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Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo
The same conventional wisdom keeping single payer off Washington's table has been spinning for various "reform" plans with such accelerated RPMs that at this point the nation's "healthcare debate" is suffering from a severe case of vertigo.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans want healthcare, but millions of them can't afford it," Obama told the assembled journalists. "So the plan that has been -- that I've put forward and that -- what we're seeing in Congress would cover, the estimates are, at least 97 to 98 percent of Americans. There might still be people left out there who, even though there's an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not get it, or despite a lot of subsidies, are still in such dire straits that it's still hard for them to afford it. And we may end up giving them some sort of hardship exemption."
That may sound good. But it's in the service of an agenda for "healthcare reform" that's seriously flawed.
Days ago, buried in a chart under the headline "How the Health Care Bills Compare," the New York Times provided some cogent yet cryptic information in the category of "Public Plan."
A key Senate committee had just approved a bill with a public plan that would "compete with private insurers," the Times chart explained on July 18. The public plan "would provide ‘only the essential health benefits,' as defined by the bill, ‘except in states that offer additional benefits.'"
Meanwhile, the newspaper noted, "Democrats from three House committees are working on a single plan." Under that plan, "Different levels of coverage -- ‘basic, enhanced and premium' -- can be offered through the public option."
Those few grainy sentences, quickly swept beneath the waves from oceans of media, referred to a disturbing aspect of "public plan" scenarios. If the ostensible goal is healthcare for all, then -- at best -- some of the "all" would end up being much more equal than others.
The Republican Party is coming from such a right-wing place that any government action to improve healthcare access is ideologically unacceptable. In contrast, the broad outlines of a Democratic "public plan" at least embrace the precept that the not-so-tender-mercies of the market are insufficient to fully provide for the population's medical needs.
But as a practical matter, a "public plan" coexisting with the private health insurance system -- generally touted by U.S. media as the pole of real options farthest from the Republican "free market" fixation -- is inherently reconciled to major inequality in access to healthcare.
Even while straining to put forward a "public option" as some sort of stunning government intervention to level the healthcare playing field, media coverage rarely comes to terms with the situation that would actually remain under such a scenario.
How does "healthcare apartheid" strike you?
For the government to offer the public a multi-tier set of options for health insurance -- in the words of the New York Times, "different levels of coverage" such as "basic, enhanced and premium" -- is to imitate the approach of the corporate healthcare establishment.
After all, isn't it implicit that the government plan's "different levels of coverage," offered to the public, would be based on ability to pay?
Missing from the dominant healthcare debate -- not only along Pennsylvania Avenue but also along media row -- is a principle that could be debated and should be debated.
In a few words: Healthcare is a human right.
And a human right should not be contingent on ability to pay. Nor should it be divided into "basic, enhanced and premium."
Media accounts keep telling us that the current political debate on healthcare is unprecedented and groundbreaking. But an article in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, by seasoned healthcare reporter Trudy Lieberman, makes a convincing case that little has changed within the frames of media parameters.
The press "has mostly passed along the pronouncements of politicians and the major stakeholders who have the most to lose from wholesale reform," Lieberman writes. "By not challenging the status quo, the press has so far foreclosed a vibrant discussion of the full range of options, and also has not dug deeply into the few that are being discussed, thereby leaving citizens largely uninformed about an issue that will affect us all."
What we're seeing now is a slightly freshened version of a timeworn tap dance that ranges across a constricted media stage. As Lieberman notes: "Absent from the debate are not only single-payer systems like the ones in England and Canada, but other systems with multiple payers, like ones in Germany and Japan -- or, for that matter, any discussion of why a system that relies on competition among private insurers in The Netherlands hasn't resulted in lower prices for consumers, as advocates claimed."
The variety of healthcare delivery systems abroad, in industrialized countries, spans a common assumption -- healthcare as a human right -- an assumption that doesn't cut the mass-media mustard in the United States. "What's common to all these systems," Lieberman points out, "is that everyone is entitled to healthcare and pays taxes to support the system, and medical costs are controlled by limits on spending. The specter of a system that takes a significant bite out of stakeholder profits in the U.S. is the real reason the debate is so restricted."
As Trudy Lieberman puts it, "Reform efforts have danced around this impasse for decades."
