As I follow the firestorm debate regarding a major reform of America’s healthcare system, I wonder aloud why such a grand nation of highly evolved and educated people cannot figure it out. A capability for resolving major national problems, which we possessed in the past, is now gone. Come hell or highwater, some simply will not allow change no matter what the consequences might be. Special interests are so flush in money and influence and political threat that we are a nation in paralysis.
Civil rights legislation, establishing Social Security or Medicare, or safety rules in the workplace are some of the issues where a Congress in 2009 would be stalemated and impotent. We have morphed into gridlock, helped in large part by the frenzy that talk show demogogues especially have accomplished. Their pinhead followers, non-thinkers and trogloydytes march to their beat, and you just feel sorry for their being stooges. Yet they storm Congressmen’s meeting and are only intent in killing dialogue for change.
A solution to expand health care really would seem doable. Yet, any observer of the American scene recognizes that we have a huge segment of the population that simply oppose social policy changes in the U.S. in the 21st century. Not even a perfect new system would be allowed. Their only goal is to discredit and throw roadblocks in the way so that the major party cannot and will not succeed at leading.
The polarizing of America seems complete. Among my friends on both sides, there are clear indicators by how they think, what the react to, what they say that determines which side of the line of demarcation they fall on. I wonder so often about what made them that way — why they cannot see. I have largely concluded it is how they are wired, with their family rearing and degree of intellectual environment secondary. I can easily spot the “conservative, authoritarian types” that see genius in Dick Cheney, Bob Burns, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pierce or Karl Rove. Order and no taxes are paramount for them.
For starters, I sometimes think that President Abraham Lincoln and the Union should have just let the South go and have not fought the Civil War. Maybe The Great South, with its haves and have-nots, should have been allowed to implode, shamed into change, treated to harsh trade sanction by the rest of America and the world. What might such a nation look like today? Would its hardcore conservative values have made it a kind of reactionary world of all-white, continued servitude, a place where there are black-and-white answers to everything? A kind of Taliban-light world? So often, I regard the Old South as a drag on American development and progress. The rogues gallery of political demogogues that have come ouf the South is immense. Nixon took full advantage of the “Southern Strategy” to win the White House. Surely, under that scenario of having let the South go its own way, the intelligentsia and the best and brightest would have escaped north and west like has happened all through history, whether it was Europe in World War II or Iran today.
Alas, the American media has allowed the health reform debate to move from discussing the merits of proposed legislation to coverage of the organized disruptions of Town Hall meetings. It’s been quickly evident that the mostly angry white “agin’ it” folks have the same talking points — spew the same tripe full of fear of their medical fate and financial ruin. They don’t offer constructive ideas to accomplish legislation that will remove us from the International Hall of Shame as the only major First World nations without comprehensive health coverage.
They whine and fuss at Town Halls — diverting discussion from real issues of health care to extremist issues about abortion or those phantom ”death panels” that would choose which people would bee no longer worthy for care. For the most part, all who are interviewed spout that the system needs to be reformed. Conservatives say it should be a measured, slow-moving, thoughtful process —taking it to the 2010 or 2012 election cycle where any major legislation dies because all lawmakers sights are on geting re-elected.
Bottom line, we all have bodies. We all want to be healthy. Good health is a right of humanhood. Why should we develop the most sophisticated gadgets like GPS that can guide us through streets but no sound system to lead us through life – healthy, wealthy and wise?
Lawn Griffiths: They whine and fuss at Town Halls — diverting discussion from real issues of health care to extremist issues about abortion or those phantom death panels that would choose which people would bee no longer worthy for care.
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ABORTION — Persident Barack Obama dangerous health care reform legislation clearly subsidizing the death of thousands upon thousands of unborn children through government-mandated abortion services.
Page 770 SEC 1714 Federal Government mandates eligibility for State Family Planning Services. Say abortion & State Sovereign. Section 1714 of the House bill does address the issue concerning family planning for women on Medicaid and under the new health care reform, lower income Americans would have their health care subsidized by the government and they will be allowed to pick a health plan that covers any abortion.
DEATH PANEL — The health care reform legislation currently before Congress is also about end-of-life care decisions for government to make, and older Americans are protesting and making progress on this challenge.
Page 425 Lines 4-12: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends. Advance Care Planning Consult or Think Senior Citizens end of life patients. Conservatives have called end-of-life counseling in government health care programs a step toward euthanasia and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has likened the idea to a bureaucratic “death panel” that would decide whether sick people get to live.
H.R.3200 - America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (Introduced in House) — Packed crowds at meetings nation-wide are clearly not happy with this government-run health care. Ever though, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi D-Calif. calls the protests over the new health care bill un-American.
What you’re missing is that the United States was built to provide massive roadblocks to big government. Read the Federalist Papers, along with Franklin, Madison and Jefferson’s work outside of them. The country was designed by anti-government theorists who built a governmental structure that Is unable to fully sustain it’s current power. To add to that power only increases the inability of the government to provide more basic services. Seven years of foreign wars with minimum wage employees feeling us up before we get on a plane is hardly “guarding the shore” for example.
