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Comedian and Stephanie Miller regular John Fugelsang has been filling in for Current TV's Eliot Spitzer this week, and he did a nice job during this short segment of reminding us of the struggles we've seen with attempts to get some sort of universal health care coverage passed and how far we still have to go after yesterday' s Supreme Court ruling.

As long as we've still got overpaid CEOs extrecting wealth from the system which is supposed to make sure our medical and health care needs are provided for, the system is still badly broken.

FUGELSANG: It's the year the Titanic sank, Woody Guthrie was born and Theodore Roosevelt quit the Republican Party and ran for president as a third party progressive, calling for universal health care. It's also our number of the day, 1912.

Now the past 100 years have seen a diversity of presidents attempt to promote the general welfare through universal coverage. FDR tried and ended up focusing on Social Security, which I now call FDR-care. LBJ got as far as Medicare and Medicaid. Richard Nixon did try, but things got a little complicated in his life.

Bill Clinton made a bold play and a conservative Heritage Foundation countered his play by proposing a mandate for Americans to buy insurance. Gov. Romney even used that mandate in Massachusetts, that same mandate he now so despises.

And today the Supreme Court voted to uphold the Constitutionality of the American care act. A hundred years since Teddy ran, Republicans are furious that the Republican Supreme Court appointee just upheld a Republican designed health plan which will save Republican lives.

They wanted this thing to die before it could actually help anybody. Now there are things I don't like Obamacare, but I'll take it over the alternative, Republican-can't-care-less, and it's important to remember my friends, the long, slow march for Americans taking care of their own, of having the kind of universal coverage that typically gets called Socialist.

The kind of system all of our capitalist allies have still continues and there's a lot more at stake in this struggle than one man's presidency.

One day we'll have an America where insurance companies executives can't get rich off of somebody else's disease.

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While continuing their conversation about whether government workers' salaries and whether the states can afford to be making good on their pension funds or not when a lot of them are facing huge problems with their budgets, AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff Thea Lee made the point that there's no reason we should not be raising taxes on the wealthiest among us who can afford it rather than cutting services or going after workers' pension funds.

And as NEA president Dennis Van Roekel noted in the follow up to Fox's Chris Wallace, it's not your average worker out there that's a problem when it comes to who is being overpaid:

VAN ROEKEL: You know, the last 29 years, productivity up 80 percent, hourly wages up eight. The lowest one-fifth, their wages up 18 percent. But the top one percent, their wages go up 275 percent.

We have got to find a way to lift all citizens, not just a few. Not a 1 percent, not just the wealthy few.

He's right of course, but it's a message I'm sure Fox would prefer most of their viewers don't hear too often. CEO pay and executive compensation have been out of whack compared to average your average worker's salary for decades now, but as soon as anyone says we should do something about it, Republicans start screaming about "class warfare," as though most people aren't aware of who it's actually being waged on.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From this Tuesday evening's The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur discusses why we're finally seeing many Americans angry enough to be taking to the streets, with details on some recent reports about the growing income disparity in the United States.

Here's more on the stats Cenk was highlighting in the clip above from Think Progress -- As The Richest Americans Get Richer, The Rest Are Drowning In Debt:

That inequality has crushed the middle class and has perilous consequences for the American economy. It is also contributing to another problem: rising debt inequality. As income inequality has risen, the bottom 95 percent of Americans have fallen deeper into debt over the last three decades, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The top five percent, meanwhile, have seen their personal debt reduced, CNN Money reports:

In 1983, the bottom 95% had 62 cents of debt for every dollar they earned, according to research by two International Monetary Fund economists. But by 2007, the ratio had soared to $1.48 of debt for every $1 in earnings.

The bottom 95% had incomes of roughly $160,000 or less in 2007, including capital gains.

And then there’s the top 5%. Their debt-to-income level actually fell during the same period, from 76 cents of debt for every dollar earned in 1983, to just 64 cents in 2007.

The contributors to rising income and debt inequality are clear — for the richest Americans, incomes are rising rapidly while tax rates have fallen to historic lows. The rest, however, are increasingly burdened by student loan debt as the cost of college soars, mortgage debt as the prices on their homes have plummeted, and credit card debt as they’ve tried to keep their head above water despite stagnant wages and rising unemployment.

And from The Economic Policy Institute Blog -- It’s executives and the finance sector that did it!:

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As The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur rightfully pointed out in the segment above, here's another glaring example of just what's wrong with our society, where the rich rig the system to their benefit and leave the 99 percent with nothing in return.

Newspaper Giant Gives CEO $32 Million Severance Package After Laying Off 20,000 Workers In Six Years:

When Craig Dubow resigned as CEO of the nation’s largest newspaper conglomerate amid health problems last year, he ended a six-year stint that “was, by most accounts, a disaster.” Gannett, the parent company of the USA Today and 80 other American newspapers, had seen its revenue plummet $1.7 billion and its stock price fall 86 percent, from $72 a share to just over $10.

To counter those losses, Gannett shed jobs, and a lot of them. Industry estimates say the company has laid off at least 20,000 workers since 2005, reducing its workforce from 52,000 to roughly 32,000. Despite those losses, Gannett awarded Dubow a severance package worth $32 million, NPR reports:

Dubow’s final compensation package includes $12.8 million in retirement benefits, $6.2 million in disability benefits and a $5.9 million severance payment, according to the filing. Gannett stock options and restricted stock, which Dubow had accrued during his years of employment with the company, were also part of the package. Those stock awards are valued at nearly $7 million.