That helps to explain why so much media coverage of healthcare reform proposals is apt to be so baffling to most readers, listeners and viewers. When the big elephant (or, if you will, donkey) in the national newsroom is dependent on the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries for financing, there's a distinct shortage of candor about the consequences of such ongoing intrusions. Newsgathering, media debate -- and, of course, healthcare -- suffer the consequences.
In the mid-1960s, Medicare became law with the stroke of a presidential pen. Lyndon Johnson was able to sign the measure despite a huge onslaught of opposition from right-wing politicians, their corporate backers and professional groups like the American Medical Association.
These days, the AMA may be somewhat more circumspect in its continuing opposition to progressive measures, but the overall balance of political power remains heavily tilted against healthcare for all.
"In the Senate," columnist Gail Collins noted in the July 23 New York Times, "everyone is waiting on Max Baucus of Montana. Nothing is going to happen on health care without the approval of Baucus," the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. As the Washington Post reported days ago, he "has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008."
Today, the kind of arguments heard during the early '60s against guaranteed healthcare for the elderly can now be heard against establishing a comprehensive single-payer system -- also known as Medicare for all. But now, the healthcare debate is trapped between a political establishment that doesn't want a single-payer system and news media that insist on ignoring its real potential.
- Posted in
120 Comments so far
Show All"I want to cover everybody," President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. "Now, the truth is that unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody's automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual. . ."
Yes.....and the next question would be, "Why? Why can we not have a single payer system in which everybody's automatically covered"? Did anyone ask this question?
A commentator on NPR summed it up yesterday by saying " what we call waste in the health care industry is somebody elses profit".
Those profitting in the current broken system will do whatever it takes to preserve those profits.
Well, everyone who pays attention pretty much knows the answer: because the corpora-fascists (in this case, the ones who own/run big insurance and big Pharma) don't want to give up their seats on the gravy train....right beside the politicians who make the rules.
The public option is just to placate the masses. I think they'll be setting it up so it will FAIL - then they can say - see, public insurance plans can't work in Amerika.
Unfortunately, We the People, will not get to see any of the details until it's a done deal.....so much for transparency in government.
From David Swanson of Afterdowningstreet on the censoring of Single Payer by corporate media:
"...I just did some searches in the Lexis Nexis databases of major US and world publications, news wire services, and TV and Radio broadcast transcripts. Searching for "healthcare" in July 2009 found over 1,000 documents, the maximum number that Lexis Nexis will display. In fact, searching just the past two days found over 1,000 documents. Another search confirmed that this is "Michael Jackson" level coverage. And another search confirmed that virtually none of these documents mentioned single-payer at all, much less told anyone what it was."...
Unedited at:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44674
Nice article by Solomon but the time to have criticized Obama's health plan was when he was running for president. Instead Solomon, like so many other liberals, decided to illogically back this faux progressive instead of campaigning for a third party candidate.
As Cornell West pointed out on "Democracy Now" yesterday, if a white president lectured African-Americans in the manner of Obama, it would be considered racism since Obama ignores the structural realities....Why doesn't he send his girls to one of the urban failing schools with an admonishing pep talk?
So, most likely, if the issue were slavery, surely Obama would propose that it should be abolished---if we were "starting from scratch", but since the structural institutions are already established, ending slavery would be impossible at this time.
I'm not buying anything this asshole is selling.
Obama and Congress' idea of health care reform is limited to rearranging the furniture in the "structural institutions", not what I would call reform.
Same thing in the financial sector.
Problem is the furniture being rearranged are deck chairs aboard the Titanic.
Well, the metaphor is off...
The Titanic was far more sound than the us economy is now. Had the captain of the Titanic paid attention to the conditions of the sea his ship might have made landfall. With about 57 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities there is no land for the us economy to hit.
Meanwhile, the newspaper noted, "Democrats from three House committees are working on a single plan." Under that plan, "Different levels of coverage -- ‘basic, enhanced and premium' -- can be offered through the public option."
-----------------
I've been urging the use of the term "Pure Public Option" because it became obvious congress would scheme to bastardize the plan.
By the way, isn't the term "Enhanced" the exclusive domain of a set of harsh interrogation techniques? Unless...?
As I understand this insurance plan it would create insurance pools within the industry that allows the industry to tap into the IRS to find out your tax contribution and income level that would locate you into the proper pool, a different level of care.
Having no insurance I went to the emergency room with a softball sized lump of pain on my shoulder. My "room" was a bed in a supply closet. One side had shelves filled with plaster casting materials and gauze wrapping material. The other shelves had plastic models of human joints, a disassembled human head and plastic charts of all systems of the body. After an x-ray and 10 hours a person in blue scrubs who might have been from the cleaning staff told me that nothing was broken and I should see a doctor.
