Steven Pearlstein, business columnist for the New York Times Washington Post, writes,
Among the range of options for health-care reform, there’s one that is sure to raise your taxes, increase your out-of-pocket medical expenses, swell the federal deficit, leave more Americans without insurance and guarantee that wages will remain stagnant.
That’s the option of doing nothing, letting things continue to drift as they have for the past two decades as we continue to search in vain for the perfect plan that would let everyone have everything they want and preserve everything they already have while getting someone else to pay for it.
So the next time you hear someone throwing a hissy fit because health reform might raise taxes on some people, or steer people into managed care, or require small businesses to contribute $2 a day for each employee’s coverage, just remember to ask yourself: And that’s compared with what?
I’ve seen projected costs for the status quo that are much higher than the projected costs of what the Right derides as “Obamacare,” yet somehow the people one sees on cable news are not worked up into a lather about the status quo costs. Just the costs of reform.
Meanwhile, one in six adult Americans have no health insurance. That doesn’t tell us how many millions more have insurance policies that will fail them if they get sick. I read about the Blue Dogs in Congress and Democratic obstructionists like Max Baucus, dithering around and picking the President’s plan to death because they are afraid of political fallout, and I want to break heads.
It’s like New Orleans after Katrina, when people were waiting on roofs to be rescued and the Bush Administration was preoccupied with how the hurricane might be used for political advantage. The lives of millions of Americans are forfeit to the whims of the insurance industry, and Baucus worries about “bipartisanship.” There are parents who daily watch their children struggle with health impairment without proper treatment, and the Blue Dogs dither. People are stuck in dead-end jobs and even marriages because they’re afraid of losing health benefits. And the Republicans scream that a national health care plan would deprive people of “liberty.”
It’s Katrina in slow motion, and we’re all New Orleans.
Washington Post – not NY Times
Yes but “We’re not going to cry ’emergency’ every time we have a Katrina”, now are we?
The nuttiness is getting worse.
Hey, it’s ok with them if, like Katrina, it’s the poor people (white, black and every shade in between and around) are the ones who die. SAVE THE RICH!!! P. J. O’Roarke had a great title awhile back, “Eat the Rich.”
BTW – in the last 24 hours an interesting statistic has popped up. Out of ALL of the compensation in the US, 1/3 goes to CEO’s and top executives. Of course, we CAN’T increase their taxes! It won’t give them the incentive to grab 1/2 of all compensation. Or whatever they deem to leave the rest of us worker bee’s – those of us worker bee’s who are working, of course… It’ll maybe keep them at a third, or a lttle less. Heaven forebid!!!
Get me the worlds largest tissue, ’cause I’m about to cry me a river…
There seems to be a gap in logic in the middle of this healthcare uproar. Why do some think the insurance companies can make big bucks on healthcare for themselves, for their stockholders, for their big bonuses, but yet if the government was doing it, they couldn’t even break even?
It’s the same thing with the loan companies too. It’s peachy that we are bailing them out, but during the same time, they make large profits (possibly doing the same type of things that started this whole mess) and can give big bonuses, but can they hire people looking for jobs? Oh No.. it might cut into our profits or bonuses. I honestly think there should be a limit on bonuses. Maybe something like no more than 10 times what the lowest paid worker is getting yearly. Any more than that, and the company can hire more or pay the people it has more.
This is an excellent rebuttal to all of the right-wing propaganda that is being tossed at the health care reform effort. These conservatives have one bullet in their gun – FEAR OF TAXES! And they use it again and again and again. It gets so tiresome. The Democrats need to run ads saying, “we can either raise taxes on wealthy individuals or we can do nothing and let costs go up naturally and let average people pay for it!”
“we can either raise taxes on wealthy individuals or we can do nothing and let costs go up naturally and let average people pay for it!â€
That or the average person can just die wishing they could afford healthcare and the wealthy can just hope it wasn’t catching. With a pandemic on the horizon, one would think they might see a reason to make sure that everyone can go to the doctor if they are not well.
Apt analogy but with Katrina there was no one running around convincing the people on rooftops that the rescue itself could be worse than their plight.There were people claiming that doing nothing for them was “a heckuva job.” Now that did not play on the afflicted but it worked well enough for others to ignore the plight of their countrymen.