Separately, Gannett will pay $25,000 to $50,000 annually for a $6.2 million life insurance policy covering Dubow and another $70,000 annually for benefits such as health insurance, home computer and secretarial assistance and financial counseling. He will receive most of these benefits for three years unless he goes to work for a competitor, according to the filing.

The lavish severance package Gannett is giving Dubow stands in stark contrast with how it treated many of the 20,000 employees it let go. Read on...

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While discussing the recent lockout of the United Steelworkers at the Cooper Tire and Rubber Company, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich reminded the viewers of the Ed Show on MSNBC just how out of whack CEO pay is compared to the average worker out there.

You can read the press release from the USW on the strike here -- Steelworkers Locked-Out at Findlay Cooper Plant.

The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur weighs in on a recent article at the Huffington Post via Reuters, which at a time when we've got record income disparity in the United States is yet another example of why we need to get the money out of politics, do something to fix these corporate tax loopholes and offshore tax havens and last but not least, address the issue of CEO pay being completely out of whack with what the average employee out there is making.

Highest-Paid CEOs Often Earn More Than Company Pays In Income Taxes, Study Finds:

Twenty-five of the 100 highest paid U.S. CEOs earned more last year than their companies paid in federal income tax, a pay study said on Wednesday.

It also found many of the companies spent more on lobbying than they did on taxes.

At a time when lawmakers are facing tough choices in a quest to slash the national debt, the report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-leaning Washington think tank, quickly hit a nerve.

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Senator Barbara Boxer and ex-Hewlett Packard, No-God-Given-American-Jobs, CEO and GOP mean-girl Catty-Carly Fiorina squared off for a debate tonight and after being hammered on at every opportunity by Boxer for outsourcing jobs while taking her golden parachute at HP, Fiorina resorted to a typical Republican tactic. When things aren't going well, play the victim card. This time is wasn't for her though. It was for "a treasure of California" and its employees Hewlett Packard. Why does Barbara Boxer hate California "treasure" HP and their workers? She really must hate America for pointing out what they paid Carly.

FIORINA: I think it's actually a shame Barbara Boxer would use Hewlett Packard, a treasure of California, one of the great companies in the world whose employees work very hard and whose shareholders have benefited greatly from both my time as CEO and all the hard work of the employees that I have the privilege to lead and I think it's a shame that she would use that company as a political football. I understand she's going to mischaracterize my record and my severance package, but I think it's a shame she would use the company in that way.

After she appeared on Fox News Sunday I pointed out just how bad that record of hers is, so it's not surprising she'd take this tack and try to pretend Boxer was attacking her former employer and their workers. Talk about some projection going on here. If anyone harmed the company or the workers, it was Fiorina.

As I noted in the other post, Think Progress' Wonk Room has more on her record at HP and what she thinks about protecting American workers. FLASHBACK: McCain Adviser Carly Fiorina: ‘There Is No Job That Is America’s God-Given Right Anymore’.

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Bill Moyers weighs in on the appointment of Regina Benjamin for Surgeon General and the influence of money on the health care debate.

BILL MOYERS: This week, Regina Benjamin was nominated by President Obama to be our next surgeon general, charged with keeping the American public informed about our health. She's a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation 'Genius Grant.'

But more important, she's a country doctor, a family physician along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, serving the poor and uninsured. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed her clinic a second time, she mortgaged her own home to rebuild it. The day it was to reopen, a fire burned the clinic to the ground. Moving to a trailer, Dr. Benjamin and her staff never missed a day of work. Dr. Benjamin will no doubt bring that same ethic to the fight for health care reform.

Many of the folks in Regina Benjamin's bayou town are so poor that sometimes she's paid with a pint of oysters or a couple of fish. She buys medicine for her patients out of her own pocket, and she makes house calls.

Now meet H. Edward Hanway, the Chairman and CEO of Cigna, the country's fourth largest insurance company. At the beginning of the year, Cigna blamed hard economic times when it announced the layoff of 1,100 employees. But it reported first quarter profits of $208 million on revenues of $4 billion. Mr. Hanway has announced his retirement at the end of the year, and the living will be easy, financially at least. He made $11.4 million dollars in 2008, according to the Associated Press, and some years more than that.

That's a lot of oysters, although he lags behind Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna Insurance, who made more than $17 million dollars last year, or John Hammergren, the head of McKesson, the biggest health care company in the world. His compensation was nearly $30 million.

Here's the difference. To Dr. Regina Benjamin, health care is a service, helping people in need with grace and compassion. To Ed Hanway and his highly paid friends, it's big business, a commodity to be sold to those who can afford it. And woe to anyone who gets between them and the profits they reap from sick people.

That behavior includes spending nearly a million and a half a day--a day!--to make sure health care reform comes out their way. Over the years they've lavished millions on the politicians who are writing and voting on the bills coming out of committee. Now it's payback time. See for yourself here on our website, where you'll find a link to campaign contributions and the politicians who right now are deciding who wins and who loses the heath care debate.

That's it for the week. I'm Bill Moyers and I'll see you next time.