I guess the ER had no doctors that day. Thank god for the medical charts that gave me the idea that maybe my bursus had burst.
I guess this is what they mean about insurance pools and different levels of care.
To outsiders, the battle between corporate interests (against healthcare reform) and the vast majority of Americans who want universal healthcare rages on with the expectation that in the end the corporation always wins. For a German, Englishman or Italian, it appears that the American majority is somehow 'backward' because they're missing the big picture; healthcare for all is a human right. But in reality, sophisticated corporate media frames the debate in such a way as to present corporate opinions as the general opinions of the public. Many poor Americans actually do believe that single-payer healthcare would represent the dawn of a ruthless, communist system complete with Alaskan Gulags and reduced individual freedoms. This is a testament at just how effective the MSM has been in dumbing down the general population. Hate radio programs like Hannity, Limbaugh and other corporate stooges have dominated the air waves for years as millions of commuting Americans listen to their gibberish for hours each day in their cars oblivious to the real agenda of these spin masters.
No alternative media sources for Americans really exist except on the fringes. Until the average American can actually grasp the basic fact that they're being lied to on a regular basis, change won't come.
Cogently put.
And maybe this is the reason we will get either half-measures, or no measures at all.
A more complete analysis would include why Americans have chosen to be so provincial in terms of global awareness. I wouldn't be so quick to lay the blame completely with MSM. Rather than being the causal element, hate radio has merely found fertile ground in which to grow. Shallow, self-involved, adolescent behavior is partially what characterizes that fertile ground. MSM just mirrors and reinforces that behavior. Where else in the world does this narcissistic behavior exist? If the opportunity exists, MSM wouldn't hesitate to exploit it. But as the saying goes, it takes two to tango.
The answer to both questions is public school. Government funded and required by law for all children to attend unless their parents are smart enough to keep them out. Or not lazy enough, like the smart parents that don't want to do all the paperwork.
Children don't need school. Children need to learn.
Textbooks are doctored, incorrect, and time consuming. Schools are only based upon one factor of intelligence, that is memorise-regurgitate-repeat-forget. Not only that, but they have rules. Conformity is a virtue. Stand in this line. (Even if, but especially if, it makes no sense) No talking without raising your hand. No, you can't go to the bathroom.
Naturally, those who conform the best are the ones that are rewarded. Those that can memorise and repeat information (even if false) are the ones that are rewarded.
Those that think for themselves, spot the contradictions, call out the lies will never be rewarded.
"Many poor Americans actually do believe that single-payer healthcare would represent the dawn of a ruthless, communist system complete with Alaskan Gulags and reduced individual freedoms."
I'm afraid you're correct here. Yesterday, I received a stupid email response from a guy who asked us to figure out a solution to saving small businesses. I emailed him back discussing the relationship between insurance companies and small businesses and how single payer would step in and actually help small businesses. Here's his Joe the Plumber response:
"Not if by stepping in it means forcing them to provide cost prohibitive healthcare, and small businesses are not falling by the wayside because of insurance costs, they are failing because of the economy. So why by any sane stretch of the imagination should it make sense to pile any more on them by making them pay even more for health care, especially with unemployment already as high as it is and getting higher by the day!"
I shot back with a response detailing single payer health care and even proved to him that small businesses would actually save. He then gave a lame brained reply:
"Maybe single payer would mathematically save small businesses but what about the 6-9 million people working for the insurance companies. The economy is sputtering and unemployment is still going up ! Single payer still looks like a job killer and it's very unpatriotic to put people out of work. Insurance companies are not to blame and they're doing their job ! You sound like a communist spokeswoman !"
I shot back at him one more time and explained to him how people could easily fight for better jobs and that single payer would make them do it. I even proved to him that most people working in the insurance industries are not happy and doing it just to stay alive. I told him to let Big Insurance fail. He finally replied calling me a "cave lady". I guess that not everyone's capable of learning like even my conservative parents. I swear, maybe our cornfed electorate does not deserve leaders like Nader, Mckinney, Kucinich, Paul, etc ... Better to just keep the nation shackled to corporate sellouts isn't it ?
I am really confused how you can be lumping Paul in with Nader, Kucinich or Mckinney. Paul is the ideological opposite of the others. To say he would never support single payer is an understatement.
