The Health Care Chronicles: The Health Care Quandry

If the Republicans are unwilling to address the need for healthcare by all, then hospitals need to start refusing care. To the elderly. To the pregnant women. To the unfortunate. Oh and of course to blacks and "Mexicans." (After all, the subtext is that they are causing this health care problem... oh, AND the mortgage crisis.)

If those on the right who believe health care is EARNED and is not a human right, then let those who have not earned it die, right? Otherwise, we will continue to incur the wrath of unpaid medical bills in our insurance payments; that is where the costs are going.

I am frankly tired of paying increasing premiums and co-pays because other people cannot afford care. So, in essence, I am already being taxed, just by private insurance companies and hospitals. But the lack of control over how much I am charged is more or less at the same level as if it were controlled on a state or federal level by the government. Sure there's a modicum of choice on the insurance end, but not really. I either go with the insurance offered by my employer (two plans) or I go with market-rate individual health-insurance. Or I can go without.

Where is the outrage that fat-cats in the insurance agencies are pocketing our money?

Claims are often made that our health care is the best in the world; after all, why do Canadians come HERE when their health care is SO GOOD, huh?! In 2000, the World Health Organization (liberals!), ranked the US in 37th place, just behind Costa Rica in 36th. How's that for exceptionalism?! I'm playing this a little tongue-in-cheek here, but my main point is that we either need to come to terms with the fact that our country is not as great or as compassionate as we believe it to be -OR- step it up and back up our words / feelings with actions befitting of a great country. It's not all doom and gloom and I don't intend to get wrapped into the "OMG! see, America sux" of the liberal left, but I think the right needs to be a little more realistic and a little less nationalistic when it comes to health care.

Health care spending in the US: 16% of GDP and rising.
Health care spending ranking in among UN countries: 2nd (damn you, East Timor!)
Health care quality ranking by WHO: 37th (as of 2000)

Where does all the money go to?

The Health Care Chronicles: The Health Care Debate

If the following words/names come out of your mouth when discussing the Health Care bill, I will not be willing to debate with you the merits of the bill because I will already know where you get your news and how you feel about the bill:
1) Socialism/Communism/Marxism/Maoism
2) "Obamacare"
3) "Ramming it through" or "Ramming it down our throats"
4) "Backroom deals" (or any of the "Lousiana Purchase", "Cornhusker Kickback", etc.)
5) Tea-party (if spoken about positively)
6) [Will continue to update as I hear more talking points]

On my own personal note, I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this bill that passed last night. I don't know enough about it yet. I am looking forward to learning what it contains before I make an up or down decision on it, but I will say that I fundamentally agree something needed to be done. I will also say that I hardly believe this to be a bill containing Socialism on the level many Republicans believe - we are not going to be standing in Soviet-style bread lines, or taking our marching orders from Stalin now. I am skeptical however at the fuzzy math that suggests we may be able to pay for this over the long-term. This country is deeply in debt (thanks largely to 2-3 decades of BOTH parties spending on their favorite items - defense, social programs, etc.) and I'm interested to get a chance to read the CBO estimate as to how this will be paid-for. I'm also keen on seeing some independent review of the CBO's numbers or interpretations of the bill - as long as it's coming from NON-PARTISAN sources. Whether or not this will reign in costs will be left to be seen soon.

Oh, and to all of those who claim to be Christians in America these days, I'm hardly a church-going Christian, but I know that Jesus would not have denied health care to the working poor. If you do not believe that health care is a basic human right of a developed nation, then you need to search deep down and ask yourself just how Christian you are.

The Health Care Chronicles: I hear cries of "RINO" in the distance...

Amidst all of the disinformation campaigns and cries of "socialism" and "communism" on the right and the unwillingness to back down from a full public option on the left, it is nice to see that there are some politicans that are interested in working together to craft bipartisan (or at least compromised) legislation. The sad part is that any attempt by a Republican to reform health care will be viewed by neocon Republicans (and their adoring public ditto-heads) as capitulation to the Democrats; they term these people "RINO" - Republicans In Name Only - a term that plagued Arlen Specter for years. In this potential legislation, the public option would only take hold if the health care industrial complex does not meet the goals outlined in the proposed legislation. Unfortunately however, few are likely to report this in depth and even fewer in the public are going to care.

It was said best in the movie Gladiator: "The mob is fickle, brother." Even now as we have important things to debate, the more viewed stories on CNN are "Heigl to take 'Grey's' Hiatus" and "Michael Jackson to be interred Thursday." People have hit overload and they are losing faith in the plan according to polls, and the politicians - outside of a few - are doing nothing to help keep this topic as a part of REASONABLE public discourse.

I have heard many positive messages on NPR as of late regarding health care, but it's falling on ears that already agree that something needs to be done. We have some semi-objective studies done of what is offered around the world ( TR Reid's The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care), but people have already made their minds up. They listen to Glenn Beck decry socialism at the idea that the government could take on a minor role, while leaving much of the system private (read: STILL CAPITALISTIC!) and see images of the hammer and sickle and imagine themselves being planted into a bread line in Communist Russia. The few responsible Republicans that remain and the Democrats are doing nothing to battle this perception problem. I want Olympia Snowe to come out against the neocon notion that she is only a Republican in name only; I want her to come out sneering at the Party-of-No Republicans that at least she is attempting to compromise. But that might be expecting too much out of politicians, and expecting that the public will be thoughtful and open-minded probably would be too.

Peter Tosh Said It Best.

I just recently finished reading an opinion piece on CNN that reminded me of our ass-backwardness in this country. Regarding pills, we are growing increasingly dependent on prescription pain killers (read: Rush Limbaugh and his Oxycontin bout) which can sometimes lead to heroin abuse - if the drug is opiate based.

The sad part is that my tax dollars (through Medicare and Medicaid) and health care premiums pay for many of these peoples' "legal" drug addictions while it is still illegal to own the smallest amount of marijuana. I see, when a big pharma company makes a drug, everything is OK about it, but use a drug recreationally (in the SAME WAY in which alcohol is consumed) or even sometimes to self-medicate persistent pain and suddenly it's a terrible thing. We can truly be a backwards country sometimes still lost in its puritanical hypocrisy.

Want to find a way to fund healthcare? I do. Regardless of the proposals on the right and left to fix healthcare, it will undoubtedly cost some amount beyond what we can already afford. Legalize marijuana, regulate it, and tax it. Immediately it will serve as a means of tax revenue, but over the long term it will help to discourage small time drug dealers, make the cross-border Mexican drug trade multitudes less lucrative, and will clear our prisons for the violent and malevolent offenders. The economic benefits will be astoundingly one-directional in our favor.

I have recently said to a few friends that the drug trade is - in my opinion - the last TRUE free market out there. Prices are set by supply and demand. There are no bailouts. You have to build your business from the ground up and cannot make more lucrative money unless you start out small-time. Can you imagine what good it would do if we prevent the "gateway" drug from being one of the cheaper ones that dealers can start selling? Ask any dealer and I would BET they started by selling marijuana in high school or sometime close to then.