I'm feeling very confused and frustrated about the health care reform bill. Where exactly are we? I'm a big believer in making ones voice heard, but to whom should I be writing, to voice my opinion? I fear writing my two senators is a waste of time. I very much like both Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe -- have voted for both, even though I rarely vote Republican, because they are women who really care about the people they are trying to serve; they are not just into playing the political game. This was demonstrated by Snowe's good faith attempt -- the only one from her side of the aisle! -- to try to work out a bipartisan compromise on the health care reform bill. But ultimately she could not bring herself to vote for the bill that was passed by the Senate, and I certainly doubt she will vote for any consolidation of it and the House bill that was passed.
Since my senators have to be viewed as a lost cause on this (I did, by the way, write to both of them back in the fall, when the Senate bill was still being worked out, and I thought voicing my opinion might possibly do some good), I was all set to send letters to all the Democrats in the Senate, urging them to vote for health reform NOW, saying you're not going to get the perfect bill; nobody's going to be completely happy; but we really must at least start the process of change now, and it's up to you because the Republicans are just going to keep saying no to everything but caps on malpractice suits (as if that would take care of the problem). But then it occurred to me that, besides the fact that a letter from a non-constituent is not going to carry much weight (I knew that from the get-go, but thought at least somebody would be hearing my voice), there was the fact that I wasn't sure where in the process we were. Would it make more sense to write to all the Democratic Representatives? But my god, there are far too many of them; I couldn't afford the postage.
The bill-consolidation process is where I'm assuming we are at present, though I'm not sure. President Obama came out with his version recently, and I thought, isn't this a little late? Has his proposal just muddied the waters, or provided options that most Democrats will find satisfactory? Are the Democrats going to try to combine his proposal with the two already-passed bills, or just use his? This is what I mean when I say I'm confused. I know there's talk of using the legislative "trick" called (misleadingly) "reconciliation" -- which the Republicans are objecting to mightily, even though most legislation passed using this "trick" has been Republican-backed legislation -- but I'm not clear as to what piece of legislation would be submitted to that process!
After hearing that several of the largest insurance companies had an extremely lucrative year in 2009, while covering ever-fewer people, and that they are now proposing premium increases of as much as 39 per cent, I wondered how on earth people could be so resistant to reform. Those guys need to be held in check so bad. I have long held that the insurance industry in this country is a racket anyway. Health care should not be a matter of profit and loss, any more than education should be. This is why I was supportive of a public option, which was included in the House bill that passed, but dropped from the Senate bill (and, presumably, will not appear in any consolidated bill). But I wouldn't refuse to pass reform legislation, just because that particular feature was not included. Come on, guys, let's do something now!
Whom do I call?
Showing posts with label health care reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care reform. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Warning: political rant
Sometimes the ignorance and gullibility of large swaths of the American populace fill me with despair. The current shouting matches taking place all across the country concerning the health care reform bill are a good case in point.
First there is the nonsense about what Sarah Palin calls the government death squads. When you get old somebody from the government is going to come around and ask you how you want to die. Actually, if you think about it rationally (which those people who will believe any scare tactics the wealthy insurance companies care to throw at them, all too often fail to do), this wouldn't be a bad idea. Americans persist in pretending they're never going to die, when as a matter fact death is the one indisputable fact of life; and it would be much better if people made proper arrangements for this fact before it was too late and their families were stuck with making heart-wrenching decisions with no guidance. However, that's not the point. The point is that the bills before Congress propose nothing of the sort. They propose including payment to doctors for counseling on end-of-life care. If you become incapacitated do you want everything possible done to sustain life, or do you want, instead, a living will? At what point do you want all aggressive therapy to stop, and hospice care to take over? Etc., etc. None of this would be done by govern-ment "bureaucrats," but by doctors, who are, after all, sworn to "first, do no harm." They wouldn't be encouraging you to let yourself be euthanized, they would be encouraging you to think intelligently and sensibly about these important matters while you're still in good enough shape to make the necessary decisions.