I have issues with Paul but he's firmly against these wars, doesn't support "free" trade although for different reasons, opposes bailing out W$, is bringing up legalizing hemp for industrial uses, is pushing to have the Fed audited, supports the idea of natural alternative cures that can also help reduce healthcare costs to name a few. I'm not completely comfortable with him but on some things he puts the Democrats to shame. He's also an independent thinker even if he is a Republican and like the others, he was also persecuted.
If by "some things" you mean his capitalist market-extremist philosophy toward society and economics, then you are correct. But that is a pretty big "some thing".
And Paul is not opposed to war, he is opposed to governments prosecuting war. If a corporation purchases or hires a mercenary army on it's own to defend it's percieved right make a profit, Paul would support that in a minute.
"And Paul is not opposed to war, he is opposed to governments prosecuting war. If a corporation purchases or hires a mercenary army on it's own to defend it's percieved right make a profit, Paul would support that in a minute."
I thought Paul at one point said that he also opposed mercenaries but I'll be glad to look into it. Mercenaries are even worse than U.S. soldiers themselves. Paul would have to be absolutely nuts to prefer mercenaries to troops. He's more of a Libertarian than a conservative Republican. Libertarians can sometimes get slick and tricky.
Don't remember his suggestion that we deal with the Somali pirates by issuing Letters of Marque? He was laughed out of the national debate for weeks because of that.
I need to be reminded more on that. I'm limited on foreign policy understanding as there's enough to take care of inside the USA as it is. I apologize for my weakness on foreign policy.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
archives/2009/04/man_this_is_just_getting.php
And don't apologize for not knowing something. Where I work I get to find out what's going on around the world pretty much all 8 hours I'm there.
Besides, aren't I asking questions almost every day on here? I have a ton to catch up on, having only become really politically aware in 2008.
Paul also wants to shut down the FED. I'm 60% with him, 40% against him. But a big plus for him in my eyes is his integrity. A quality in extremely short supply on Capitol Hill (and the White House, although I had erroneously thought that wouldn't be the case this time around - I had expected Obama to be more conservative than I would prefer, but I did believe he would be honest. Boy was I wrong on that).
Paul however, has a long track record for standing for what he believes. Like him or not, you have to give him that. On the other had, he wants to end Social Security and Medicare. What he would do so the elderly wouldn't return to living on dog food again as they did before food stamps I'm not sure. Maybe nothing. I will never forget that old couple next door to me starving to death living on cheap dry dog food when I was very young. I had just moved in (summer 1963) when an ambulance showed up next door. I was so shocked and horrified. Nobody helped them, they were just left to die. It was after that when CBS ran the Hunger in America series and we got the Food Stamp Act of 1965. And 15 years later we got Reagan who labeled catsup a vegetable so he could take food from hungry children. Republican pigs.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Thanks for the reminder on Social Security. Someone gave me two articles on what Social Security really is and it did not start out with money. In fact, the very concept of Social Security is tied to having the utmost respect for the elderly, something that was supposed to make this country better than the rest. The same I would say with Medicare.
Here are the two articles you might find interesting:
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v3i6democrats.htm
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v3i1ss.htm
Based on those two articles, your guess about Ron Paul doing nothing for the elderly would sadly be correct and I would never forgive him for doing that. I will have to take this issue into account when writing him a letter asking him for his take on alternative practioners. It's already bad enough that a lot of today's young are being brainwashed into believing in "personal accounts" as somehow the best way to save Social Security. Some of them are even getting into arguments with their own elderly who actually know better that putting SS into the stock market is totally foolhardy. As for Obama and SS, like joining the Blue Dogs on health care I believe he's subtly open to slowly privatizing SS since nobody's discussing SS these days.
Paul would also abolish all environmental, consumer, and workplace health and safety regulation and do away with all wage and hour laws.
USan,
Thank you for clarifying that because though Pat is right about something, he is so wrong about so much. I think there might be some who are attracted by the appearance that he might be the reincarnation of Pat Paulson.
Blessed are those without living parents or grandparents for they are not supporting Social Security queens. In a Libertarian Utopia there is no place for old folks.
JenniferBedingfield July 23rd, 2009 11:57 am I have come to believe there is a certain "mindset"...maybe it's bordering on genetic....that were/are totally susceptible to the propaganda this country has been shoveling out since the beginning. You CANNOT get through to them. MANY depend upon and believe TV and the newspapers are the ultimate truth. I do not know, short of neuro-linguistic re-programming, how to reach these individuals. Maybe it's too late for them. They are precisely the type that keeps this government in power and thriving depite the lies and criminal activity committed on a minute to minute basis.