Conservatives also have “illusion of freedom” as another bullet in their gun…as in someone is going to take away a freedom that you really do not have. But that’s enough to appeal to any ingrained based suspicion of others that there might be. So many end up accepting lies from those they should be suspicious of and being suspicious of any and all who are motivated to help in a sensible way.
We are regrettably a “sucker nation.”
Ed Schultz has been heroic in his efforts on MSNBC and Air America radio to call out some major players in Congress who refuse to commit to a public option.
Can these whores ultimately be persuaded? Have they sold themselves out to the point of being beyond shame? I guess we’ll find out in the coming months.
A matter of a possible pre-existing condition? Recently a friend of mine was rushed to the hospital with an accute appendicitis attack. Waiting for the hospital to sort out, figure out, and ultimately determine whether her insurance provider covered appendectomies, her appendix burst. (Years ago a rupture of the appendix was a death knell.)
The hospital’s dilemna? If a health-insurance provider can claim, say, cancer a pre-existing condition, would the same apply to the appendix? Afterall, short of having them out prior to signing on to a health insurance policy, one has them as a precondition.
My friend miraculously survived – after two weeks of hospital stay, because all of her organs had shut down (which can make survival quite iffy.) In the end, what would have been a simple operation, a subsequent very short hospital stay, not to mention the pain and suffering my friend had to endure, all would have been avoided. Hospitals, doctors, patients are all at the ultimate mercy of the health insurance syndicate, for which profit is the only criterion, everything and everybody else be damned.
And I must add that the inefficiency rampant in our present non-health care system – Obama talks about it – is blatantly obvious in the case of my friend. Her health insurance provider ended up shelling out mega-bucks covering her treatment – all which could have been avoided.
“18,000 deaths blamed on lack of insurance [a year].” “More than 18,000 adults in the USA die each year because they are uninsured and can’t get proper health care, researchers report in a landmark study released Tuesday.” … “Overall, the researchers say, 18,314 people die in the USA each year because they lack preventive services, a timely diagnosis or appropriate care.”
The 18,314 people that die each year because of lack of health insurance has likely increased considerably since this was a 2002 study.
Since the costs of government health care is usually reported for the future 10 years (the “trillion” dollar cost is 100$ billion a year for ten years), the costs of not having health care needs to reported by the same measure. That means:
183,140 will die if they aren’t provided government health care.
The corporate-medical-insurance industry has denied coverage to millions of Americans, even those who think they have health insurance are one corporate-bureaucrat’s-rationing “rescission” away from having their health coverage taken away from them.
And even those that manage to keep their health care during time’s of extreme sickness represent “over 60 percent of bankruptcies are of people who had insurance but were “still overwhelmed by health debt””
The right wing’s nonsense about America’s “best health care” is a refutable lie by multiple measures: overall, the US health system ranks behind 36 other countries according to the World Health Organization; The US has a worse infant mortality rate than 43 other countries (and the entire European Union combined); and the US has a worse life expectancy rate than 49 other countries.
Ultimately the system we have now is a corrupt corporate-medical-MONOPOLY that has managed to buy off a handful of Democratic Senators (the corporate-medical-industry, in collaboration with other corporate-industries already own the Republican Party).
[reposted, first post had link-citations that triggered filter]
“18,000 deaths blamed on lack of insurance [a year].” “More than 18,000 adults in the USA die each year because they are uninsured and can’t get proper health care, researchers report in a landmark study released Tuesday.” … “Overall, the researchers say, 18,314 people die in the USA each year because they lack preventive services, a timely diagnosis or appropriate care.”
The 18,314 people that die each year because of lack of health insurance has likely increased considerably since this was a 2002 study.
Since the costs of government health care is usually reported for the future 10 years (the “trillion” dollar cost is 100$ billion a year for ten years), the costs of not having health care needs to reported by the same measure. That means:
183,140 will die if they aren’t provided government health care.
The corporate-medical-insurance industry has denied coverage to millions of Americans, even those who think they have health insurance are one corporate-bureaucrat’s-rationing “rescission” away from having their health coverage taken away from them.
And even those that manage to keep their health care during time’s of extreme sickness represent “over 60 percent of bankruptcies are of people who had insurance but were “still overwhelmed by health debt””
The right wing’s nonsense about America’s “best health care” is a refutable lie by multiple measures: overall, the US health system ranks behind 36 other countries according to the World Health Organization; The US has a worse infant mortality rate than 43 other countries (and the entire European Union combined); and the US has a worse life expectancy rate than 49 other countries.
