On The Whole, I Think Things Are Going Rather Well
I confess to being blindsided by the wholesale exuberance with which the Republicans have embraced killing off wide swaths of the undeserving electorate, unencumbered by even ritualistic expressions of regret for the carnage they hope to legislate with their healthcare “reform”. I suppose It must be exhilarating for them to throw off the weight of the pretense of humanity they have shouldered while living and moving among us these last few decades. It’s as if their heads have all tilted sideways, revealing plastic tubing spewing milky white lubricant instead of blood, like the replicant crewmember in Alien, as they fulfill the Supreme Directive from their corporate overlords to clear-cut the nation of the poor, the ill, and the elderly.
And, as a side benefit, Republicans have managed to re-define and expand those classes; the ranks of the poor, the ill and the elderly will increase.
You know how aging boomers tell each other “70 is the new 50”? Well, in health insurance terms the opposite is true – “50 is the new 70”, as the insurance premiums of those over fifty will skyrocket due to age-rating. All those diets and Fitbits will count for naught, because once you cross that magical age, the insurance underwriters know that your corporeal encasement has started its inevitable downward spiral and you will begin requiring actual healthcare in addition to the privilege of paying premiums.
Providing the services that the premiums nominally entitle one to goes against the foundation of healthcare for profit, which is denial of services. Denial of service is the fundamental core of “free-market healthcare”. Denial of service is what gave rise to all those great practices of the past, when no one hindered the insurers from making their big bucks: rescission, age rating, lifetime caps, and pre-existing condition exclusions, all of which will start to make their way back into the insurance marketplace, because “regulation(!)” or anything that hinders making a buck is bad.
If not regulation, than what? The Republican answer so far has been “competition!”. They seem to envision a world where hospitals will be like supermarkets with weekly specials on hip replacements emblazoned on a marquee outside the entrance. Of course, this completely negates the large percentage of care which is not discretionary, i.e., critical or emergency care. If your teenager has totaled the car and is being removed with a Jaws of Life, will you tell the ambulance to wait while you google to see who has the best price on a full-body cast? Didn’t think so.
More will be poor, even those who now consider themselves “comfortable” or “middle-class” as more and more of our gross income is spent towards those rising premiums for the services we are be-grudged. Family incomes will be further decimated once Grandma is kicked out of her nursing home when Medicaid stops paying and she now occupies the former rumpy room, outfitted with an adjustable bed and oxygen tanks. Oh dear,one of the former household wage earners also has to forgo employment once they figure out that home healthcare is out of reach. Sad.
More will fall ill as a result of the lack of preventive care or intervention in the earlier stages of disease, which will cause an acceleration of emergency and end stage care which are primary drivers of the highest cost services.
So, good job, Republicans! You’ve been stellar in revealing the hollow, rotten core of your political philosophy, that only the rich and the privileged are entitled to healthcare (or anything else of value), and that the rest of us are “the surplus population” that the planet is best ridded of. You are on the precipice of fomenting a historic Great Moment of Pissed Off Peasantry when formerly rag-tag and disunified sectors of the electorate will combine to rid themselves of your presence in office.
So what’s not to love about the Republican healthcare initiative? The single fly in the ointment is that the only alternative to Republicans at the moment is Democrats, who whiffed in their own moment of healthcare reform. Instead of focusing on ridding us of the unnecessary intermediary of for-profit insurers and instituting pharmaceutical price negotiation, they attempted to enshrine our “uniquely American” (unique in its inefficiency and stupidity) system. Will they be up to the challenge a second time?
Are Democrats capable of giving Americans the single payer system and universal coverage that is both the moral imperative and the fiscally responsible answer to this ongoing train wreck of an issue?
Comments
Democrats will do bupkiss
as shown by their shitcanning of single payer in CA.
28 million without insurance = good.
28 million + another 22 million = evil.
Well, this is the interesting part
to watch them twist themselves into pretzels while they struggle to make hay of the Republicans big reveal of being homicidal maniacs.
Two things I think are apparent:
1. Republican healthcare is a no go from the getgo.
2. The ACA was a failure. Co-pays and deductibles made it an illusion of healthcare but not actual healthcare. The Medicaid expansion was the only really successful part
So, the only successful component of the ACA was the part which expanded single payer. Medicare is also a successful single payer healthcare program.
It's interesting to note that the Democratic standard bearer last time around announced that we would "never, ever" have single payer.
But, given the facts of 1 and 2 above, it would be insanity if the Dems tried yet again to deny Americans a level of healthcare enjoyed by much of the rest of the world. The majority of Americans are positive about single payer healthcare. The obstructive ones are our politicians who are paid to retain the status quo through campaign donations.
I think single payer should be the liberal/Dem litmus test this time around.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
Even a Republican consultant (Matthew Dowd)
keeps bringing up single payer lately, on Face the Nation. Democrats, not so much.
Yes it should be
That would purge away a lot of the corprocrats. A strong litmus test of supporting publicly funded, clean and transparent elections would purge some more. A litmus test for a new fairness doctrine for the media could almost finish them off. A net neutrality litmus test might be the coup de grace. First things first though, renounce super delegates and corporate donors.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Single payer, and
No more fucking wars.
