Bill Moyers on Medicare for Everyone

The Saddest Thing I've Read Today

In a CNN article about the Aurora shootings, I've found this passage:

[...] Caleb Medley, who was shot in the head, lost an eye and sustained from [sic] brain damage. "The surgeon came and talked to us and said he'd be in ICU at least a week," said Medley's friend, Michael West, who set up a website to help take care of medical bills and the needs of Medley's family."

Medley, as it happens, was uninsured at the time of the shooting.

In what country, I ask you, do the friends or the family of a shooting victim have to set up a website to raise the money needed to pay the victim's medical bills? Only in truly sick, twisted country that has it values upside down; one in which people with guns will show up at a rally to protest the advent of quasi-universal health care. In sum: only in America.

Explain This

Libertarians, Republicans, and heartless curmudgeons need to explain to me why it is not acceptable to have a society in which some people are "wards of the state" but it is perfectly fine for people to be chained to their employer(s).


Case in point:

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans file bankruptcy because they cannot afford their medical bills. Thousands more are locked into jobs their [sic] hate because they cannot risk losing their employer-provided health insurance while they have a preexisting condition. (Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 27, 2012 at 10:12 pm)

So: It is socialism, hence unacceptable, for the State to provide health care services to residents who pay taxes (presumably for the privilege of maintaining the most bloated military in the world). It is the triumph of liberty when people are turned into indentured servants, chained to their employer(s) because they have medical conditions which would be too costly to manage without the benefit of health insurance provided by a corporation that enjoys rates unknown and unavailable to individuals


This is the philosophy of those, like Mitt Romney, who advise everyone to go and create a business, be successful, while failing to mention that it's often the self-starters who are barred by prohibitive costs from participating in the health insurance market. (And imagine what kind of idiot it takes to propose a society where everybody should pursue the ambition of being a tycoon or small business owner: Who would work for these entrepreneurs? No one, because according to idiots like candidate Romney we should all strive to be independent business people. Oh, and corporations are people.)


May a giant dick fall from the sky and jail-rape these idiots. 

Greed vs. Life

Hunter at Daily Kos gives a very typically pitiless and accurate take down of the conservatives' arguments against universal health care, in which he unmasks the freedom vs.socialism/government argument for a what it really is: an argument for greed over life.

You can read Hunter's whole impeccable argument, Steve King is still a rotten human being by clicking the link. But a few excerpts bear highlighting:

The freedom of the healthy, it is presumed, will be abridged if they are taxed even a penny to pay for the less healthy. The freedom of the decently well off will be compromised, it is argued straight-out, we consider it a national interest to care for people those "well off" individuals deem it unnecessary to care for. 

[...] The future potential of a need for health care among all living humans would seem to be a self-evident premise, and existing federal law provides that they will be cared for in emergency situations, whether they have preemptively "entered into" that commerce or not. The hospitals and other institutions responsible for that care are already actively engaged in—and mandated to— provide that commerce. There's no opt-out there. There is no citizen who does not benefit from that explicit federal guarantee of some very basic level of care, even if they, like Mr. King's Randian supermen, never actually need to partake of it. They are in that commerce. They benefit from it.

[...] The conservative argument is that there is no underlying right to health care, there is no obligation to provide citizens with that care, and that establishing a tax or fine or program to provide that care is in fact the true infringement of rights and freedoms, as some people might be put out by it. This argument is considered implausible in nearly all other aspects of government: There is no opt-out of defense spending, if you do not wish to pay for it. There is no little box to check if you do not want your tax dollars to go towards transportation spending, or infrastructure improvements, or courthouses, or police forces, or fire prevention efforts. These are decided legal issues. The notion that the rights of a certain small subset of the greedy and amoral are being wounded by requiring them to partake of a federal program to insure all others would seemingly be a rather asinine proposition. For millennial conservatism, however, it is not. 

[...] The "right" not to be taxed is being weighed against the "right" of poorer or less fortunate citizens to live, and the outcome of that question is honestly being presumed as debatable, even though there are precious few other contexts in which you could debate the question and not be considered, for lack of a better phrase, a goddamn monster. 

 Read the rest of it. It's well worth it.

If Broccoli Were Like Health Insurance...

If broccoli were like health insurance, in cartoon form. What a country, eh?

Hunter Hits Another Bulls' Eye

That'd be Hunter over at Daily Kos, and his latest bull's eye is his post about this week's Supreme Court Kabuki Theater job.

You can read it here.

Broccoli, Vile Weed! (And Even Viler Justices)

There's a famed episode of Seinfeld where Jerry, in order to save a friend's job who works at Kenny Rogers' Roasters, accepts to switch apartments with Kramer, who had started a protest against the restaurant in an attempt to put it out of business so he could resume a regular sleeping schedule (the restaurant's red neon sign prevented Kramer from catching a good night's sleep).

Later in the show, though, Jerry discovers that in spite of the protest, Kramer (and Newman) has become addicted to the chicken, and figures out that Kramer would not have the guts to resume his ploy to put the restaurant out of business even if he had to go back to his apartment. Jerry finds out because he meets Newman at Kenny Rogers' and the clerk who hands Newman the order says "Oh, don't forget your broccoli." Jerry says "Broccoli? You wouldn't eat broccoli if it were deep-covered in chocolate sauce!" Newman's half-heartedly responds "I love broccoli!", so Jerry exhorts him to have some broccoli, then. Newman does and proceeds to spit it out after almost choking on it and exclaims "Vile weed!". That's how Jerry uncovers Kramer's ruse and forces Kramer to switch back apartments.

