Debate on Healthcare? Not really.

I am just repulsed by what is being pulled on the health care debate by the right wing, the blue dogs, and the health insurance lobby. There is so much spin, so many lies and pure bullshit propaganda, including red baiting and dog whistling, that I, and many other rational people, are just flabbergasted and getting very, very angry.

• How do you reason with people who believe that paying for end of life planning is the same as euthanasia? Who believe that "living wills" are all about "pulling the plug on Grandma"?


• How do you reason with people who don't even know that fascism is an inherently right wing, corporatist, anti-union ideology? Who engage in thuggish tactics and violence, but whine that they are being falsely labeled terrorists?


• How do you reason with people who believe that the president in not a natural born citizen, in spite of a legal Hawaiian birth certificate and two newspaper announcements of his birth in Hawaii? I don't even have that level of proof - I just have the same type of birth certificate (not a hospital certificate), and no newspaper articles!


• How do you reason with people who think that socialism is the same as communism, and that any government involvement in anything but the military is socialism? But yet they'd never give up their roads, fire departments, police departments, municipal sewers, water delivery or courts in which to sue people (or get sued by corporations, more likely.)


• How do you reason with people who say they oppose "big government", but are all for the massive "homeland security" bureaucracy? They don't bat an eyelash at corporate welfare to banks and defense contractors from the public coffers, but heaven forfend that taxpayer money should be used to keep taxpayers alive, healthy and able to pursue happiness!


• How do you reason with people who think that it's fantastic that a previous president authorized wiretaps and email snooping on all Americans, but scream bloody murder at the mistaken idea that the government is collecting email addresses of people who disagree with legislation under consideration?


• How do you reason with people on Medicare, something that the Reaganites vehemently opposed, who now rabidly oppose health care reform for the benefit of the rest of us?


• How do you get these people to understand that they are being gouged for prescriptions because their party won't let the government negotiate (a good free-market principal) on prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients? These people don't want the *government* to touch their *government* health care to save them money?


• How do you get through to folks who, when you tell them that millions of people are uninsured, and uninsurable, reply that most of those people are illegals, drug addicts, or irresponsible? Especially when the "source" they cite are right wing lie sheets and insurance company propaganda? When the people you personally know that are in that situation worked hard, then took care of their ailing family members, and are now to sick to work, but not able to get disability because they played caregiver for family for too long?


• How do you reason with people who whine that you're engaging in "class warfare" when you want to tax the rich more, but yet have themselves been making war on the middle and lower classes for the last thirty years by:
  1. increasing the tax burden on the middle class while giving breaks to the rich,
  2. eliminating funding for programs for affordable housing that keep people off the streets and able to get jobs,
  3. eliminating funding for vocational education
  4. union busting and exporting manufacturing jobs, thus keeping the working class desperate and sinking farther into poverty
  5. fighting tooth and nail against making the minimum wage once again a livable wage
  6. making more minor drug offenses into major crimes with mandatory sentences so that more and more people are imprisoned or can't get work because they're a "drug felon".
  7. restricting access to birth control, prenatal care and abortion for the poor by eliminating funding for family planning, harassing clinics, and shooting ob/gyn's who do abortions, so only those who can afford to travel can afford to rule their own bodies?


• How do you get through to people who, when you tell them that 79% of bankruptcies are due to health care, and that over half of those started with insurance and got "rescinded" or lost it because they couldn't work, say that those people were irresponsible and should "get a job with insurance"?


• How do you get the point across to people who, when you tell them that a lot of big companies like WalMart don't offer their part time employees insurance, just say "they should be willing to work full time jobs", despite the fact that WalMart deliberately won't bring their hours to full time so they can avoid paying benefits?


• How do you keep from screaming at people who act like their (or their spouse's) employer health insurance is great, they'll have it forever, and all anyone needs to do is get a job like theirs? Never mind that that insurance can get changed, they can get laid off, or in an accident that means they can't work, or sick with something nasty and get dropped/rescinded or denied - they have theirs (for now), so the rest of the nation can just suck it up and deal, better luck next time??

