All you really need to know about health care and reform in the US

It seems we can't discuss virtually anything anymore, as a nation and people, without people getting unrealistic and/or emotional and/or ugly, etc., etc., doesn't it?

First, so many of us were furious at what our government was doing--and doing to us--during the previous 8 years in the "W" regime and now people are so upset because, frankly, they say a screaming Liberal, in the worst definition of the word, Socialist and, dare I say it? African-American is now President that too many people just flip out.

There needs to be much more rationality and pure facts out there in our discourse.

And so it particularly is with health care and reform right now in our country.

If President Obama proposed is, they're agin' it, whatever it is.

So let's get some clear, simple, true facts in a short list and keep these in mind in this debate.

Herewith:

1) There are nearly 50 million Americans without health care in this country--and it's not because they choose to be;

2) Our health care system is the most expensive system in the world;

3) We rank 37th, internationally, in mortality rates, proving that the system doesn't work right or well, particularly in lieu of its costs (see no. 2 above)

That's all.

That's all we need to know.

The system is broken, folks.

It's broken for corporations and businesses and individuals, all. It's broken and it's only going to get more expensive, if left unchecked.

Don't kid or fool yourselves, we need health care reform and we need it badly. There have been too many millions of people without health care in this country for entirely too long and the way this economy has gone (thanks in large part to the previous President, in a great deal of people's opinions), there is a high likelihood that many more of us could also end up on the list of people without health care.

To repeat: the system's broken. Badly broken. It needs to be fixed. And the sooner the better.

I'm just sorry the insurance companies, through their lobbyists and requisite money, are in the room, contributing to the "reform."


Have a great weekend, everyone.

Scary, shallow stuff

Yesterday, I took a moment to read some letters to the editor in the local paper, The Kansas City Star, and got reintroduced to some pretty brutal ignorance.

One man wrote rather heatedly about how horrible the "Liberal Agenda" is:

Sick of the liberal agenda

"I would have to agree with Noelle Moll (6/29, Letters) that those pushing for government health care are playing with the numbers. But what are a few embellishments or downright lies when it comes to getting your agenda rammed down the throats of the American people? That’s business as usual for this administration and this Congress, whether it’s the bailout, global warming, the auto industry, funding for ACORN, health care, Big Oil — it goes on and on.

They lie to get elected, they lie to hang on to the power they receive once they get elected, and then they abuse it at the expense of the American taxpayer. And we’re supposed to respect them because they are elected officials, yet they have no respect for us. The government has no interest in facts if they get in the way of the agenda, and the media have no interest in the truth if it doesn’t sell."

Mark Haskell, Olathe

Big Oil? He's complaining about Big Oil now, when George W. Bush--Mr. Big Oil himself--already left the White House? That's rich.

I have news for Mr. Haskell--unless he's wealthy, that health care fix the President, Democrats and all us "Liberals" want is because, as most any doctor will tell you, the system is horribly broken, expensive and in need of repair and replacement and it's for all Americans. Mr. Haskell is, at minimum, middle class with health care coverage and, predictably, healthy up to this point and without any history of medical problems of his own.

Then there's the people from Central Missouri on Highway 13 who wrote "Obama is America's Hitler Goodbye Freedom" on the road.

Ai-yi-yi.

The last President we had--and that for all 8 years--took away all kinds of personal Constitutional rights and these people were fine with it. Apparently, if the guy doing it is white, it's all okay because, hey, he's "one of us", right?

But if the next President faces the same problems and he's from the "other party" and, worst of all, African-American, well, surely, then, he's coming to take our guns and put Socialism deeply into our government.

???

I don't know how you go from that first logic to the second but a lot of people both in this area and country, think just this way.

They're uninformed, they're angry, they're armed and they're convinced they're absolutely well-informed and correct, both.

A dangerous, dangerous situation.



Links to stories:

http://blog.showmeprogress.com/diary/3136/a-right-wingnut-interpretation-of-missouris-adopt-a-highway-program

All Americans need to see this

US Health Care

While everyone else, on both sides of the aisle, rant and rave, one way or another about Sonia Sotomayor as the next Justice on the Supreme Court, I'm going to let them and go on to something different, if not more important.

And that is, as you see above, health care in America.

I've said for a long time, the way we need to fix health care in the US is to take the gross, ridiculous profits out of it, the way the rest of virtually all of the world has so it's more a right instead of a privilege.

We're the only people on the planet that do it this way, ours is the most expensive, we don't have the highest mortality rates and yet Americans have been convinced ours is the only and best system to distribute health care.

Insane. Insanity. Fools.

Anyway, as I write this, I saw, a few days ago, some writing by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship that asks the question: "How can we expect an industry that profits from disease and sickness to police itself?"

Followed by this note: "The health care industry has spent $134 million on lobbying this year to keep its profits high and public health in the shadows."

And it is crazy.

Why would we even expect them to be involved in the conversation? They're only going to have one answer, again and again, and that is to either NOT CHANGE anything about the current system or, at worst, to change it as little as posssible from its current form.

They'll be thrashing about all over, saying how horrible it will be to change virtually anything about our health care system.

They'll say the same things they always do--

--"We have the finest and best health care system in the world" (we don't)

--"In Canada and Europe, you have to wait for hours or days to see a doctor" (you don't)

--"In the rest of the world, you can't see the doctor you want" (yes, you can and in the US, for lots of us, we can't--and we know it)

And more.

But it's all just rubbish.

