I’m tired of the games

The Following Is a Political Rant on Health Care – consider yourself warned

I don’t want to hear anyone – President, administration personnel or member of either chamber of Congress – say anything about health care reform unless they are saying that the bill they are proposing guarantees health care for every citizen of the United States.

That’s it. No convoluted plans, no compromises. Every person in this country deserves health care as a fundamental right. It’s embarrassing that we have the most expensive but least effective coverage of the world’s leading industrialized countries (and some of the poorest counltries). Think about it: a foreign army threatens, sure we’ll save you; your house is burning down, sure we’ll put it out; someone is burgling your house, the police will be right there; you’re dying of a curable disease but can’t afford the treatment, sorry, maybe we’ll send flowers. Who does that make sense to?

I want the minimum level of care tied to what members of Congress get (which is paid for by our tax dollars). In other words, no member of Congress or their family can have better coverage than the lowest level of coverage available to an average citizen. Guaranteed, birth to death.

If we must maintain the for-profit health insurance model, then every American should get a subsidy to pay for insurance. I don’t give a damn if insurance company executives can’t make millions, we are talking about peoples’ lives here. This affects health and emotional and financial security. The fact that any citizen of the United States must choose between food and prescriptions, or rent and a doctor visit, is obscene.

Don’t bother telling me that we can’t afford to have a government bureaucrat making decisions about our health care. For one thing, it seems to be fine to have this done for people on Medicare or Medicaid and for veterans – you know, the people who put their lives on the line for us. For another, I have insurance company bureaucrats who personally profit from denying benefits making those decisions now so how would it be worse?

And stop throwing out lame ideas like taxing benefits or taxing sugar and tobacco to pay for this. Raise the marginal rates on income over $500,000. Tax stock transactions, say $0.25 per transfer, to pay for the bailouts to recover that money. Fuck the hedge fund managers and tax their income as income, not as capital gains. Why someone earning billions pays 15% tax and someone earning $50k has to pay 22% is beyond me. And the effective rate on corporations in this country is 0%, how about we make that more equitable so the average citizen doesn’t have to pay for everything?

Any plan to further cut Medicare and Medicaid is also outrageous. Medicare administration has already been farmed out to private companies. That’s tax dollars from a non-profit government agency being funneled to third party administrators. An additional layer of unnecessary administration has been added whose only job is to cut benefits so they can show a profit. That is criminal.

Don’t forget, we already subsidize healthcare. For every emergency room visit that can’t be paid for, for every indigent care case, for every person without health insurance, the insurance premiums and hospital fees are pushed up to cover the loss.

Yes, I am bitter and royally pissed. Everyone in Washington is playing political games with this. This is much more than a political power play. This is a game that affects peoples’ lives. To fight against health care is to support insurance company policy that harms lives and has lead to deaths. All for the sake of profit.

Also, please remember that the network of Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans were originally not for profit, and they made tons of money and the executives made huge salaries.

All that we have now is a system of for-profit insurance that can be arbitrarily cancelled and emergency rooms nationwide that are strained to the breaking point, with many closing and leaving the community they served with no place to turn for help. To believe that this constitutes a working health care system is delusional or at best wishful thinking.

We need change – now where have I heard that hollow statement before? We need it now. This is a moral imperative. People are suffering and dying because of our collective actions. I don’t know what to do beyond this here and annoying my Congress critters, which I do routinely. Any suggestions?

One more thing: health insurance is not health care. The current conversation is focused on insurance and forgets the people who need care.