Ultimately the system we have now is a corrupt corporate-medical-MONOPOLY that has managed to buy off a handful of Democratic Senators (the corporate-medical-industry, in collaboration with other corporate-industries already own the Republican Party).
Don’t you see, this is the coup de grace of the right. Their final solution for an objectivist utopia. Those of us who don’t succumb to indentured servitude of feudal corporatism, or otherwise, find ourselves on the wrong end of the marketplace, are directed to exit, stage left. They want us to die if we don’t accept their way of doing things.
They want us to die if we don’t accept their way of doing things.
Same logic they applied by running government debt skyhigh with crazy tax cuts during the war. They WANT to destroy the government and so tried to spend it into oblivion. They might have succeeded.
Little do “they” know that “they” will die too without us. Stupidity thy name is rightwing conservatives.
News reference: “over 60 percent of bankruptcies are of people who had insurance but were “still overwhelmed by health debt—
60% of bankruptcies involved medical expenses and 75% of those had health insurance coverage. Slightly different
If we don’t get a grip on these issues very soon, we’ll be headed towards a “blade runner” type society.
I just returned from an assignment in Miami, where the construction and real estate industries have crashed. If you want to see the future if we stay on this course, spend a day under the I-375 bridge. Just a stones throw from downtown, it is a scene right out of “night of the living dead”, with zombie like addicts and mentally impared roaming about, and pathetic homeless, many disabled, seeking shelter from the intense tropical sun and frequent rain storms.
The area is littered with hypodermic needles, trash, feces, and sleeping vagrants.
All this and more, in the shadow of million dollar condos.Eight bodies were found in the area over the past several months; two were homicides, the rest OD’s.
Just a few miles lies the Julia Tuttle Causeway, where the Miami-Dade County officials have decided to wherehouse convicted sex offenders under yet another bridge.They came to this decision because the sex offenders may have served their jail terms, but remain sex offenders for life. County ordinances prohibit sex offenders from living in close proximity to civilization, so the bridge underside is a logical choice.A pleasant tropical climate, and water front view. (sound familiar?)
The right rambles on about “Judaeo- Christian” values, but time and time again, these values seem more about enrichment of the few and kicking the less fortunate to the curb. Michelle Bachmann and Looney-tunes Blackburn come to mind. The right claims to hate “big government” that helps the less fortunate and tries to stop the financial hemmoraging, but loves big government that builds a bloated military and supports right wing hot topics.
A nation with a poorly educated, unhealthy population struggling financially is what we will become.Apparently, the right does not understand cause and effect.
I’m afraid they may have two bullets. Racism has worked just fine for them when it comes to midterms and fundraising. Whether it will continue its service remains to be seen; they certainly are flogging that one for all it is worth.
Let’s not forget: if Republicans win the midterms in the House, they control the redistricting that follows the census…
News Reference -( My stats say 20,000 people die each year from lack of access to health care, ) BUt 30,000 medicare patients die each year from OVER treatment.
That made no sense until I read that doctors will order all sorts of unnecessary tests, treatments and medications for patients in order to collect more bucks from patients’ insurers – maybe that’s one reason medicare is going broke???
Our present health care non-system defies reason. The health insurance syndicate’s only function is transactional. Connections between patients, doctors, hospitals, pharma and employer provided health insurance must now pass through the health insurance provider whose only function is to collect (exorbitant) fees for passing something on???
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/24-8
Check out Thomas Sowell’s column today on NRO (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI5NThiYjlhZGNkNjVlNWZlNGMxMGEzZDJhZDI3NmY=) for the most batspit crazy interpretation of insurance companies refusing to cover people for pre-existing conditions: he claims/suggests its all about lazy/cheap people waiting until they get sick to buy insurance so they get medical care paid for by other folk’s premiums.
“Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years [during Republican Bush’s Presidency], U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
“Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical…”” (emphasis added)
(Thanks for the correction “dyedinthewoolliberal”.)
Did the link, erinyes, and thanx. Actually, war profiteers were more commonly, and appropriately called ‘Merchants of Death.’ As far as private contractors rebuilding Iraq, if Iraqis were rebuilding their own country it would save American tax payers about 90 percent of what the contractors are costing us. (This possibility was deep-sixed years ago because it would ‘involve’ the Iraqi government and that’s SOCIALISM.)