Health Care “Reformers,” Don’t Make Me Swear.
December 19, 2009 by Julia King
A friend just emailed me about health care, wondering if I think the Senate ought to (as he put it) “shitcan” the current bill. Hmmm. I’ve never used the word before (this rather sailorish “shitcan”), but I think I might like it. Shitcan. I type the word a third time and still it looks good.
He owned up to being only on the “edge of understanding” and claimed some malleability on the issue, which coincidentally puts us in the exact same camp.
I wonder: Is there anyone in the center of understanding? Someone who really gets it? Gets the fact that every other “advanced” nation on earth is able to give its entire population medical care but we cannot? And is there anyone who can explain how it is the Catholic Church appears to be on the brink of blocking women from accessing a perfectly legal, constitutionally protected medical procedure? And the legislators who are helping them do it are called “moderate.”
I haven’t written much about this for two reasons. One is that, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a full time job. Yes, real writers with full time jobs that are not writing jobs, wake in the wee hours of the morning just to string together words. So I guess that makes me the Velveteen Rabbit of writers, all full of stuffing and not actually real.
My job is a challenging, fulfilling job, by the way, and one that exposes me regularly to people who need, among other things, health care. This leads to the second reason I haven’t written: It’s just so incredibly sad. It is tragic that Americans can find the money, the will and the way to launch war on any given day, but get all tripped up and bogged down in ideology when it comes time to provide basic care to its citizens… or those who want to be its citizens.
It should have been Single Payer from the beginning. We all get there together. If we don’t, it doesn’t mean a thing. Okay. I confess I’ve given a different speech to friends who are even more disillusioned than I am. I’ve talked about Susan B. Anthony and how she devoted her whole adult life (not just a campaign season or two) to getting women the vote – and in the end she never saw it. It happened, of course, but not on her watch. And in the process, Frederick Douglas sold her out; and later suffragists like Kate Gordon and Laura Clay sold African American women out. They all got there eventually, but not together. Was Douglas a brilliant negotiator to leave white women behind? And were Gordon and Clay equally brilliant to leave black women behind?
No. They were all just humans desperate for a taste of dignity. It’s human frailty, not cunning and intellect, that allows us to cut others from our cause just so we can get there faster. But it’s what we do.
Heavy sigh. We’re screwy.
Yeah. Shitcan.
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3 Responses to “Health Care “Reformers,” Don’t Make Me Swear.”
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We watched Bill Moyers last night (Dec. 18) and only hope that Obama advisors saw it too! Basically, the guests–Robert Kuttner o f American Prospect and Matt Tabbai of Rolling Stones–described how meaningful health care reform was doomed from the beginning, when Rahm Emanuel invited Big Insurance to the table in order to get their support.
The strong implication was that Obama signed off on the deal too. Hence the absence of single payer from the debate and the failure of Obama to push hard for the public option. Yet, any support from the health insurance industry has been muted indeed. This seems to have been a disastrous deal.
Perhaps all is not lost. Kuttner says he would still vote for this legislation because it has so many helpful items in it. He also expressed the view that there remains a chance that Obama may still realize that his leadership on key issues must be stronger and he could still emerge as the great president we hoped he would be.
Joan and Ed
I still think that the individual mandate is the killer. My libertarian-liberal streak says “hell no.” If the individual mandate stays in, then the insurance companies have us all over a barrel. Time will be against the consumer, as the deadline for the mandate to kick-in approaches. If the individual mandate goes out, then the insurance cartel will have to come to the people in order to get it removed, and the people should exact a price, namely the public option.
I for one do not necessarily see the public option as simply a way-station for single-payer. A truly robust public option (nation-wide with the power to negotiate provider and drug rates, among other things) could compete successfully with the privateers indefinitely.
The other key problem is that the “final form” of the legislation, as to be passed by the House of Lords, has, as I understand it , no effective cost-control mechanisms. So, this will be a “cost-plus” deal, in which the cartel will be free to pass all costs along to the consumer. So, health insurance for a family of four will soon cost $20K per year.
Terrible.
Alan
Correction to the above message: If the individual mandate comes out, then the insurance cartel would have to come to the people in order to get it REINSTATED.