCIGALPA — Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya mobilized Monday to prepare new protests calling for his return to power more than a month after the military threw him out of the country.
Foreign envoys meanwhile were set to meet Monday with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, a Nobel peace laureate spearheading an effort to negotiate a deal between Zelaya and the interim government led by Roberto Micheletti.
Zelaya supporters said they would begin a five-day march on the country's two main cities starting Wednesday despite a crackdown threat from the de facto government and the death of a teacher who was shot at a protest last week.
"There will be two marches with people from all over the country. One will go to San Pedro Sula and another to Tegucigalpa," Juan Barahona, of the National Resistance Against the Honduran Coup, told AFP.
Arias was to discuss Honduras with Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza and Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega.
Enrique Iglesias, a top official with the Organization of Ibero-American States, was also expected to attend the meeting.
For his part, Zelaya, who spent much of last week on the Nicaraguan side of the border with Honduras, was in Managua preparing for a trip to Mexico for a meeting Tuesday with President Felipe Calderon.
Zelaya was bundled out of his bed at gunpoint and kicked out of the country in the June 28 coup, which has been condemned by the international community.
The Mexican president in turn will meet US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at an August 9-10 summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, with the simmering Honduran crisis likely to be a hot issue.
Washington has said that Zelaya is the country's only president, and US ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens flew to Nicaragua and traveled to the border to meet the deposed president on July 29.
Micheletti expressed his displeasure in a Saturday interview with local HRN news.
"We are extremely surprised with the attitude taken by the (US) ambassador, and we call on him for a correction; he cannot be interfering in issues that are strictly of Honduras," Micheletti said.
"There is no country or people powerful enough in the world to bend us," he added.
Washington has canceled diplomatic visas for four members of the interim government, and Micheletti has threatened to retaliate by canceling the visas of US diplomats.
In Tegucigalpa, hundreds of Zelaya supporters -- including the president's wife Xiomara Castro -- gathered Sunday for a wake for Roger Abraham Vallejo, a 38-year-old high school teacher who was shot during a mid-week demonstration.
Another teacher, Martin Florencio Rivera, was stabbed to death after leaving the wake, which Zelaya supporters blamed on regime supporters.
"He was killed after being stabbed 27 times when he was leaving Vallejo's wake," Eulogio Chavez, a teachers organization leader, told AFP.
"That is the same way they killed the comrade in El Paraiso," he said, referring to a Zelaya supporter beaten and stabbed to death who was found near the border with Nicaragua on July 25.

A Canadian Doctor Diagnoses U.S. health care..

Universal health insurance policy is already off the agenda as far as a government single payer plan is concerned. At most there will be a government alternative and even that may be gone before the final reform plan emerges. The scare ads and simple minded platitudes about socialised medicine seem to manage to do the job. Americans who are restricted by HMO plans in the doctors they can go to nevertheless claim that in Canada we cannot chose our doctors. Of course we can but in some cases we might not be able find a family physician!
While comparing the Canadian and US system certainly would show on balance that the Canadian system is better unless you are quite rich there are many universal systems that are much better than ours with more extensive coverage, more efficiency, and less cost. France and Norway come to mind. While the U.S. system is far more expensive than any other developed country Canada does not do well in comparison to many others.
The US system cannot be reformed to any considerable extent because powerful interests do not want any reforms that would harm their bottom lines or restrict their power within the system. These are the interests that fund the ludicrous but perhaps effective scare ads that misrepresent our system.


A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare
The caricature of 'socialized medicine' is used by corporate interests to confuse Americans and maintain their bottom lines instead of patients' health.
By Michael M. Rachlis August 3, 2009

Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them. Our countries are joined at the hip. We peacefully share a continent, a British heritage of representative government and now ownership of GM. And, until 50 years ago, we had similar health systems, healthcare costs and vital statistics.
The U.S.' and Canada's different health insurance decisions make up the world's largest health policy experiment. And the results?On coverage, all Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services. There are no deductibles or co-pays. Most provinces also provide coverage for programs for home care, long-term care, pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment, although there are co-pays. On the U.S. side, 46 million people have no insurance, millions are underinsured and healthcare bills bankrupt more than 1 million Americans every year.
Lesson No. 1: A single-payer system would eliminate most U.S. coverage problems.On costs, Canada spends 10% of its economy on healthcare; the U.S. spends 16%. The extra 6% of GDP amounts to more than $800 billion per year. The spending gap between the two nations is almost entirely because of higher overhead. Canadians don't need thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers to deny care. Even the U.S. Medicare program has 80% to 90% lower administrative costs than private Medicare Advantage policies. And providers and suppliers can't charge as much when they have to deal with a single payer.Lessons No. 2 and 3: Single-payer systems reduce duplicative administrative costs and can negotiate lower prices.Because most of the difference in spending is for non-patient care, Canadians actually get more of most services. We see the doctor more often and take more drugs. We even have more lung transplant surgery. We do get less heart surgery, but not so much less that we are any more likely to die of heart attacks. And we now live nearly three years longer, and our infant mortality is 20% lower.Lesson No. 4: Single-payer plans can deliver the goods because their funding goes to services, not overhead.The Canadian system does have its problems, and these also provide important lessons. Notwithstanding a few well-publicized and misleading cases, Canadians needing urgent care get immediate treatment. But we do wait too long for much elective care, including appointments with family doctors and specialists and selected surgical procedures. We also do a poor job managing chronic disease. However, according to the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, both the American and the Canadian systems fare badly in these areas. In fact, an April U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that U.S. emergency room wait times have increased, and patients who should be seen immediately are now waiting an average of 28 minutes. The GAO has also raised concerns about two- to four-month waiting times for mammograms. On closer examination, most of these problems have little to do with public insurance or even overall resources. Despite the delays, the GAO said there is enough mammogram capacity. These problems are largely caused by our shared politico-cultural barriers to quality of care. In 19th century North America, doctors waged a campaign against quacks and snake-oil salesmen and attained a legislative monopoly on medical practice. In return, they promised to set and enforce standards of practice. By and large, it didn't happen. And perverse incentives like fee-for-service make things even worse.Using techniques like those championed by the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, providers can eliminate most delays. In Hamilton, Ontario, 17 psychiatrists have linked up with 100 family doctors and 80 social workers to offer some of the world's best access to mental health services. And in Toronto, simple process improvements mean you can now get your hip assessed in one week and get a new one, if you need it, within a month.Lesson No. 5: Canadian healthcare delivery problems have nothing to do with our single-payer system and can be fixed by re-engineering for quality. U.S. health policy would be miles ahead if policymakers could learn these lessons. But they seem less interested in Canada's, or any other nation's, experience than ever. Why? American democracy runs on money. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies have the fuel. Analysts see hundreds of billions of premiums wasted on overhead that could fund care for the uninsured. But industry executives and shareholders see bonuses and dividends. Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same. The U.S. media, legislators and even presidents have claimed that our "socialized" system doesn't let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It's Americans these days who are restricted to "in-plan" doctors.Unfortunately, many Americans won't get to hear the straight goods because vested interests are promoting a caricature of the Canadian experience.Michael M. Rachlis is a physician, health policy analyst and author in Toronto.