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Unpopular Ideas

Ramblings and Digressions from out of left field, and beyond....

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Location: Piedmont of Virginia, United States

All human history, and just about everything else as well, consists of a never-ending struggle against ignorance.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Toward Medicare for All

Ever since that darkest year of 2001 it's been clear to me that the reason that the GWBush administrations could not in any way go on to excuse the infamy through which they were twice allowed to occupy the Oval Office is that, being naturally evil people with consequently misguided intentions, their policies had one overriding basis that led to their fouling everything they touched, almost without exception. That basis was to think of what a Clinton-type administration might do in each situation and so to see the exactly opposite direction as always being the best way to go.

I guess that, while always trying to keep up the spirit of moderation, the Obamarites would try to be consistent by not following that policy either. Still, in that light I have a few trepidations about what the incoming Obama administration is likely to do. They might keep the pendulum from swinging back far enough in the other and much preferred direction and in so doing challenging Newton's Third Law of Motion.

True, Obama's teams will include a lot of former Clinton people, including the former First Lady herself. But the general tenor of things doesn't as yet signal as much in the way of Change as B. Obama had spoken of during the campaign. Note for instance keeping in their positions of power people like Bush's Secretary of War, R. Gates, and J. Lieberman, the wishy-washy so-called Independent senator from Conn.

Probably the most crucial area in which this slowness to Change threatens to occur figures to be in health care.

The choice there seems obvious, and it definitely would be Change bigtime. Single-payer -- or Medicare for All, as it would much better be called -- is the way to try now, while scrapping private health insurance. But B. Obama has signaled that he intends to go slow on this, by first asking the public what it would like to see.

But this is a public that stood still when the Clintons were so badly trashed for putting forward a more universal health care system during their first years in office, while at around the same time Congress repealed a provision for catastrophic health insurance just a few months after passing it, when people who largely already had such coverage protested bitterly and loudly at allowing others to have the same protection -- showing that the Haves in this country are not very charitable to the Have-Nots, and, since the Haves are still very much in the picture, in the days ahead they will most likely work hard to keep things that way.

Steve Bates' "Yellow Doggerel Democrat" weblog and Andante's "Collective Sigh" have been giving especially vivid testimonies lately of the trials and tribulations faced by people trying to recover their health while at the mercy of a privately insured system that at times seems actually designed to work against that, by causing additional stresses and strains that can only worsen the afflicted's existing conditions.

This is the price that the less fortunate members of a society pay when a large segment of the population sees itself as having inherited the world, and from that position they see no point in allowing others to share in the general well-being, which first of all should always include good health and chances for a long and rewarding life. And in this case it doesn't help at all that those who have the power to make this decision and to change medical matters for the better are almost all Haves who are happy with things as they already are.

4 Comments:

Blogger Steve Bates said...

The real irony, Carl, is that until this point, I would not have thought of myself as a "have-not." At age 60, I looked at my retirement savings and thought things were looking pretty good for a working stiff. But I was a self-employed working stiff, which means that I pay my own private medical insurance. Now that unexpected medical problems have essentially compelled me to stop working, and now that those premiums have risen to 2-1/2 times my monthly rent, I have a real problem. Poverty is not around the corner... I still have some savings, and I am not in debt... but it is on the horizon. I did everything expected of me, and I did not deserve this. If I seem to harbor a lot of political anger, you may assume our medical care system is one big reason.

2:52 PM  
Blogger andante said...

What Steve said. We did everything expected of us, but the vaunted `employer based` system failed us and threw us to the unGodly expensive private market.

If the Obama administration can fight off the inevitable onslaught from heath insurers, there is hope. I`m not holding my breath, but still....

I am fortunate to have qualified for Medicaid for at least a portion of my bills, and later this year, due to my disabled status, I`ll qualify for Medicare.

I tke GREAT deight in trumpeting the virtues of the social safety net to all my conservative acquantances who think only worthless, shiftless folks apply and receive such benefits.

They really don`t know what to say.

4:38 PM  
Blogger LeftLeaningLady said...

The part of this that confuses me the most is the one where the voters, those who use the ER as their Primary Care Physician, those who work backbreaking underpaid jobs with NO benefits, get all up in arms about 'socialized medicine'. I've been there. I've held my son (many years ago, thank goodness) as he cried through the night because his ear hurt so bad. Then didn't take him to the doctor the next day, because it didn't hurt anymore and then ended up paying for EXTRA antibiotics weeks later when I realized he couldn't hurt me because of the fluid build up in his ears.

I joined the military to ensure that my son had health coverage and I've been lucky to be able to afford it for both of us since I got out. (Thanks to my marriage last year we are both covered by Tricare) But many can't afford it and many of those seem to be the ones who are against Medicare for all.

I had a recent email from an ex-boyfriend who was whining that he was unable to schedule his shoulder surgery until March. BUT, he is getting it and at no out-of-pocket cost, because he is Canadian. What's not to like?

12:56 PM  
Blogger LeftLeaningLady said...

HE COULD NOT HEAR ME.

I should learn to proof read before hitting "publish"

12:57 PM  

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