Pardon the profanity. I'm so sick of all this shit.
Thanks for the essay, Phoebe.
At this point the elites
insisting on politeness is akin to being chastized by the headsman for flatulence.
Fuck decorum, the horse it rode in on, anybody who looks like it, and the squirrel in its yard.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
"and the squirrel in its yard" or up its pole!
right on brother (raises fist). Was just thinking about flipping my photo to face left because why not. Just do a 180 and call it the real thing. Now I have a corporate effing ear worm, insidious advertising for the win. Aaaah it never ends.
Lack of decorum is a good pressure release I'd say, compared to what comes next. I think the Rs are this bad on purpose, to make the Ds look "better" so everything will stay the same. "Fiscally responsible" LOL! How 'bout that revolving door full of bomb droppers, how "fiscally responsible" is that? Never mind. Thanks.
peace
Yep even the AMA get's into it
while the BRCA kills 540K it does harm
where were they with the ACA that kills
320K over the same time frame.
IOW's the Heritage Plan is AOK, while the
Tea Bagger plan is a plan to far.
Either way we are told BOHICA.(bend over here it comes again)
http://www.businessinsider.com/ama-healthcare-bill-brca-senate-2017-6
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
PL, you ask if Democrats can give us a single payer system
and universal coverage. My answer is, "No!" Democrats cannot, will not, do it anymore than they can punch their way out of a wet paper bag. Helplessness is their defining feature.
Witness the great Obama's signature "healthcare" bill, a warmed-over GOP creation cooked up by the mad social scientists at the Heritage Foundation and enacted previous to Obama taking office in Massachusetts under GOP governor Romney. It was, as you say a reaffirmation of our Frankenstein health insurance/health"care" nightmare.
The purpose of the "Democratic" Party is to be the weak tea alternative to the GOP's bitter medicine. Both work in tandem for TPTB. I look to neither party to do right by the 99%.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
The Democrats may not have a learning curve
But the electorate does.
We experienced decades of "free-market" healthcare which gave us the immoral practices designed to limit services and enhance profit that the ACA was supposed to fix.
We have now lived through the ACA which failed - basically due to a failure to provide a public option as a competitive hammer against the for-profits and the capitulation to non-negotiation with Pharma.
I doubt we will have the opportunity to experience the Republican healthcare plan, and if we do, it will accelerate the extinction of the Republican Party.
Americans are ready for single payer. The Democrats only ever lead from behind, when they are dragged kicking and screaming to a conclusion the public has already reached.
I think the signs are auspicious for a single payer movement led this time around by the reluctant Democrats. At least this is what they should campaign on. Being Democrats, they will still have an opportunity to screw it up in an effort to be bi-partisan and will negotiate against themselves until they design a bill that is acceptably bad and ineffective enough to pass - Son of Obamacare. And then we can go through the whole charade again.
Or, they could defy both their history and nature and craft a bill that actually serves the public and not their individual pockets.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
Took daughter to doctor yesterday
Would have cost 205 dollars to have an earwax blockage removed.
30 seconds at home is worth 205 bucks. Would have preferred the doctor do it since that's why I walked 7 miles, but hey, best healthcare system in the world, right?
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
When my kids were little, our pediatrician used a
Waterpik with warm soapy water to clean out my daughter's ears. I did something similar for my father-in-law after he saw the ENT. I think I used hydrogen peroxide in the water that time. It works really well. My FIL could hear much better after that.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
10cc syringe
and hot water and peroxide.
Can't believe we actually have to go back to doing our own medical procedures due to the insurance companies pricing it out of my income bracket.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Well warm water not hot
But yes, that is the method to use.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
medicinal herbs
It's also why medicinal herbs and the traditions behind them are making the major comeback that they are.
A friend of mine treats skeletomuscular inflammation by keeping the herb Turmeric in his diet. A Facebook Fiend castigated him for doing that, saying he should rely on "science based medicine" and that his use of traditional herbs was "an insult to human intellectual progress" or some such crap. The relevant facts are:
1. The scientific jury is still out regarding the use of Turmeric as an anti-inflammatory. For every study denying its effectiveness, there are two finding that it is effective, and naming the probable molecules (curcumin) in the herb which provide the effect. Nevertheless, as Turmeric is used harmlessly (and tastily!) as a culinary herb, what's wrong with somebody getting a little help from it too?
2. We do not have "science based medicine" in the USA. We have "profit with just enough science to hold it together" based medicine in the USA. A nation with genuinely science based medicine wouldn't have adverts for medications cheek-by-jowl up against adverts for lawyers suing those selfsame medications! My first question to the Facebook Fiend is: "Just what country do you suppose we live in, anyway?"
The Facebook Fiend sounds like so many over at That Other Place. Gakk!!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Actually working on an sf novel idea
a critical look at the neocolonialism we find ourselves in.