I'm sorry, but if these people are going to be that damned stupid, we even more desperately need to pass health reform with a single payer system, and make sure that it includes psychiatric, because a lot of these people are delusional! They are deathly afraid of a "nanny state", but then they turn around and act like irrational children playing with fire and gasoline!

Over 70% of the country wants national health care, and most of them prefer a single payer, no nonsense system. But the lunatic fringe gets all the press, and the health insurance and big pharma shills score the lobbying points. What we'll end up with is a crappy "mandate" by law to buy a toxic, overpriced, non-competitive and unfriendly insurance from the very companies that have brought us to this crisis!!

Seriously, President Obama and the Democratic Party, stop trying to be adult and "fair" - the right will not play along with bipartisan anything, except maybe bipartisan feeding at the lobbyists trough. We won. It's our damn turn to steer the ship of state.

In the 8 years of the Bush regime (and the "Contract OnWith America' before that), they never had any interest in allowing any compromise or inclusion of the Democrats ideas - it was "my way or the highway'. They have spent the last 30 years tearing this country apart, often suborning centrist Democrats (Reagan Democrats = Republican light) into "compromises" that were really sell-outs.

I strongly suggest that "bipartisanship" come to mean "we listen, nod that we've heard, and then do things our way anyway". Seriously, I voted for Obama because I wanted my country back, I wanted the rule of reason and the people to kick corporate interests and religious hypocrisy out of the drivers seat. I am sick of the Republicans, their lies, their demagoguery, their imperialism, their jingoism, their bigotry, their racism, their hypocrisy, their baseless moralizing, their willingness to enslave us to corporate interests. I remember how their cronyism deregulated and fucked over California's energy market, and how the Republicans just tried to say the 'solution' was more deregulation! Yeah, it would solve their desire to get richer?

I will gladly pay more tax to be assured that the piratical leeches of the health insurance industry never again risk scuttling our nation, never again drive hardworking people into bankruptcy, poverty and death from denials, lifetime maximums, and rescisions.

I will rather pay my taxes to cover the indigent, the unemployed, the working poor, and even lazy bums rather than have them go to fund unnecessary wars and sweetheart deals with Lockheed, Halliburton, and Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves now).

I am angry, and apparently we have more ground work to do to reclaim our once caring, fair and proud nation from the cesspit of banana republic corporatism and thuggish, uncaring religious fanaticism. I waited, fuming, until we got smart enough to vote the jackals Bush and Cheney, and their party, out of the White House. I waited, hoping that the previously spineless Democrats in Congress would grow a pair and push back against the corporate blackmail and Republican lie machine.

We have the majority, but the limp-dick slaves of the corporatocracy are still selling us down the river.

I ask you, if your congressman/woman does not back health care reform with at least the compromise of a strong public option (and preferably single payer), that you vote them out in the next primary. Don't put so-called conservatives/Republicans in, but don't support sell-outs, get new blood who will answer to the people.

The job is not done. We must render the neoconservative movement a sad footnote in history, a failed experiment in greed, imperialism and hypocrisy. We must wrest the moral compass of the nation out of the hands of the hate-filled religious fundamentalists and the corporate hypocrites who fund them.

I want my country back, damnit.

Single Payer and HC Links

These are not generally left-wing sites.

For-profit medicine is a national sickness

Health insurance for the 21st Century

Single-Payer Myths; Single-Payer Facts

Paying More, Getting Less

Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer - can you say astroturf?

Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies

Health Insurance Coverage

A Healthy Bottom Line: Profits or People? - Santa Clara University Ethics discussion

Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care - if not SP, then make health insurance non-profit

What the For-Profit Trend In Health Care Really Means - interesting 1996 article, and seeing where we are now (Hint: Some of the previous non-profit are for-profit now [eg BC-BS], and the major for-profits now dominate and rule the industry.)

