Mid Week Drive-By on Health Care Reform
Health care reform is probably dead. As reported in the New York Times in an article entitled “Health Policy Now Carved Out at a More Centrist Table”, six conservatives, all well paid by the medical insurance lobby, are controlling our fate. One of the great misrepresentations by our media is that these people are centralist. They are conservative and they will continue to apply failed conservative thinking to tweak a system that needs a complete overhaul. The group is led by Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucas of Montana, who represents 0.32% of our population, and is the biggest beneficiary of health insurance lobby money.
The rest are as follows: Olympia Snow of Maine (representing 0.43% of our population); Charles Grassley of Iowa (representing 0.99% of our population); Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming (representing 0.18% of our population); Kent Conrad of North Dakota (representing 0.21% of our population); and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico (representing 0.65% of our population). Yes you got that right. Senators representing 2.78% of our population, basically in conservative Middle America, are determining our fate. Senators representing almost 1/5 the population of California or 1/3 the population of the State of New York will decide how the rest of us get health care. Or as Howard Dean said yesterday on the Rachel Maddow show, what we will get is some reform of the health insurance, but the same dysfunctional health care system will be left untouched. It is no wonder we are becoming a backwater nation led by Senators who represent Brithers and other morons who can’t think bigger than their conspiracy theories or their pocket books.
Just look at the discussion and the fear tactics used as to how to pay for it. One of our major problems is that we have an employer based health care system. The obvious answer is to end that whole concept and we pay a surcharge from our income that covers everyone. Saying we can’t afford it is really kind of insane when no one asks if we can afford the Iraq/Afghanistan war, subsidies to agribusiness, or the bail out to banks who are now screwing us on credit cards. What this battle is really about is those who represent the health care insurance industry and the rest of us. Right now the health care industry drones are winning.
One last thought on the failure to reform health care. My friend and golfing buddy, Tom Griffin, shared a real insight with me the other day as I was slicing a ball off the course. Abraham Lincoln had it wrong. He should have let the South secede and then we would not be held hostage to all these backwards thinkers (the whole Republican Party). Here is one other thought for you. If Senators were empowered based upon the size of the population they represent, the Republican Party would be an afterthought. Maybe it is time to revisit that concept in the Constitution. You can guess who would be against it.
Note something really important in this debate we are seeing played out in the media. We don’t see any health care professionals who have studied the system helping us to understand what is being proposed or using their considerable expert experience to help us understand if it will work. What we get is an endless political discussion which is about who wins, Republicans or Democrats. I see that as the great failure of the news media today, their failure to educate instead of titillate. That is one of the major reasons why we have little hope of making any real progress until things are dire. The one exception was an interview on the Bill Moyers Journal with journalist Trudy Lieberman and Dr. Marcia Angell on health care reform. It was depressing to understand from these two how failed our debate has become.
So we continue down the road of ignorance is bliss and our media allowing fiction and wild claims (Republican quotes from the Levin Group or anecdotal falsehoods about Canadian health care) to stand unchallenged and we march off, going nowhere. I have very little hope anymore that real change is possible in this country.