As many know I am totally supportive of Health Care Reform and at the very least a Public Option to allow people to have a non profit source of insurance. Because of this I am on the receiving end of every right wing, wacko, ignorant, racist, yahoo email on the planet. So to save myself time, here is my response to all of them:
Make the rounds of your neighborhood and start seeing the cans to collect for someone's medical care. Great country we have where families hold car washes and collect pennies to pay their medical bills. Then thank Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Wellpoint and all the other blood sucking vampires for the "Best Medical Care money can buy"
Most of the charges such as bumping off grandma are totally false and complete scaremongering put out by a combination of the far right and the more than $2 million per day being spent by insurance companies to fight anything that might cut into their 30-40% profits for providing inadequate financing of the health systems, killing 18,000 people a year, forcing people into bankruptcy with the loss of homes and encouraging divorce so that a well spouse can preserve the family savings while dumping the sick spouse on the tax payer just to be able to survive.
One other item. Have everyone you know check their health insurance policies for the phrase, "Maximum lifetime coverage". Take that amount and divide it by $300,000 which is the yearly cost for cancer treatment. How much time do they get before the insurance company dumps them?
On the Constitutional issue, if this argument were true then there would be no Social Security or Medicare. Now there is a political element that thinks these two things should be wiped out, but I doubt most people (including the ones holding signs and screaming at town halls) are among them. Both of these are based in the Constitutional right of taxation to "Provide for the General welfare". A healthy and secure population is a benefit to the whole of society.
So if you are willing to give up both Social Security and Medicare, be my guest. When you leave there will be more for the rest of us covered by that "Single Payer, Government Run" plan. I'm fighting for decent healthcare for everyone so that people don't die from lack of care or are driven into poverty while insurance companies deny coverage, dump customers, enforce lifetime maximums, and interfere with medical decisions (dare I say "rationing"), not to mention the executives rake in millions in salary and the billions in corporate profits while contributing absolutely NOTHING to the medical care of a nation.
This is a reprint from one of my earliest blog posts. The death of Senator Edward Kennedy reminds me of the first time the nation lost a Kennedy. Today, the brother who picked up the pieces for his family following the deaths of John and Bobby and the man who took up the causes following the deaths of Bobby and Martin Luther King is gone. Almost 50 years ago we had a set of ideals. We really did believe that a helping hand to the weakest among us was a good thing. This all too self centered age needs to remember that lesson now. Health care that does not destroy a family with unbearable expenses when it can be had at all is not a privilege, it is a right ... one we should all be willing to afford.
A child was born in February of 1963. Approximately 15 years later, a teacher gave him the assignment to write about the year he was born. Since he wasn’t, as yet, confidant enough to tackle a creative exposition completely on his own, he sought his mother’s assistance. After a little enforced research, he came home with, “I have an idea”. He and his mother sat down together to do an interview and then have him write about the year plus one month from October 1962 to November 1963. Starting Out was the result.
STARTING OUT
Had she or hadn’t she? Sleeping pills, yes, but what? Thalidomide – the name haunted her and every other pregnant woman in 1962. Those babies! – Her baby? She was scared and would stay that way until next year.
El Camino Real – beautiful as only Northern California can be in the October sun. The radio blared away with the Four Seasons’ “Sherry”. They were young, a baby on the way, and happy – at least on this day. The President interrupted the music, “Today I have ordered a blockade of Cuba!” Suddenly their bright world was dark. They waited. The world waited. Six days later the Russian ships turned around and the sun came out again, but for how long?
“You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more” sounded like as good a promise as any following the November elections. Vaughn Meader had them all laughing with his satire of the Kennedy White House, “Goodnight Jackie. Goodnight Bobby. Goodnight Ethel. Do you have your bear, Teddy?”
“Puff the Magic Dragon” welcomed a baby boy into the world on February 21, 1963. His mother counted fingers and toes in time to the music. He was beautiful, perfect, loved. She was politically aware and terribly liberal, but at this moment, it didn’t matter that the South was in an uproar over integration or that the Supreme Court had reaffirmed the right of peaceful assembly. Christopher Alan was here and safe. Let the world take care of itself. She had bigger responsibilities.
The baby went to the movies right along with mommy and daddy. An infant-seat made seeing “The Birds” and “Lawrence of Arabia” easy. And to think it wasn’t that long ago that she thought Hula Hoops were the greatest invention ever!
Divorce was becoming the great American pastime. She was just one more casualty that May. There were lots of casualties – her kind and the “advisors” in Viet Nam. It was a time of commitment and she was supposed to care about the Green Berets, care about the Peace Corps, care about LSD and Timothy Leary, care about so much, but there just wasn’t time. Being a single working mother took all of her hours. Given her choice of trends to lead, this wouldn’t have been it. She and Tony Bennett had both left their hearts in San Francisco. Rod McKuen might think that love had been good to him. She disagreed. Oh well, McDonalds sold 15-cent hamburgers. At least she didn’t have to cook.
JFK was a Berliner at the wall, and Camelot was in full swing. Pope John XXIII died; the world mourned a good man. Fanny Hill fought its way through obscenity trials, while Bob Dylan led the war protesters with “Blowin’ in the Wind”. Martin Luther King had a dream near the Washington Monument – too late for Medgar Evers murdered the previous June and not in time for the four young girls bombed to death in church the following September. The US/USSR hotline was installed, and the “red phone” became a symbol of the unthinkable. Could anything else happen in this crazy year?
Los Angeles baseball fans were in heaven, and Kofax and Drysdale were patron saints! A four game sweep of the World Series had the city pretending it was New Year’s Eve, as confetti and champagne rained down on the heroes! Those beautiful no-hitter bums!
Her child was ten months old now, but for three days he slept almost constantly as if he understood that this was no time for a baby to cry. The tears fell uncontrollably from much older eyes. The drums of November marked a national tragedy. “Where were you when you heard?” would become the question a generation could answer. Kennedy dead and two days later his accused assassin died “live” on TV. On the television: the flag, the riderless horse, and the constant pictures of a nation stunned by grief. She hovered over the sleeping infant, her tears dropping on the blond curls. What have we done to you? What will become of you? Was there any hope left for the world or this new person? They would have to wait and see – together.
For those curious as to “then what happened”, Christopher is now past 40. He retired from the U.S. Army and now lives and works in the state of Washington. He is divorced with one son. His parents remarried only to divorce again seven years later (another story). He has a sister and two beautiful nieces.
His mother is a retired writer and editor and is still happily single. As with most of the country, she is no longer a sixties liberal and has settled somewhere around fanatically moderate Democratic/Republican: Social issues left, fiscal issues right with more than enough exceptions in between to give anyone political schizophrenia
