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Is This Democracy?
The current health care debate is instructive. Conservatives claim that we have the best health care system in the world, and that may be true for the rich white Congressmen who make these claims because they have a government run health care program and can afford the best of care. For the rest of us though, health insurance costs are doubling and out of range for 50 million. Three times that many are underinsured. We pay twice what other civilized countries pay, yet most health indicators rate our country near the bottom. 20,000 people die each year because they don’t have health care and 65% of bankruptcies are because people can’t afford health related problems even though many of those were insured. Insurance company bureaucrats dictate care, treatment, length of hospital stays, and essentially who lives and who dies.
Because of these problems most unions, doctors, nurses, AARP, most hospitals, health care institutions and nearly three fourths of the population is in favor of radically changing the health care system. There are no shortage of models in the world that work to emulate. As a matter of fact any other system would beat ours. The simplest and most cost effective is a single payer health care system. It should be a done deal, a slam dunk. We voted for change and the Democrats have enough votes to override vetoes.
And yet inexplicably Single payer is taken off the table and a public health insurance plan which is a shabby second is being dumped. What is the problem?
The problem is money of course. Not how to pay for it. If we paid half what we do to the insurance companies we would have a great system. The problem is that everyone in Congress that has anything to do with making legislation has received wheelbarrows of money from the insurance industry to maintain the status quo.
I thought that in a democracy representatives were supposed to represent the people, or if they were smarter and better informed than the general public, be capable of making informed decisions that are best for the long term good of the nation, even if they have to vote against their constituants. Instead they are voting their pocketbook. How is this different than the most corrupt banana republic, where public officials have to be bribed to get anything done?
Part of the problem is that the rich, the powerful, and the corporations run the country by bribing the leaders, but the other half of the problem is that a two party system in inherently dysfunctional. The party in power can garner all of the K street donations and perpetuate their rule until they over reach and are thrown out and then the other party takes over until they over reach and are thrown out. In the meantime the minority party can only obstruct so very little ever gets done.
It is much easier to obstruct progress than it is to provide workable alternatives to solve the problem. Republicants have decided that they will just say no. They are doing every thing they can think of to make Obama and the Democrats fail, even though failure would be disastrous for the nation. They have become masters at framing issues, and have learned how to scare the heck out of everyone through very effective propaganda and by just plain lying. They and their corporate sponsors have paid for “Think Tanks” Talk show hosts (Rush, Glen Beck and the rest of Hate radio), and entire television networks (Fox), and they maintain remarkable discipline because they control the faucet of corporate money. Grover Norquist and his “Americans For Tax Reform” has gotten 90% of Republican legislators and 60% of republican governors to pledge that they will never raise taxes for any reason. That is why we don’t pay for two wars and have given tax cuts to the rich, while the gap between the super rich and the rest of us skyrockets. They have doubled the national debt to $11.3 trillion, and the interest on our borrowing will soon become the government’s greatest expense, and still they resist all forms of revenue or any kind of sacrifice. The Republicans meet to discuss “Talking Points and they all go out and spread the word from their identical scripts, and anyone who doesn’t tow the party line has their funding shut off and challengers funded instead. Norquist who does not have any elected position, is probably the second most powerful person in the country.
The Republicans are very effective at spreading fear and feeding paranoia. They dragged us into an unnecessary war, based upon nothing but lies. This did enormous harm to the nations reputation and worldwide standing and made us less safe. Now they are using the same tactics to destroy the country. They confuse old people and make them think the government is trying to kill them off and to take away their Medicare. They feed the fear of the radical Christians claiming that the plan will fund abortions. They feed the fear of the nationalists claiming it will be Socialized medicine. It is all totally laughable except that the public is so gullible and succumbs to the constant organized drumbeat of lies from many sources every day. The internet multiplies the problems by spreading falsehoods virulently and providing web sites that spread and verify the lies. People listen to what they want to hear, and read what they want to believe. No one uses factcheck.org, politifact.com or other non biased fact checkers, it is too easy to believe what feeds their paranoia.
It doesn’t matter if change is desperately needed, if the plans make sense, if they save money and lives, if the Dems propose it, the Republicants are against it. The Dems have been bending over backwards for bipartisanship. They have totally emasculated their energy and health care plans in the attempt to gain Republican votes, but they receive no Republicant votes no matter what they do. They have made all kinds of concessions to satisfy the Republicants, the Blue Dogs, The corporations, but nobody is representing what is best for the nation and the people.
It used to be said that politics is the art of compromise, but it isn’t politics if one side compromises and the other side doesn’t bend. It is simply capitulation to the bullies. If the Republicants refuse to play fair and bargain in good faith, the Democrats will be forced to just cut them out of the picture with a reconciliation bill. If the Republicants will never vote for any health care reform, no matter how watered down the spineless Democrats make it, why don’t we just do it right and go back to what we know works for the rest of the world and for half of our own population? Half of our country now has single payer government health care. The vets, the aged, the very poor, children, and the politicians, all enjoy “Socialized Medicine”, and they are all happy with their care and it costs much less and is more efficient than the private plans. Why not just extend those existing plans to cover everyone? Why not save 20,000 lives a year? Why not reduce the cost of healthcare by half and reduce our deficit? Is it because half a million insurance crooks will loose jobs? How about the three million health care jobs that will be created?
Doing nothing is the worst of all possible choices. Costs will spiral out of control and the Insurance Industry will deny more and more people so they can get richer as more and more people die. If those with an irrational fear of “socialized Medicine” fear government plans, let them help the insurance industry out by buying supplemental insurance for “Cadillac plans that will pay for their Viagra and face lifts.
Health care should be a guaranteed right and the World Health Organization recognizes that right. Don’t let the greedy health industries and their paid off toadies deny 50 million people their basic rights, and deny the rest of us the right to have affordable care we can count on.
The best way to pay for health care is to place a tax on alcohol, tobacco, poisons in our water and air, sugar and other substances that degrade our health. This would discourage unhealthy behavior which would further save costs.
To end our dysfunctional political system we would need to get money out of politics, have at least three viable parties, and fix the system so third party votes will not be thrown away as spoiler votes. Currently the country is just about evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and Independents, but the independents are left out of the system. Having preferential voting would alleviate the dysfunctional gridlock. Currently both parties cater to their extremes. If we required at least three alternative bills for every problem, and representatives voted their preferences, 3 pts. for what they like the most 2 pts. for second place and 1 pt. for what they like the most, the bill with the most points would win. In most cases if there were apples (Repubs), oranges (Dems) and fruit salad(Independents or centrists), the fruit salad would win. If both major parties had to compromise to get the support of the third party to win their support, their policies would be forced to move to the center and would then better represent the will of the majority. The same system would work for general elections if at least three nominees were required for every position, and people voted their preferences, the moderates would win, if they all had equal (public) funding. Until that happens we will not really be a democracy, we will be a corpocracy with our representatives owned by special interests.
We may not be able to fix the government right away, but we should all contact our representatives and tell them that if they don’t have the guts to support a single payer system to at the very least allow a public insurance option.