Right to health care

Since my recent foray into market forecast at News Writer's Guide to the Market was such a spectacular failure -- I consistently predicted doom and gloom even as the markets rose and rose -- I thought perhaps it might be time to wade into another arena about which I know next to nothing, although even that's a far sight better than an awful lot of Americans these days.

And just for the record -- despite the pundits' deep sighs of relief and fresh new predictions that we're climbing out of the economic hole 30 years of conservative government dug us into -- I still think there's a lot more nastiness yet to come. This is a fake out. Reminds me of when I went to see Jessica Lange as country music crossover star Patsy Cline in that movie -- Sweet Dreams. I would go see Jessica Lange in anything, then and now.

Patsy Cline, as we all know (well, those of us old enough) died in a plane crash in Tennessee. In the movie, Patsy and her friends are on board that plane when the engines quit. Oh no, theatre-goers thought. This is it. Sweet dreams. But after a few heart-stopping minutes, the pilot gets the engines going again. Everyone on board the plane breathes again. Everyone in the audience breathes again. And then the plane slams into the side of a mountain.

Pretty stupid of us, really. We all knew the fucking plane was gonna hit the mountain, because we were all Patsy Cline fans and we knew what happened. But when those engines started again, we had some kind of amnesia. Like we forgot it was a movie, and we thought, hey, Patsy survives, even though we knew damn well she didn't. When the plane hit the mountain, the gasp in the audience was audible. Very audible.

Thus it is with the economy. We all know what's gonna happen, but we've been lulled by the start-up of the engines, not realizing we've lost too much altitude and we're gonna hit the fucking mountain.

But what do I know? I'm no economist, and I've been wrong for months on this.

So the other issue I'd like to tackle is health care. Yes. An insurmountable mountain on its own, I'm likely to need a bigger plane and maybe two pilots to maneuver this one.

Here's what I know about health care: In the United States, if you gots the bucks, you gots the care. If you don't, welcome to the emergency room.

So here's the deal. The president wants to put a public option for health care insurance on the table to cover those folks whose employers don't provide it, who don't have employers or who can't afford private insurance.

The big objection from the president's opponents, as best as I can see, is that it might work.

Yes, public health care could become so successful at lowering premiums and providing quality care that it would hurt the private insurers.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me the private insurers are most of the problem now. Let's hurt them.

The objectors also worry that under a public option, health care might be rationed and some unnamed, faceless bureaucrat who's never seen the patient will decide how to handle the case.

Excuse me, but for those of us with insurance, isn't that how it's handled now? I think they call it "managed care." Manage this, fuckers. And besides, that would never happen to them, because they're all fucking millionaires. They get what they want, when they want it.

And that's a lie anyway. The objectors like to malign the Canadian system, but has anybody noticed a stream of Canadians fleeing to the United States because they can't get the open heart surgery they need? I didn't think so.


But the insurance companies -- and the pharmaceutical companies -- have the politicans sewn up rather well, so what we end up getting in the way of health care reform won't be much of a reform. It may look different, but the results won't change -- the rich folks will still be able to buy what they want, nameless, faceless bureaucrats will still determine when the rest of us are sick enough to get that coverage and there'll still be a helluva lotta people waiting in the ER waiting room because of a sore throat.

Unless ... unless ... Congress somehow gets the idea that there might be consequences to leaving the status quo. Not sure where they might come across that idea ... maybe ... nah. Y'all don't want to bombard them with calls and letters. And if you lose, as you probably will, you'll have to make good on your threats, and you know what a pain in the ass that is.

But progressive folk are lining up Democratic opposition to the war suplemental bill. Last time I saw a count, they had 11 of the 28 Democrats they needed to stop it. It's gonna be close, but it could work. They already got the Lieberman-Graham amendment barring the release of any more torture photos dropped. Success may be closer than we think.

I have far too many friends who are one major medical bill away from bankruptcy, and that just shouldn't be. Conservatives are wrong when they say that it shouldn't be government's job to take care of the health care of its citizens. I say what could be more right?

And please, don't even get me started on the socialist bullshit. What the hell do they think Medicaid is? Ohhh riiiiight. They'd like to ditch that too. Compassionate conservative my ass.

The Declaration of Independence says that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our inalienable rights. Universal health care coverage will help keep us all healthy. And that means we keep those rights.

Unless, of course, the conservatives really do believe that only some of us deserve those rights.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Peace Y'all