That's true but sometimes you never know. You'd be surprised to hear that some otherwise staunch conservatives such as my parents strongly favor single payer health care but that's probably because of what my cousin and I went through in different cases and times. Additionally, as NMLib has pointed out several times, even some supposedly progressive and/or liberal people will oppose single payer insanely. It's all trial and error and there are those who are too closed minded to reason with. I could care less that he was a liberal, conservative, libertarian, or whatever. He wanted help and I tried to make my idea clear but I had to find out after I exhausted all options to try to help him understand and open his heart. There are different ways to convince different people to agree on an idea as I have learned in life. That's why I try all venues before throwing in the towel.
Your friend sounds like an ex-friend of mine who, in October 2002, told me I was "off the deep end" when I explained that Bush obviously planned to invade Iraq. A few months later, as the drumbeats for invasion become audible even to my ex-friend, I was called "off the deep end" when I said it had nothing to do with liberating Iraq. Now, six years later, with our troops still in "liberated" Iraq and no end in sight, I wonder if my ex-friend still thinks I'm the one off the deep end.
If only we could leave this country to the people who deserve it...
As I explained in another post on this thread, it's all trial and error. On Iraq and your ex-friends, it all depends. It's all a matter of trying all venues of convincing before giving up. I don't mind and am happy to share the experience I had so that perhaps another idea to convince can be discovered. :)
I've had a similar encounter which I describe in my reply to Jennifer's post. Sometimes trying to play it nice with them makes them even more vehement and I have no clue as to why they act crazier and more violent the more I try to reason with them and explain.
Most of the time, their unfounded anger is already in them but you accidentally would have triggered them to release it without knowing it. It happens a lot. Once they start going desperate and even threaten violence, the best thing to do is back away and leave them to fend for themselves. That last part about God and gas chamber was totally way out of line of that conservative speaker.
Jennifer, I've come across similar rantings from rightwingers. As others have said, some cannot be reasoned with. I too would like to share a similar conversation with a rightwing dud who complains about taxes and HR 676.
Here's a conversation I had with a dud who obsesses about higher taxes after which he simply left:
Conservative talker:
Who is going to pay for it...or will it be yet another tax added to what is taken out of my paycheck. Another chunk of the money I earned to feed my family and myself will be taken to go to subsidize the healthcare of someone who isn't responsible enough to pay for it themselves. Where will it end, will it be when I am being taxed so much that I can't afford to live and support my wife and daughter.
My response:
First of all, you're paying 4 times as much in taxes to allow Big Pharma and Big Insurance to rip you, me, and everyone off than what you'd pay for single payer. If you had even read the details, single payer actually enforces personal responsibility while Big Insurance and Big Pharma don't. If you cared so much about personal responsibility as you claim, then you should be showing your anger against Big Insurance and Big Pharma who are taking your hard-earned tax dollars to give those people you claim are irresponsible their care. Since single payer would cost far less than the current privatized care, you would actually pay less in taxes as government would have to lower the taxation as a result. Why should we waste more money on wars and Wall Street?
Conservative talker:
HR676 is a huge expansion to Medicare which is already an immensely badly run system, rampant with fraud and mismanagement, and they want to vastly increase it, are you kidding me. Of course the specifics of the bills funding was glossed over quite effectively, especially the part about the sliding scale of costs, that wasn't vague or anything. As it stands right now the states are already forced to pay for a big percentage of Medicare, and they want to increase it...so as I said before where are they going to get the money to pay for it?
My response:
First of all, by eliminating the middle men Big Insurance and Big Pharma, the money to pay for single payer will be there. If you don't want Medicare, you can opt out of it. The same for single payer. Single payer actually gives you a choice. Big Insurance doesn't. FYI, single payer is NOT socialized medicine. In fact, single payer would replace Medicare entirely. A real conservative rather than a typical political one would support single payer. Even Canada and UK conservative leaders aren't this reckless.
