Why A Progressive Democrat Like Me Hopes the Health Reform Fails!
by Tex Norman(121)
The more I hear about the Health Reform legislation is starting to look like, the more I am wanting the Obama Health Care Reform to fail. Now don’t get me wrong. I desperately want use to have National Health Care for everyone. I am not wanting the plan to fail because I don’t want a plan, or that I don’t like the way it is being funded, I want it to fail because the opponents think it is Universal Healthcare, that it is Socialized Medicine and it is NOT that. What Congress is doing with Obama’s health reform is more akin to a mandatory car insurance law. I feel that the limp efforts to fund health care will pass, it will pass in a bastardized form, I predict it will be poor insurance, and the cost to the lower and middle class will be burdensome, and the next conservative President will kill it. From that point on we the people will be worse off, the insurance industry will then have themselves right where they want themselves to be: in a position to say, “See, I told you so. Socialized Medicine didn’t work.”
THE SMALL STEP APPROCH
I clearly understand the small step approach. There are lots of examples where a concept becomes a very weak bastardized form of what is actually wanted, and then, over time, the program is tweaked and added to, until, eventually what we have is close to what that anemic piss poor form was when it was first passed. Progressives are saying, “something is better than nothing,” and “pass it now, fix it later!” and I hope they are right, but I don’t think they are right. The problem is that real, free, single-payer National Health Insurance is not being considered, but this limp-assed mandatory health care requirement is going to be called Real, free, single-payer National Health Insurance, and so the plan preferred by progressives is branded, tainted really, by this doomed health reform and it will set back the goal of true National Health Care for fifty years or longer.
MANDATORY HEALTH INSURANCE WILL NOT EASY THE BURDEN ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
You might think, “Health care, even this mandatory health care stuff will save the middle class from financial disaster when a health crisis occurs. Wrong! Health reform will not ease the financial burden for financially imperiled households. Why not? Because the costs of the mandatory health care and the co-pays are still too costly. Medical problems caused 62.1% of all of the bankruptcies that occurred in 2007, and three quarters of those bankrupt debtors had health insurance, and 92% of them had medical bills of at least $5000 EVEN WITH HEALTH INSURANCE. Just having the health insurance is not going to be enough.
Health Reform, that controls health care costs, is what must be mandatory.
IT COST TOO MUCH – I AGREE
I agree and disagree. Allow me to explain. I agree that this mandatory (forced) health insurance coverage is too expensive, but when I say this, I am not in bed with the conservative republicans. This mandatory health care will be too expensive for the middle class. I’m hearing figures like this: for middle class and lower middle class Americans their bill for receiving mandatory health care will be in the neighborhood of $50 to $75 dollars per person. That sounds like cheap insurance, and, if we are talking about health insurance, it is a real buy, especially if you have a pre-existing condition, but what the law makers fail to understand is that forcing a $75 per person bill on the working middle class is going to send millions of them over the edge. These people may have an income so high they don’t qualify for hardship assistance to pay for their mandatory health insurance, but they have so many credit card bills and other debts, that another bill for $75 bucks per person will put them into default with their other creditors. These people pulling numbers out of the air have no concept of what it is like to live pay check to pay check, juggling bills, trying to decide which creditor will have to wait this month.
IT COST TOO MUCH – I DISAGREE
Real, free, single-payer National Health Insurance is said to be too expensive. Right wing conservatives call health care for all a “job killer.” Do these health care haters so want to avoid a “job killer” program that they prefer a “people killer” program vacuum?
When it came to war these conservatives had no problem committing the Nation to paying for it, without the slightest consideration for the cost. We didn’t care how much it was going to cost we were going to avenge the deaths of our people in that 911 attack. The cost of the war would easily pay for a true national health care program.
What I am saying is that sometimes, the costs must be considered, but the cost cannot be justification for not buying what is needed. American needs all people to have access to health care, and that need justifies the cost whatever that cost might be.
Consider this ridiculous example: It is costly to feed yourself and your family. Think of the savings you would have if you stopped buying food. [But you can’t live without food, so we buy food even when it cost too much. Why? Because we can’t live without food. Food is a basic need tied to life.]
Well find an example not so obviously tied to life.
OK, consider this one: Gas is expensive (though not as expensive as MILK) so all you have to do to save money is to stop buying gas. [But without gas I couldn’t drive. If I couldn’t drive I couldn’t do my job. If I can’t get to work I can afford that expensive food and everyone will die] Oops. We are back to life or death issues.
But these examples don’t fit with health insurance. You can live without health insurance. About 120 Million Americans prove this, because we already have 120 Million of our citizens living WITHOUT health insurance.
The logic doesn’t hold plasma. Yes, you can live without health care for a little while. You can miss a meal and still survive. You can have no car for a day or two and keep your job. Eventually, you have to eat, you have to get to work, and you have to have health care.
My wife wears an insulin pump. Not only does the pump cost thousands of dollars, but the supplies costs hundreds of dollars every couple of months. Think of the savings if she just stopped taking insulin. She would die in just a few days, but wow what a savings.
Some stuff is just so basic that we pay for it regardless of the cost. Why is it, for the radical right, that war is so important that we buy into war, twice, but when it comes to health care these same people have voted NOT to expand health care coverage to children, and now they oppose health care for all. We can always find a way to bail out billionaires, or to go to war with countries that posed no emanate threat to the United States, and when we have to pay for it these radical righers have no problem cutting taxes to the rich, cutting benefits to the elderly and poor, and then letting the tax rate creep up on the middle class. I think you have to be mean to be a card carrying radical right conservative.
Article submitted Sunday, July 19, 2009 & read 1199 times.
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