If we are going to go into a socialist/communist framework, such as universal healthcare, we need to dismantle the Constitution and rewrite it first, so that the system can sustain itself and function competently. The current Constitution doesn’t provide the necessary structure, so the healthcare proposal is basically a being without a skeleton to keep it upright.
The Constitution is designed for a self-reliant group of people. Much of it giving precedence to the individual over the law, as in jury nullification. Such a system cannot effectively back a system where the government controls healthcare, making it, essentially, an arbiter of life and death for its citizens.
It’s high time the US does do something about health care. The problem is that the system is so complex, vast, expensive and wasteful that there’s only one way to fix it: dump it 100% and start over. Doing what BO wants is to make a patchwork out of a jerry-rigged mess. The result will be more convoluted. We need to begin by building more medical schools and getting people into them. We need to vastly increase the supply of doctors, dentists and nurses. We need to put a stop to ridiculous law suits — hey, things go wrong in surgery. Too bad. We need to pay for this with everyone paying, maybe a national sales tax. And we need to get back to American values of taking care of yourself. I don’t want to pay for people who are obese, who do drugs, who are alcoholics, who ride motorcycles and do other stupid things. But no matter what, we can’t continue much longer as-is. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are all about to go under…then what are we going to do?
In 1994 I was among the estimated 39 million uninsured. I had a job, but no insurance. I looked for an affordable health plan but on my $7.56 hourly wage nothing fit into my budget. Fit and trim at 39, I said to heck with it. What could I do? After work as I walked my two dogs, an impaired driver ran me over. I came home two months later as a disabled person. I got social security disability right away due to the extent of my injuries (brain and spine) but medicare came two years later (standard). the driver’s meager car insurance paid for part of my huge medical bills. My CAR insurance paid the rest. If I developed breast cancer I’d have died in the poor house leaving a mountain of debt.
We need a public option for the uninsured, even if it’s only temporary.
Obama caved in when he should not have.
What happens now to the growing ranks of uninsured?
I agree completely with this article. I am completely astounded that we as americans are so blinded and frankly ignorant of the real damage that our current system of health care is doing to our population and our country. The real “death squads” are the insurance companies who deny coverage for any number of reasons or the unrelenting personal bankruptcies due to a medical issue that takes down an american every 11 minutes. To state that we are socialists or communists becaouse we want to go to a better goverment run system or another type of reform to the betterment of our people is in my opinion “neanderthal” like thinking. Without reform, we are on a course that will only lead to the further erosion of our country and way of life.
Almost everyone agrees to reform but nobody has the power to change it due to the power of special interests groups and big business. In case you missed the last 12 years or so, its big business that is running this country and influencing what happens to the american people. To say the least between wall street and Health care, they have their personal interests at stake and not the country’s nor its citizens.
Accurate, once again, you continue to spew forth the lies and mistruth about this health reform package. The government will not tell you how to die, but it will pay if you seek end-of-life counseling. That includes living wills, and things that should be discussed far in advance of any situation where you are close to death.
Also, Pelosi did not say the protests were un-American. She said something like shouting down or not listening to both sides is un-American. Please, stop spreading the lies. If you don’t like the plan, great, more power to you. But if you don’t like it because you believe a bunch of lies about what the bill does, then try reading it so you fully understand it. After that, if you still don’t like it, at least you will really know why.
And, Lawn is exactly right. We’ve become a nation of Us vs. Us. Right vs. Left. The right will never let the left win on any issue and same goes for the left. It seems that until all of the talking heads on both sides realize how much damage their rhetoric has done, we will be mired in this impasse.
AzRez has some good points. Very good points. Stop making med school so expensive, increase the medical professions’s staffing and salaries will drop. There is no reason a pharmacist with 2yrs exp should be making 100k given the 7 yrs of schooling needed. That is too high. A good pharmicist, perhaps. One who has more tenure, perhaps. But not anyone who barely got out of school. Supply is the problem.
If the govt were to step in and provide healthcare, they should only provide a stipend for insurance. If you live a clean life and are dirt poor, then the stipend should be enough to cover the insurance premium. If you are a smoker (or other personal choice decision which negatively affects your health), then you should get the same stipend the clean person got. However, the insurance companies should charge you the true rate. If you don’t want to pay the difference, TOO BAD!! Then no health care for you. So, imagine clean person 200 bucks per month while smoker is priced at 400. Smoker can pay 200 of his/her own plus 200 from govt. If smoker doesn’t want to pay, fine, then smoker will still have 200 credit to spend at Drs per month. If actual bill costs 500 that month (and smoker has 0 balance prior to that month), then smoker can choose to get treatment and pay 300 or be DENIED treatment. This is THEIR choice.
Increase supply of Drs and make people pay for their bad life choices. Have the govt only get involved to an extent.