Conservative talker:
You're sounding too confusing. My insurance company is doing very well and pays for my coverage very well. I'm a very responsible adult and can take care of myself and I don't want government dictating my health care coverage for me. I don't mind government spending what it takes to get rid of those "Islamofacists" so my wife, daughter, and I can feel safe and sound. I'm also enjoying my portfolio getting back to normal and maybe Obama was right to bail out those companies even though I supported Mccain and Palin and will continue to vote Republican. Anyone who wants government to provide them free health care that comes from my taxpayer money should be sent to the gas chambers by GOD !
My response:
Sir, I do not agree with your cruel and gutter talk but I wish you and your family well. Since you are getting too personal about this issue, I will leave it GOD to help you out. Good day.
I've just seen the best movie, 2005 I think, but I wasn't aware of it. "Side Effects" with Kathryn Heigl. The writer and director of it is a former pharmaceutical sales rep, and this movie is a total indictment of the pharma industry.
I read the movie review on Wikipedia. In the real world, being honest would get you fired in sharp contrast to the film. I'll bet this film sure puts the "War on Drugs" to shame.
The pharmaceutical sales rep being honest with the doctors she calls on is part of the comedic element in this movie. She does it because she doesn't give a shit any more, and doesn't care if she gets fired, but it turns out that the physicians are desperate for real information on dangers and side effects because there is no real info available in the pharma spin. Anyway, you have to rent the DVD and watch it. I'd say it is among the best movies of this decade. There is an optional director's commentary which is quite revealing. She had to retain legal advisors for every scene because of the savage power of the pharmaceutical industry.
Well as far as I'm aware you can't opt out of single-payer, it makes it illegal for anyone to sell insurance that covers what the system covers.
But anyway, check out this conversation I had with my aunt no more than 15 minutes ago, who works in the health insurance industry, after she noticed my support for single-payer in my Facebook status:
Zachary
hello
Karen
hello
sorry but cant help with the Healthcare Reform. Working in the industry, we are not too excited about it.
Zachary
hehe
well
i havent been able to see a doctor since i graduated. no money for one
ive been out of my blood pressure meds for a couple months, cant get them refilled
i tried getting an additional part-tme job so id have money to take car eof this and other things, but no luck
so now im buying a suit with my next paycheck so i can try to get a better paying job
Karen
can you qualif for medicaid?
Zachary
so i support single-payer ;-p
maybe
but even that doesnt cover doctor's visits or prescripitons
and it still has a premium, doesnt it?
i have no money to spare for this stuff
Karen
depends on income
Zachary
i gross about 17k a year
Karen
sorry but a better job would give you all that. Once you have it. you won't be happy waiting 3 months for a visit. That is what happens in Canada. I know lots of people who have relatives u there. Good luck with the job. Youre smart, it will work out. love Aunt Karen
About the jobs thing, there are a lot of temporary/contract to permanent positions at large and in most cases, you won't get any health benefits no matter how high the pay unless you get fulltime employment. Even if you do get benefits, it's very limited. I was quite surprised when I once switched jobs to a better paying one only to notice my health benefits significantly smaller.
It's hard to say if your aunt supports single payer. When I first came on to this site, I was grilled when I admitted my current employment position and type of industry and since then I remembered that sooner or later I'd have to answer questions about why I really chose it and what I'm really gaining from it all. I'm guessing that like myself, your aunt is in a dilemma trying to make ends meet and yet is not really comfortable where she's working at. Stuff such as 3 months waiting myth is what they're trained by their companies to say. As the economy gets worse and I don't know how long that will stretch out, there will be a lot of denial expressions implicitly acknowledge that feeling of job insecurity. She will need to be able to fall back on a better job outside the insurance industries at some point as will I outside of DOD.
Jennifer, you wore that guy down until he gave you a desperate argument. Save the jobs of the insurance people, gawd. People must go without healthcare, go blind, lame and die to save the jobs of insurance people, many of which jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries anyway. Any kind of social health care plan will certainly create new jobs. I'll bet that same guy isn't interested in saving the jobs of social security and medicare administrators, clerks, managers, etc. I heard a radio interview a few years ago about how California's unemployment claims jobs were offshored, LOL!
Bliss, I didn't want to wear him down at all and thought that I was actually helping him out. When he got to being desperate and engaging in name-calling, I figured that I might as well leave him to his own devices. He works in another company that's related to the one I work for. If he really goes nuts and tries to make my company throw me out because I tried to be helpful, I'm ready to find another company to work in no matter how long it takes. I checked his company out and through a couple of his co-employees who emailed me an apology letter for his rude behavior, they actually admitted that their insurance provider will have to be let go of to avert a possible bankruptcy ! I hope his manager hears about this and gives him the pink slip. Maybe then he'll learn about single payer the hard way when he finds himself out of work and begging for mercy.
