May 09
14
You’ve all seen this little illustration. In the old days perhaps you had a copy sitting next to the fax machine. There’s a variation that’s “what the kids wanted,” “What the school district approved,” etc..
Unfortunately, this idea now applies to health insurance.
What the majority of Americans want is Medicare for All.
What for profit insurance companies and their well paid executives want is mandatory purchase of coverage by all Americans (if there has to be any change at all).
What many politicians and most business owners want to do is lower costs.
Some other politicians and some insurance companies want is continuation of the status quo.
What almost all politicians are is afraid to be on the “wrong” side.
What some lawmakers are now proposing is a government run health insurance company, with a requirement that everybody buy health insurance and some way to help “lower income” families afford coverage. To me this sounds like the worst of all worlds: mandatory coverage, plus tax credits that won’t help, plus a nice new bureaucracy whose rules will probably be every bit as byzantine as those from for-profit health insurance companies.
Here’s the thing. What most Americans want turns out to be the thing a bunch of economists say would be the best thing. It would certainly be an undeniable good thing for entrepreneurs, the unemployed, those at risk of losing their jobs, and all women.
Why won’t our elected officials stand up to insurance special interests and actually talk about what their constituents want? Why are they more afraid of special interests than they are of us?
In Closing: Since it turns out that a little daydreaming and seeing things that are “cute” does good things for productivity, here’s news on a couple of Japan’s feline stationmasters (other than Tama-san of course); Cheerios is a drug?; financial literacy video games; medical tattoos; and at least ending use of the phrase “war on drugs.”
Update: Many thanks for the link from Crooks and Liars. This is now one of my most popular posts ever. Unfortunately, that means it has been the target of comment spam, and I have had to turn off comments.
so let’s get out there and tell them. Forget the fake tea parties and the war protests (you know, the ones only Amy Goodman talks about). If the majority of Americans really want this than we should get out and say it.
What is encouraging is the American people are slowly slowly starting to realise is they live in a one party state. The American Business Party has two wings. Distracted, wedged and blind Americans have been marching around Old Glory singing I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy whilst Business, through their proxie politicians, have been giving it to u up the wazoo. Grow a spine and take it to the street. You are not a bad people just a dumb people who, unlike most democracies, have no control over their elites. Never have since Roseveldt. Hence permanent war, poverty and enviromental ruin.
[...] via ShortWoman» Blog Archive » Compromise Usually Means Nobody’s Happy. [...]
Thanks to all the commenters so far.
Michael, I am getting out there and saying it wherever appropriate! I hope others will join me.
Hope you don’t mind me reposting this from my blog, I think you’ll see why:
Letter – Schumer Health Care Plan – NYTimes.com:
“Re “Schumer Points to a Middle Ground on Government-Run Health Insurance” (news article, May 5):
There are a number of problems with Senator Charles E. Schumer’s so-called middle ground on universal health care. While your article acknowledges some of the structural ones — like whether a federal program could ever be subject to state laws — it doesn’t acknowledge the major issue: What is best for health care consumers?
What system is going to provide the best care? How can we provide meaningful health care to the greatest number of people with the resources available? What policies can we carry out now to ensure that there will be sufficient caregivers to meet our needs in the future?
These are the questions that we should be asking. As an advocate for consumers, I am distressed to see yet another health care discussion that focuses on the impact on insurance providers’ bottom line. The fundamental purpose of the health care system is to provide health care, not to protect and perpetuate an industry.
Richard Mollot
Executive Director, Long Term
Care Community Coalition
New York, May 5, 2009″
Well said. I was listening to a Center for American Progress Podcast of a talk given to them by Max Baucus, and I kept thinking, where is the vision? It was mostly about how we were stuck with working with our current system and tweaking it into some public-private amalgam that would be “uniquely American.” This is disappointing in many ways, but I primarily am disappointed that he reflects that stubborn conservative world view that we cannot learn from other countries, that their experiences mean little or nothing to us. If you take that view, then transformational change is impossible to envision, and you are stuck with timid change.
But also troublesome is the complementary idea that America cannot do this, because we must think so timidly, in such limited ways. JFK said, “we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Where is THAT America, Senator Baucus, Senator Schumer?
Cheers,
http://cmhmd.blogspot.com
I don’t think The People want Medicare for all, I think what The People want is lowered health care costs, and I don’t just mean insurance premiums.
I don’t want Government-run health care. I also don’t want to be stuck with high-premium, low-coverage health insurance. I want providers to be able to provide competitive rates for various services. I’ve heard tales of providers cutting out insurance altogether and providing flat-rate fees for all the services they offer, and their costs reduce dramatically, and their clients/patients costs are much lower as well. The care goes up because the Doc can focus on providing the best possible care, rather than spending time and money dealing with insurance bureaucracy.
The special interest groups lobbying Government on behalf of the insurance industry are vested in keeping regulation and legislation in place so insurance can remain dominant. Since special interest groups provide the majority of most politicians election campaigns, they win out – not the people who actually vote for them.
And we all lose.