These are generally considered progressive:

Crazy Wingnut Healthcare Attacks Exposed

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care -- Part I

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers

The Health Care Debate: Another Country Heard From

Healthcare Now main page - lots of stuff

The White House Health Reform site - more focused on the wimp-out "public option" to appease the insurance lobby.

Massive takedown of for-profit "health" "care" - "You Can't Buff a Turd"

Single Payer Myths Disproved By Canadian Research!

When Wealthy Isn't Healthy - for-profit health care industry makes more profit while offering fewer services - Brief Article - 1999 article, again it's worse now.

Healthcare vs. the Profit Principle - 1997 article (it's only gotten worse).

More later...

Oh, about rationing and elderly (from Mythbusting Canadian Health Care Part II):

Another persistent (and ridiculously mendacious) rationing myth about the Canadian system is that old people are cut off from treatment and left to die. I've never heard about a single case of this in Canada; but it happens routinely to Americans on Medicare and many private policies, which have strict limits on how long you can stay in the hospital with an acute illness. When the benefits run out, ready or not, they send you home. If you die, you die. The Canadian plan has no such limits: you stay for as long as you need to. But in the US, these limits fit the very definition of "rationed care."

Who does euthanasia, but without anesthetic? Not Canada...

Prevention

My insurance, which I am now paying for on COBRA (made affordable by a 65% subsidy in the stimulus package, thank you!) does not cover annual physicals!

Seriously, the one thing that could help reduce the severity of chronic diseases is early diagnosis and treatment. The other thing is regular monitoring. But my insurance, like many others, does not cover this. It only covers mammograms after age 40, although it covers annual pap smears before then.

It does not cover routine physicals for men, in spite of the fact that many male problems like prostate cancer and heart disease benefit from early diagnosis and treatment. It only sort of covers the reproductive system for women, but not general physicals. Yet thyroid, heart disease and all of those problems are best treatable when diagnosed early.

IMO, any health plan, public or private, should be required by law to cover general annual physicals for adults, just like many cover well baby and child physicals. The long term cost savings, not only in terms of cash but misery, would be staggering.

Single Payer Health Care

Go and read this article: This is what losing your kidneys looks like. I'll wait.

There has got to be an end to the stratification of health care in this country. Why are we willing to have people's very lives dictated by private insurers? Why are we willing to allocated medical care based on who has the most money, the best employer, or a spouse with a good insurance plan? Why are we willing to say to people trying to start businesses, "You must sacrifice your health, and that of anyone you employ, to succeed" because health insurance is too expensive for a bootstrap company?

Before the 1970s, health insurance was based on a mutual, or cooperative, basis. Profit was not permitted. It sorta worked. Once the profit motive came in, prices went up, oligopolies formed, denials increased, exclusions soared, and refusals to insure became so prevalent that it isn't even funny.

If you've ever had acne, asthma, depression, diabetes, cancer, or any of a huge list of ailments you can not get insurance for anything even remotely resembling a reasonable price, if at all. No one will write you a policy that doesn't exclude what you need it for the most!

The "insurance" model itself is faulty. Insurance is supposed to be a hedge against risk. Thing is, nearly everyone gets sick or injured at some point during their lives. The only variables are when, with what, and how often.

What is needed is health assurance - a pool of money that everyone pays into that covers their medical expenses, no "if's, "and"s, "but"s or exclusions. Whether a person gets a boil on their ass, or cancer of the colon, it should just be covered. The best way to do this is with a federal (large pool) single payer health care system.

I am very, very tired of seeing PayPal donation buttons for self employed friends, artists and musicians trying to pay for uninsured medical expenses. The risk nowadays to life and limb from working for yourself due to insurance conglomerate perfidy is unreal.

Please, Congress, for once do the right thing: Single Payer. No triggers (conditions are already met), no mandates (requiring people by law to "buy" private "for profit" health insurance), no half-assed "public option" plans that are designed to fail.

Corporations do not have a "right" to profit from people's misery, stress, pain and death. We the people do have a right to "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness", and it's pretty hard to have any of those when you're dying from lack of money to pay doctors.