About CA and offshoring, I'll have plenty to say on offshoring and outsourcing later but for all the macho-egotistical "manliness" of Arnold, he sure can't learn to build a strong labor force within the state but will instead choose to pick on someone overseas ready to settle for nearly being a slave laborer. With the way CA and NY are in dire straits, I'm literally afraid to even visit either one of those states let alone live there.
Well said, Space Cadet! This is why I feel I am banging my head against a wall when I try to discuss the issues with my mainstream-CNN-MSNBC-friends-family. The talking heads on the TV don't mention or talk about the things I mention, so I am immediately dismissed as a "conspiracy theorist" and whatnot. It's sad -and lonely - being in the minority who sees through the corporate media hologram of bullsh$t. (to paraphrase Joe Bageant)
BTW- Bageant's "Escape from the Zombie Food Court" is an incredible read... http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/04/
escape-from-the-zombie-food-court.html
Quote: "We suffer under a mass national hallucination. Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a "theater state."
In our theater state, we know the world through media productions which are edited and shaped to instruct us on how to look and behave and view the outside world. As in all staged productions and illusions, everyone we see is an actor. There are the television actors portraying what supposedly represents reality. Non-actors in Congress perform in front of the cameras, as the American empire's cultural machinery weaves and spins out our cultural mythology."
Sioux Rose
MARK: Excellent post. I know exactly what you mean. The guy I date BELIEVES what's on TV presuming that anyone who made it there, either is talented or has unimpeachable credentials! And when I talk politics with my more enlightened friends, as soon as I start connecting "the big dots," they tell me that I am "too negative." It's like "we're all Californians" now. Everyone just wants to believe it'll all work out. The New Age publications have to an extent run parallel with the End Times (fundamentalist Christian) publications, as both fully expect Deliverance from a force outside ourselves. I realize that a great awakening can change mankind's destiny; yet I also see in plain sight the tremendous impediment posed in the form of a media that WANTS persons to stay asleep. Sings them lies and lullabies to keep them in a semi-somnambulistic trance, and when that doesn't work gives them bread, circuses, sporting events (like those of the Roman Arena), and anti-depressant drugs. To foment the massive awakening that is needed is the modern equivalent of one of those tests concocted and delivered by the three fates aimed at a character (of society) from mythology. I hope that we all add to that reckoning in our own small ways... "The Butterfly Effect" style.
Sioux Rose
SPACE CADET: Very important points, and well-stated.
Your post explains why the likes of Rupert Murdoch invest in so many forms of media. This control of message has run parallel with more and more wealth being drawn to the top of the fiscal pyramid. And of course the two circumstances reinforce one another. A media big whig won in Italy, in Mexico, and a few have incredible influence in the U.S. These billionaires understand that the one who controls message controls policy, and can mold the public's perception(s) accordingly.
" Many poor Americans actually do believe that single-payer healthcare would represent the dawn of a ruthless, communist system complete with Alaskan Gulags and reduced individual freedoms."
Right you are. It is absolutely amazing how many people I have seen recently, that have either stated verbally, or as a written response to a news article regarding healthcare reform, who are terrified that if we were to allow a public option (meaning to them a complete government takeover of everything involved with healthcare, including doctors, hospitals, nurses), that all of a suddent they won't have any freedom left. Period. Further, they still, thanks to our RWM (right wing media), believe that we have the absolute best healthcare system in the world, second to none. They believe that most of the uninsured are illegal aliens. Amazing!!!
The public option could work if it sets the bar with good coverage and lower rates than private insurance. That would attract a lot of people, not just the old and sick, and would create a large enough pool to be sustainable. Once that happened more people would see it working and switch. I would switch to it in a heartbeat, and I'm not old or sick.
And that's the problem: Big Insurance doesn't want the public option because they simply can't compete.
Actually, they could compete if they'd eliminate executive salaries and perquisites, CEO bonuses, and marketing and legal budgets.
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Sometime last week I think, Beck tried to argue that insurance profits were only like .01% of all expenses related to healthcare, to argue insurance profits weren't the problem.
Naturally, he neglected to mention (or perhaps doesn't know) that all those executive salaries, CEO bonuses, and marketing and legal budgets count as expenses, and are thus deducted from revenue and not counted as profits. Am I right?