More expensive and "advanced" does not mean more effective for the vast majority of humanity.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
the majority of humanity
Including American humanity!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@thanatokephaloides
If only humanity was a thing shared by the
Lizard Peopledecision-makers who purportedly serve humanity in the other sense... rather than serving them up to self-interests for profits, I mean.Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
May I suggest
you include somewhere in the book, a department of drug name generation.
They surely have one these days. Far-see-gah. Pre-ve-gen. Tru-li-ah. They must put single, nonsensical syllables in a sack and pull them out and play with the order.
Sometimes you see ads for these drugs at the same time the ambulance-chasers are running ads for those who have been harmed by that same drug.
IMO, it is the pharma and insurance companies that are the basis of the "skyrocketing" portion of medical costs.
nicely written, thanks
in particular-
"throw off the weight of the pretense of humanity they have shouldered while living and moving amongst us"
bygorry
I will support a single-payer bill only after
I read every font of the proposed legislation.
There's no doubt in my mind that Dems will dangle the hope of implementing a single payer system in order to drive the vote in 2018. Hope folks keep in mind that it is easy to do, when there's no way in hell that they can achieve this goal. (at present)
Bernie's 2013 did not expand our current Medicare program. It called for dismantling all federal/federal-state public health programs--except the VA--which has begun the process of privatization since 2014, and the Indian Health Service (IHS). As a matter of fact, language in the bill is as follows,
"(b) SENSE OF THE SENATE CONCERNING URGENCY OF A MEDICARE-FOR-ALL TYPE SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. . . .
Here's a link to that bill.
(BTW, when I say 'Expanded,' in my terms, that means to eliminate the 20% co-pay, etc.)
I've been even more leery of the Dems' true intentions since I saw Pelosi's quote. I'll post it, so folks don't think that I'm just being cynical about the Dem lawmakers' intentions.
Which is not to say that we should give up on the idea--just that we must hold Dem lawmakers' feet to the fire, and not be hoodooed or tricked again!
Thanks for writing on this topic, Phoebe--especially on Medicaid, since so many of the nursing home benefits have been reduced over the past few years.
Mollie
"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."
____Author Unknown
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."--Will Rogers
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Yes, they will lie
claim that they've always been in favour of it, then claim that the neutered, half ass compromise they sold out on years ago counts as an achievement on one of their innumerable lists of accomplishments that they like to trot out when telling liberals to shut the fuck up.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
@Unabashed Liberal
As in confirming the 'nowhere else to go' attitude allowing Two-Faced Corporate Party psychopaths to continue being voted for in the hope that no leverage will finally work on those having no ethics and, apparently, no survival instinct and, more importantly, on the pathologically greedy and mindlessly destructive billionaires and corporate interests who are running the US government - and life on the planet into short-term-profitable-for-them extinction 197 ways (and possibly days) from Sunday?
Many of us believe that we'd already be radioactive slag if Trump hadn't got in via the Electoral College (apparently having some survival instincts after all, even if, no doubt, 'the Russians hacked them all!!!) and delayed our final destruction by The Mad Bomber by months, so far.
Although I wouldn't necessarily bet on planetary life still existing by 2018, never mind 2020, I think the Dems scare me more than the Repubs because they will operate in silence and with the support of the corporate media, leaving Americans and others to wake up with bloody, gaping holes where essential parts once resided, and no media coverage permitted beyond official propaganda.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
If it's good enough for Congress, it's good enough for me!
thanks, my own new personal slogan about single payer is that, after reading up on the OPA and what congress gets. We the people employ them, or what? I always fell for that line but maybe it is b.s. too, and there is no law. I am back yanking the Overton window because why not. If Rs are gonna go "scorched earth" I wanna go "rainbow heaven" if ya know what I mean. Negotiating sucks, but "We're capitalists", those are the ones in charge. It's all they can do it seems, wheel and deal. Unfortunately Ds begin in the middle every time, it's no wonder we are where we are.
peace
How could anyone think that Hillary was the most qualified
candidate ever after she told people this?
I remember how they got around this little canard. They said that they would hold her feet to the fire after she was elected.
Why they thought that would work for Hillary after Obama actually told us that and when we did, he blew us off. This was during the primary and before the ides of March edict and we told them that we would rather vote for a person who was already running on that, then vote for a candidate who had to be pushed to do the right thing.
As Lily stated upthread, the ACA was the same as the Heritage bill that Romney passed in Massachusetts.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
The Democrats in California have now shown their true faces too.
In the case of California Democrats Tony Rendon (Speaker of the Assembly) and Senator Nancy Pelosi, the so-called forgetting doesn’t even take years — it’s instantaneous.
"and Senator Nancy Pelosi"
oops she is a D.C. critter, not Sacramento material. But yeah they are two peas in a pod, corporate to the core. How do you "earn" $100 million as a career politician? Become Nancy Pelosi v2.0, it will be interesting to see who props up next.
peace
Congress critter
To note, Pelosi is a congress critter, the US House Minority Leader, not a US Senator.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Federal, State, Local, Dog Catcher
the Ds have it Covered in California, sorry about the horrible pun. Not funny.
peace