We have the MOST EXPENSIVE health care system IN THE WORLD;

We are not the healthiest group of people on the planet;

Millions of us in this country are going WITHOUT health care, because it's so expensive;

The numbers of us that are going without health care in the US is growing--the situation is getting worse;

The doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, insurance company executives, pharmaceutical companies and their executives are all GETTING RICH, on the backs of the working people of this country, just so we can have health care--and that's an insane, unsupportable, unsustainable outrage.

We need to change the health care system in America.

We need to change it radically.

We will need to fight the health care, insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital corporations and lobbyists TOOTH AND NAIL, so to speak, to get a good, smart, workable system for us all, instead of for them.

They shouldn't even be let into the conversation, frankly.

There needs to be an organized riot, of sorts, by us, regarding health care in America.

We need to be strong. We need to be forceful. We need to push to make this happen.

Frankly and sadly, I don't think the American people have the stomach for it.

I don't even think the average American on the street knows we have a problem.

I salute Bill Moyers and Michael Winship for trying to educate us.

Link to story:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140226/bill_moyers%3A_how_can_we_expect_an_industry_that_profits_from_disease_and_sickness_to_police_itself/

Agreed. Lets go get 'em

There was a pretty fascinating one-half page advertisement in The New York Times today, in the very important first section by the Catholic group, the Knights of Columbus.

Now, normally, the last thing I'm going to do is even mention any Catholic group, let alone agree with them but I think they got it right this time.

Under the title "Now is the Time for Change", in big, bold letters, they write that "The United States is suffering an economic crisis, a leadership crisis and a moral crisis."

They go on:

We must do something...Now."

Most Americans would have long ago agreed with this.

They write that their "polling shows more than three-quarters of our country believes the corporate world's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction. Moreover, a majority of Americans, and two-thirds of executives, gave a grade of D or F in ethical matters to the financial and investment industry."

They say that "We have lived with this lack of business values too long. It is a problem that cannot be legislated or regulated away."

Okay.

Agreed.

And way overdue.

But the thing is, what they're saying needs to be taken to its logical, harsh, complete truth and that is that CAPITALISM HAD FAILED US.

Captialism has failed us and the corporations of America are eating us alive.

Corporations are chewing up their employees and workers, using them and spitting them out, at the end of their work-cycles as desperate, poor, unsupported people who have no resources--because it all went to the CEOs and the corporation itself--and no health care coverage.

All this in the name of "unfettered Capitalism" and progress.

We need to stand up and force our government to stand up for us.

We need to take power back from corporate America.

So the Knights of the Columbus is on the right track on these issues but at the end of the advertisement, they merely ask for us to "join us in creating a Culture of Volunteerism..."

Volunteering to help one another is not enough. Volunteering won't get this done.

Getting lobbying, lobbyists and corporate lobby money out of our election system--now, that will start to get something done.

Then we'll start to get our corporations to stop completely exploiting all of us.

Link to ad here:

Hear that sound?

It's the sound of our chances of getting good, single-payer health care with a workable system for all Americans being sucked out of reach.

Have you heard about this yet?

The Obama Administration is doing the right thing--to an extent--in going along with the health care community's promis to cut 1 trillion dollars from their costs.

Actually, what happened is that the health care community--hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical and insurance companies--all got together when they realized the kind of clout President Obama has right now, due to his election and goodwill with the American public and said we'll cut our costs that much.

They are threatened.

They also know our health care system doesn't work and that President Obama was going to do something about it. They knew he had the backing of the American public to do something about it.

So instead of letting him do something, they pre-empted him and offered this "1 trillion dollar cost cut."

All well and good, sure.

But it's 2009.

What's to keep them from reneging on this deal?

Nothing.

What penalties are being set, to make sure they come through for us all?

None.

This buys all of them--the hospitals, the doctors, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, all of them--time. They get time until this popularity and power the current President has blows away--as they know it will. It's inevitable.

Right now, President Obama is at the height of his popularity and power and they know it.

This gives them the ability to delay any meaningful cuts in our health care costs, all with the idea and promise that they'll do just that, until he's dragged down by W's war for oil and the financial mess the US and the world is in and everything else that's on our national plate.

But they won't follow through on this completely and effectively and this will all come to nothing.

If not forced--and right now, no one's talking force--nothing will happen. They'll hold down their cost increases for a while and then later go back to business as usual and we won't get the health care solutions we need.

Health care will continue to just be for the wealthier of us and it will grow worse.

Ain't gonna' happen

President Obama did a very noble thing announcing that he'd like to put together this whole health care for everyone program by the end of this year.

And I'm very hopeful and positive about the President, his administration and hwat they can do and get done. Sure.

But you know what?

It will never happen

With all of the organizations involved in health care in America--the doctors, pharmaceuticals, insurance agencies, lobbyists, everyone--no one is going to give on this.

More importantly, the thing that won't happen--not in the next decade, anyway--is that profit won't be taken out of the whole health care picture in this country.

The rest of the world, virtually, has done it, but the US just can't.

We idolize profit, profits, wealthy people and the possibility to get rich too much to take profit out of the formula.

As a group, we can't comprehend how the whole arrangement can work without there being profit in the equation. Too many people in our country have bought off on the corporate propaganda that there must be profits--large ones, at that--so new technologies can be brought forward to cure more diseases.

It isn't so but you'd be hard pressed to convince us of that.

So he's done his Don Quixote and that's great but come December 31, 2009, we won't have a new, working health care system for all of us, the way we should.

I hope I'll be wrong.

I'd bet I won't be.