American Logo December 10, 2013 Volume III, Issue #39 _____ In the United States, Obamacare’s 2,500 pages plus regulations (the Canadian Medicare Bill was 13 pages) is so complex that then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said before passage “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. - Ralph Nader ___ Private Enterprise Health Care: Americas Fukushima Give me socialism or give me death. Actually, Id rather die... - An American Credo A funny thing happened on the way to Obamacare, nee the Affordable Care Act. With a view to rendering it unaffordable, and thereby dead in the water, the Republicans fought it tooth and nail through endless committees in Congress and the Senate, abridging, amending, diluting, footnoting and rendering it contingent on passage of the Farm Bill, which included slashing seniors benefits and food stamps. Hitching it to the Presidents surname, it became a by-word for extravagance and the subject of late-night comedy on Fox News. Next, they tried dozens of time to have what was now the law of the land repealed, then aborted, then amended, then rendered toothless and, most recently and surprisingly, theyve chortled with glee because what they have reduced to a tattered Oz-like scarecrow, they think isnt being implemented quickly enough. That last is probably a Freudian slip, a death wish joined at the hip with a subconscious yearning to get it done. Why? Because this poor, beaten-up, half-assed, neutered thing of shreds and patches is star-crossed and strangling, not because it is government-operated, but rather quite the contrary, because of the free enterprise nature of this poor beast, once conceived as a noble steed rescuing society from systemic tragedy in the beginning, has now become a tattered zebra (which is to say, a horse put together by a committee). Once - was it decades ago? - at least in the minds of Teddy and his departed brother, Hillary and a unique White House initiative, even a few clairvoyant Conservatives - it was conceived as a stand-alone, single payer concept. Now it has transmogrified into a Frankenstein replete with overarching insurance brigands, for-profit HMOs and tertiary hucksters clinging like barnacles to the framework by offering minor unnecessary services such as product delivery and paper work. Actuarial simplicity is impossible with this hierarchy of leeches creaming billions off the top - which is the way we like it in America, and therefore ensuring that the Affordable Care Act will be for most people quite unAffordable. In Canada, as Ralph Nader and others point out, nobody dies for want of pay; in America, you either pay or die. And then theres the pharmaceutical imperative, an engulfing corporate overlay from those wonderful folks who brought you the Viagra four-hour erection, Bushs drug negotiation ban and Rumsfelds Swine Flu Shuffle. Completing the admixture, the nightmare is compounded by the jerry-built, self-conscious (because always suspect) million-footed 50-State bureaucracies commingled into one huge administrative log jam. In total, in fact, exactly what the Republicans SHOULD want to implement (if they were acting like George Will Republicans, instead of alley cat brawlers and Tea Bag looney tunes), much less if they actually wanted health care for anybody but well-heeled Congress persons. The keynote is in the complexity, whereas any sane health care system around and about the civilized world, be it the U.K., South Africa, Myanmar or Belgium, works well and with relative economy because of its powerful simplicity. Everybody is covered from birth to last rites. Single payer, no middlemen, no HMOs, no tertiary opportunists clinging like free riders to the side of a derelict streetcar, no 50 varieties of State acceptance, endorsement or empowerment, and above all no faux free enterprisers making the system safe for maximizing profit and minimizing efficacy. As Ralph Nader put it recently, affordable,comprehensive and universal. What do these backward second-rate countries around the world know that we dont? Nothing What do they do that we dont? Rather, what do they not do? They dont cling to this 1930 myth that wails that even a soupcon of socialism will bring our great Republic crashing down around our ears. What did Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck and FDR know that we dont? They knew instinctively that channeling social capital into a Hoover Dam, or Social Security, was right for the time, just as later, under Eisenhower, it was accepted that an Interstate highway system from Marthas Vineyard to La Jolla was a proper function of government. And still later, Daddy Bush would have been the last to admit that a ridiculous defense budget could be construed as socialism. But for some reason, simply looking after the health of the people is seen as tantamount to a frill, an entitlement, but more importantly, its well-nigh communism and anathema to all we hold dear. Socialism? It seems that we as a nation would simply rather die, rather than observe just a little plain gawddam common sense. A brief out-take on the subject of socialism, which has a tendency to modify, mollify and morph over time, at least at the convenience of politicians. In 1944 a funny little guy with glasses and curly hair named Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister and unrepentant politician (a bad combination) was elected Premier of Saskatchewan in Canada, at the head of a political party known as the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), of interest to Americans only because he would later become Donald Sutherlands father-in-law. But at the time, his lefty politics would have made any true Americans blood run cold. He introduced universal health care in Saskatchewan, and was pilloried by press, populace and Liberal and Conservative parties for this communistic abomination - until they realized the socio-economic and vote-getting clout it had, at which point it was eagerly adopted as their own by every government up to and including the present ultra-right-wing Harper Conservative government. And the New Democratic Party in Canada today is about as socialistic as Bernie Sanders. So far, at least, Canada hasnt suffered the fate of North Korea or Cuba as a result of their proletarian thinking. And Donald Sutherland is lucky that he wasnt around when Senator Joe McCarthy was cleaning up all those Russkies in Hollywood, Instead, what have they got that we dont? In all those backward countries , everybody is covered from cradle to grave, people are put first and coverage doesnt depend on employment or affordability. Here in the land of the free, more than 30 million Americans (the population of Canada) will still not be covered 10 years from now, insurance companies actually increase their profitability, and if you lose your job or income its tough luck, Charlie, you can do without or resort to the charity of an emergency room. Elsewhere, among inferior nations such as Belgium and South Africa, the healthcare system is paid for by taxpayers and modest premiums, hospital bills are simple and you dont even see them, and total outlay represents 10% or less of GDP. In America, in most cases if you cant afford the premiums you die, hospital bills and doctors are inscrutable, co-pays can be prohibitive and increasing total costs currently run to about 18% of GDP. Is the Fukashima comparison in the title an exaggeration? Time will tell. But today, for millions of Americans, the potential financial tsunami is already a reality..
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 23:24:37 +0000
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