Lost in this whole debate is that we already have a horrible example of what American subsidized healthcare looks like: Indian Health Services. “Phantom ‘Death Panels’” LOL, I don’t know what a death panel is, but if you mean some board decides whether you get treatment or not or you have to pay for it out of your own pocket, IHS has them. If you think tribal leaders go to IHS for services, think again. If you think Native Americans acheived the worst health outcomes in the US without any help, think again.
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Lawn Griffiths is right on the money when he observes that people fall into the liberal or conservative camp on just about any critical policy issue, health care being our most current example. Right now, we are seeing the extremes of the conservative side doing everything it can think of to scuttle deliberations on health care. They are even overty crippling the traditional town hall meetings, forums in which Americans should be allowed to express their points of view, irrespective of what those points of view might be. Next, week, next month, or next year, it will be something else which will bring out the worst in the extremists, liberal or conservatives, depending on the issue. Fortunately, we still have the right to vote; these extremists haven’t found ways to frighten the citizenry away from going to the polls….yet. As of today, the citizens of the U.S. went to the polls and elected ample enough Democrats to initiate significant changes in government policy, including health care. So, it’s time for them to get on with it. Our Congress and Executive Branch need to do the right thing: make universal health care law. When the Republicans can win the respect and support of a majority of the Congress and/or the Executive Branch, they can then assume full responsibility for making and revising public policy accordingly.
To help “fix” the nation’s healthcare problem doesn’t require a wholesale move to socialized medicine like Canada or Europe have, nor does it require another huge tax to be paid for by the nation’s small business owner’s.
What is required is to start allowing the entire medical industry some real competition.
For example, let medical insurance companies sell their policies ANYWHERE in the country. If BlueCross in Ohio has a far lower rate than BlueCross in Arizona let me purchase the Ohio policy. Currently that is not allowed by law, so the local medical insurance companies only have limited competition, which allows rates to stay higher than they would be otherwise.
Allow drug companies or pharmacies to sell across the border. If a drug company’s products in Canada are half the price of their U.S. counterparts, why can’t I purchase those there? It seems silly to allow consumers to purchase just about anything else over the internet but we’re forbidden to buy prescription drugs from Canada.
Cap some of the medical insurance lawsuits. Surely everyone realizes by now that ridiculous lawsuits make lawyers rich and the costs of those lawsuits get passed down in the form of higher premiums, which force doctors and hospitals to charge us all more to pay for them. Where do you think the $8.00 cost for a single Tylenol during your hospital visit goes to?
Immediately stop the policy of providing free extensive healthcare to all those here illegally. Sure, go ahead and stabilize the injured, but transport them ASAP back to the border to let their country’s great socialized healthcare network take care of them. Why should American taxpayer’s (or the insurance companies or the hospital’s) be stuck with millions of dollars annually in unpaid healthcare costs from illegal aliens that invade our country every single day? Those costs then get transferred back down to us.
Implement these policies and watch the competitive forces within the marketplace take over and costs for healthcare will come down.
“Good health is a right of humanhood. ”
Oh, really, Lawnboy? This is absolutely false. Where is this stated? In the Constitution? No. American citizens have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I notice Lawnboy did not mention the chief sowers of discord in this whole sordid episode: Obama, Pelosi and Reid. They are lying through their teeth about the intent of the bill, taking the American people for idiots who cannot read the actual language. And the ultra-left media is not doing its job in calling them out for this. Lawnboy is now among those responsible for perpetuating the lies.
Lawnboy, in case you haven’t noticed, our medical care is the envy of the world. Look how many foreign born doctors have come to serve the residents of Maricopa County. Look how many foreigners come here from bastians of socialism to get real, quality treatment. It is indisputable.
Why should we lower our standards to that of Canada and the UK? It makes no sense.
No one in Arizona is falling through the cracks of medical treatment. Illegals are bankrupting hospitals in the Southwest, but they’re getting the treatment they need. Destitute Arizonans are getting treatment through AHCCCS.
Many Americans choose to save the money they’d spend on insurance and pay as they go.
There is no rationale for the rush to judgement of the Obamanistas on medical coverage. While we’re all waiting in line for hangnail treatments in the future and our elderly are turned away from mammograms and other vital procedures, elitists and Michelle’s mother will be getting the royal treatment.
Lawnboy forfeits his credibility by straying all over the reservation — Nixon, Russell Pearce, the Civil War, etc. — rather than put up a respectable argument.
And speaking of polarizing, Barry Hussein Obama is statistically the most polarizing president in history.
While you’re complaining about free speech and opposition to your “Messiah,” you’ve completely missed the fact that opponents of this socialistic boondoggle have raised ample and honest reasons to prove that socialized medicine will fail. As it has everywhere else. You and the ultra-left media groupthink champions have done next to nothing to report on the alternatives offered by the loyal opposition.
Congratulations. You’ve proven once again why the EVT is a failing proposition. Keep up the sad and biased work.
Good day.