I suggest this alternative stimulus package: let's pass H.R. 676, the Universal Health Care, aka Single Payer bill, introduced by Representative John Conyers.

           Supporting points:

1. A large percentage of bankruptcies and foreclosures are caused by medical debts.

2. Foreclosures will be dramatically reduced, the first step in stabilizing the housing debacle.

3. Medical bills and insurance premiums consume a disproportionate amount of middle class American incomes.

4. By eliminating medical expenses for both business and individuals, liquidity would instantly flow back into the consumer market.

5. The savings incurred by businesses will result in higher wages, and once again infuse liquidity and facilitating good old American consumerism and economic growth.

6. In the last few years, we have seen a growing amount of labor disputes and strikes, not over wages or working conditions, but over healthcare premiums and benefits.

7. There is no other feasible way to rebuild American manufacturing industry. In today's global market, our factories cannot compete with those in countries whose workers are born with the right to free healthcare.

8. We will never be the best country in the world for as long as the health of our citizens is not a fundamental interest of the state.

9. American drugs can be purchased at tiny fraction of their homeland price anywhere else in the world. A governor was just impeached for, among other reasons, the re-importation of American manufactured drugs. American taxpayers pay for a large proportion of all research and development, yet they have no stock in their investment, and all we get as a return is the privilege of paying up to ten times higher prices than any other country.

10. Medicare is in violation of the 14th amendment - age discrimination. What kind of society says it is acceptable for its children or their parents to lack such fundamental right but not so for its senior citizens?

11. Universal health care is a moral and economic imperative under any circumstance. Implementing it now would also solve our economic disaster from the bottom up.

12. It is the right thing to do and right now is the only morally and intellectually sound way of resolving the crisis at hand. It is not liberal or Democratic, is pragmatic.

13. I would love to see a presidential executive order declaring Medicare universal and comprehensive, I am sure this Congress would be delighted to work out the funding and taxation issues. I also believe that by reigning in the drug companies and with the increase revenues from every company that covers its employees, the cost would be a lot less overwhelming than the TARP and a lot more productive in its goals.

It is time - it is actually past due. If we cannot do this now, we never will. Bipartisanship not withstanding, lets keep in mind that those who will oppose Universal Healthcare today would have opposed Medicare, Social Security, and everything else FDR had to offer. They are, once again, on the wrong side of history; as a Country in the twenty-first century, let's make sure we write the history we want our children to read and live by.