And then there's all the milarky about how if we're not careful we'll have a terrible, uncaring health system like they have in England and Canada -- whose citizens are now expressing anger at how those systems are being misrepresented by the ads here. My English friends Ann and John had two children and didn't pay a dime to have them. As Ann said to me, "I can't imagine going through child birth, and all the adjustments connected with having a baby, and coming home to huge hospital bills as well!" Both she and John have leveled criticisms at the NHS on occasion -- like any system it is not perfect -- but both are basically highly supportive of it, as are most of the citizens of the U.K. But because we are, as a country, essentially ignorant of what life is like in other countries -- unless something happening in another country impacts the U.S., or U.S. citizens, or is a natural disaster like a tsunami or an earthquake, network news does not report on it -- we don't know that the scare ads we are seeing all over the television simply do not represent the experience or attitudes of most of the people living under these systems.
And then there are those people yelling, you're going to have this public option plan at the expense of my Medicare! Excuse me, are they not aware that Medicare is a "public option" government-run plan, exactly the kind of thing they're objecting to? Where do people leave their brains when they leave home?
There are legitimate things one can base objection to the bills on, perhaps how-do-we-pay for-this being one. The simple, and logical, answer to that would be: we raise taxes. All the countries with excellent health care systems have higher taxes to pay for them. They have accepted the idea of the shared burden of higher taxes, in order to have the shared benefit of good, reliable health care that does not force anybody to declare bankruptcy, because of their med-ical bills, or to go without medical care, because they can't afford it.
But Congress is scared to death to come out and say, 'we'll have to raise taxes, but it will be worth it.' I think it's a mistake for President Obama to insist that only the very rich should be taxed. Those guys should perhaps bear the lion's share of the burden, but it should, again, be a shared burden. My taxes help pay for improved roads, and I get to use those improved roads. My taxes should help pay for an improved health care system for everyone...including me.
First there is the nonsense about what Sarah Palin calls the government death squads. When you get old somebody from the government is going to come around and ask you how you want to die. Actually, if you think about it rationally (which those people who will believe any scare tactics the wealthy insurance companies care to throw at them, all too often fail to do), this wouldn't be a bad idea. Americans persist in pretending they're never going to die, when as a matter fact death is the one indisputable fact of life; and it would be much better if people made proper arrangements for this fact before it was too late and their families were stuck with making heart-wrenching decisions with no guidance. However, that's not the point. The point is that the bills before Congress propose nothing of the sort. They propose including payment to doctors for counseling on end-of-life care. If you become incapacitated do you want everything possible done to sustain life, or do you want, instead, a living will? At what point do you want all aggressive therapy to stop, and hospice care to take over? Etc., etc. None of this would be done by govern-ment "bureaucrats," but by doctors, who are, after all, sworn to "first, do no harm." They wouldn't be encouraging you to let yourself be euthanized, they would be encouraging you to think intelligently and sensibly about these important matters while you're still in good enough shape to make the necessary decisions.
And then there's all the milarky about how if we're not careful we'll have a terrible, uncaring health system like they have in England and Canada -- whose citizens are now expressing anger at how those systems are being misrepresented by the ads here. My English friends Ann and John had two children and didn't pay a dime to have them. As Ann said to me, "I can't imagine going through child birth, and all the adjustments connected with having a baby, and coming home to huge hospital bills as well!" Both she and John have leveled criticisms at the NHS on occasion -- like any system it is not perfect -- but both are basically highly supportive of it, as are most of the citizens of the U.K. But because we are, as a country, essentially ignorant of what life is like in other countries -- unless something happening in another country impacts the U.S., or U.S. citizens, or is a natural disaster like a tsunami or an earthquake, network news does not report on it -- we don't know that the scare ads we are seeing all over the television simply do not represent the experience or attitudes of most of the people living under these systems.
And then there are those people yelling, you're going to have this public option plan at the expense of my Medicare! Excuse me, are they not aware that Medicare is a "public option" government-run plan, exactly the kind of thing they're objecting to? Where do people leave their brains when they leave home?
There are legitimate things one can base objection to the bills on, perhaps how-do-we-pay for-this being one. The simple, and logical, answer to that would be: we raise taxes. All the countries with excellent health care systems have higher taxes to pay for them. They have accepted the idea of the shared burden of higher taxes, in order to have the shared benefit of good, reliable health care that does not force anybody to declare bankruptcy, because of their med-ical bills, or to go without medical care, because they can't afford it.
But Congress is scared to death to come out and say, 'we'll have to raise taxes, but it will be worth it.' I think it's a mistake for President Obama to insist that only the very rich should be taxed. Those guys should perhaps bear the lion's share of the burden, but it should, again, be a shared burden. My taxes help pay for improved roads, and I get to use those improved roads. My taxes should help pay for an improved health care system for everyone...including me.
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