Letters to the Editor
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The best explanation of the Health Care dilemma yet ! Thank You ...
Explaining it in terms a capitalist understands:
" the way the market is supposed to work: Make more money by delivering more product."
" The health insurance industry makes more money by delivering less product. It maximizes profits by minimizing care."
This analysis could be applied to the way all other insurance companies now work as well. Katrina exposed this big time. Even Trent Lott got shafted (LOL).
It didn't used to be like this , Bill Moyers exposed the sham in a piece he did on Bill Moyers Journal.
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Like I said -
Catastrophic and/or preventive care for all. And that's it. But everything else from dietitians to everyone's favorite Asperger diagnosis to arthroscopic surgery for 12 year olds, I don't think we have to seriously consider paying for. Or - if you do, then talk to the providers and get them to cut their prices by half. Don't come to me to pay for 100%, get the providers to cut their prices in half. And either make everyone pay for it or just outlaw cigarettes already. Sin taxes are inefficient, mean, unfair and immoral.
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Sin Taxes Good
And either make everyone pay for it or just outlaw cigarettes already. Sin taxes are inefficient, mean, unfair and immoral.
To hell with that. If we outlaw it, people will still do it (and in similar numbers), so they'll still be a burden on the health care system - plus a burden on law enforcement, and no public profit at all. Sin taxes may be "inefficient", but the "war on drugs" isn't exactly a shining beacon of success. I say let the addicts pay the consequences of their actions. I don't see why I should have to.
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Do you really think this is true?
Americans are a compassionate people. We do care about sick children. We do care about our dead and wounded vets and their families. We do care about victims of Hurricane Katrina. Empathy and compassion are what this country is about. America is about caring for one another, about being in the same boat, about being a national family. It is not about profiting from someone else's suffering, especially if that someone else is a child.
I would suggest this is true about one part of America only. But there's another part, that sees a sick kid and thinks that they shouldn't have been conceived. They look at New Orleans after Katrina and grumble about just desserts for not having gotten in their SUVs and evacuated. They look at other citizens as at best competitors, at worst predators. The rich ones live in gated communities; the poor ones have big dogs and steel bars on their windows and keep their guns loaded and handy. They think of government as something alien and outwardly, except for the military. They think of taxes as forced confiscation to be given to darker-skinned slackers, illegal immigrants, terrorists, lepers.
This part is somewhere between a quarter and a third of us. One in four, maybe one in three. They still click their heels and salute the Righteous Leader in the White House. And they are of course so, so victimized, so besieged. They know this to be true because Sean and Ann and Rush and BillO tell them so.
And there is a third America too. They don't read Salon, the Post, the Times, the New Yorker. They don't have time. They're up at five, out the door at six, struggle at a job - or two - with a demanding boss whose performance targets go up constantly without giving any help. They come home in the dark exhausted, do what they can for their families, then collapse so they can do it all over again tomorrow. To these folks SCHIP may as well be the newest rapper, or snack food, because their daylight hours are owned by The Man and they know from experience that the political powers service their own clients and buddies, who wouldn't be caught dead in a middle class neighborhood.
The third Americans are good and decent, and they are the huge majority. They are one illness or accident away from losing their homes. They are one hiccup on Wall Street away from losing their jobs. They love their kids and they are in constant anxiety. And they are invisible politically. And a lot of the first Americans scratch their heads wondering why.
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how about this, Pyrian?
we offer the same deal to the coca growers as we did tobacco. after we've got the nation hooked, we sock it to them in taxes. of course, you will not be affected - you are too GOOOOD. and in appreciation of that goodness, you will see your taxes reduced.
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Greg in FL
Nice letter.
Those who evince this smarmy narcissistic disdain for distressed fellow citizens would typically be the first and loudest clamoring for their "rights" once struck by misfortune themselves.
Y'know, all you greedy tax-hating "conservatives," the collapsing interstate highway bridge doesn't give a rat's ass about how much bread you got should you be crossing it when the structure fails.
And, I'm sure every legislator that voted to uphold (lifetime ward of the socialized health care state) Bu'ush's SCHIP veto avails him or herself to every penny of "federalized health care" to which they're "entitled."
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What We Have Here is a Failure of the Imagination
George Bush has vetoed government funding of health insurance for sick American children. He says he opposes the bill on “philosophical grounds.”
How do you come up with a philosophy that denies care to children and peace of mind to their parents? Do you start out by sending time with those families and developing an understanding of their concerns? I don’t think so.
Our society today encourages the abstraction of others and obsession with self. Thus, while we have a very visceral understanding of what it would feel like to have the government “take” our money away (tax us); we have little to no empathy for others whom a program like this might benefit.
What would happen if we stepped away from our media-generated view of the world and got out and actually talked with people outside our particular demographic? (Talk to a WalMart employee about their health care concerns, for example.) Now, try and IMAGINE the trap they find themselves in and what could be done to help them. Now IMAGINE you are one of the three hundred million inhabitants of the richest country of the world. IMAGINE what is possible.