This week's health care arguments in front of the Supreme Court reminded me of that episode, because broccoli was a central plot twist in the Seinfeld episode and was also a central argument in Justice Scalia's opposition to the Affordable Healthcare Act. Scalia, whose antics are legendary and whose intelligence and rhetorical abilities are obviously greatly overrated, contended that allowing one government mandate (the individual mandate to purchase health care or pay a tax penalty) might lead to another (the government's hypothetical mandate to all Americans to purchase broccoli).

Paul Krugman was one of many commentators who pointed out that Scalia's argument is disingenuous because one American's failure to purchase broccoli does not have any effect on another American's ability to purchase the vegetable or on its affordability. Justice Scalia is a sure vote in the pocket of the Act's opponents, no doubt. His clumsy rhetoric and his inability (or unwillingness) to understand the difference that goes between the grocery market and the health care market.

But where Don Verrilli, Solicitor General of the United States, caught a lot of flack in the mainstream media for his fumbling defense of the ACA's individual mandate requirement, Justice Scalia caught almost none for his pedestrian offense against logic and his attack against the Act's pivotal requirement. This difference in treatment is another example, in case one was needed, of the ridiculous job that the MSM does in informing the American public about the content of the issues. No wonder so many Americans are confused and think that both sides are equally guilty for the country's failures.

Perhaps, as Newman says in the Kenny Rogers' Roasters episode, broccoli is a vile weed. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind, however, that Justice Scalia's presumed defense of individual liberty in the name of broccoli is very vile weed.

Now That The Health Care Arguments Have Been Heard, Let The Arguments Begin

For the insatiably masochistic, like me, here are a couple interesting posts about this week's SCOTUS hearings on health care.
The Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act, and the Slippery Slope (by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago)
No Surprise: The Supreme Court Is Hostile To Health Care (by Adam Winkler, Professor of Law, UCLA)

Start From Scratch

I said it before and I will say it again: The best thing that the Supreme Court could do for all of us is shoot down the individual mandate that is that foundation of the Affordable Healthcare Act. In saying it I know that I will draw the ire of many, many of whom I sincerely respect.

As you know, I am no libertarian and no conservative, but I do believe that the Affordable Healthcare Act is a total screw up of the promise of health care for all, brought about by a weak President and Democratic majority. It was a half-assed, half-hearted attempt to make health care accessible to all Americans without pissing off the insurance industry and the medical-hospital complex too much. It was never, in spite of the name, an attempt to make health care more affordable. If it had been, cost meaningful controls would have been part of the law. They are not. The closest the law gets to some form of cost control is to mandate that insurance companies must spend 80 cents on the dollar on health care, which is no cost control at all, because it does nothing to prevent costs from rising at the rate they have been and beyond.

At this point, the best thing that can happen is for the Supreme Court to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional. Send the whole law back to the drawing board, and let the states deal with creating a universal health care system for its residents. That's how universal, single-payer health care started in Canada. That's probably what it will take over here.

If Obama and the Democrats had really wanted to make health care affordable and accessible to all Americans, all they had to do was to open enrollment in Medicare to all Americans who wanted to enroll. If you want to achieve the goal of bringing the USA up to the same level of humanization as all advanced countries, it should be a piece of cake to do it for the country that constantly, and unjustifiably, calls itself the number one in the world. If you wanted to have every American citizen and legal resident covered by a universal health care system, do it through taxation: slash the military budget, and redirect that money to provide your people with what most other civilized countries regard as a basic human right.

Anything short of that is a hoax. The President and too many Democrats viewed health care reform not as a goal in itself, but as a means of currying and keeping political favor. Let them deal with the consequences. And apologize to all who will suffer because of their short-sightedness.

Wherein Wendell Potter Takes Politifact to Task

Wendell Potter, former insurance company executive turned whistleblower, has written a post in which he takes Politifact to task for choosing a "Lie of the Year" that is actually true.

Duh!

Here's a report from the reputable Guttmacher Institute, showing that public funding contraception reduces unwanted pregnancies.

Of course, the United States is full of morons who think that abstinence education is the only solution to unwanted pregnancies, that we should not subsidize the lifestyle of poor "sluts" who "choose" to have sex, get pregnant and would seek an abortion, if state law allowed it. I also understand that Congress is full of callous, truly evil politicians who view abortion as the immortal wedge issue that can be applied to a stupid electorate every election to obtain the desired results; so these politicians cut public funding for reproductive care, in hopes that the "moral" divide between good Evangelicals and bad everyone else will play their advantage.

What I don't understand is how people of average intellect cannot see through the ploy of those who speak against abortion, and say they would like it to be banned, and also fight against access to contraceptive care. They are obviously not paladins of morality. They are just manipulative liars who care not one iota about women and their children and would say just about anything that people are dumb enough to believe to hold on to and expand their own power.

Surprise, Surprise? Nah!

President Obama and Congressional Democrats tried to pass (minor) health insurance reform for health care reform. Anyone who followed things closely could have told you that it was, for the most part, a sham, a scheme aimed at giving the impression of taking action when in fact the goal was to leave things as they were and, if possible, to expand the revenues of a powerful industry. Mission accomplished, for the industry at least. For Americans? Who are we kidding?

Krugman: Patients Are Not Consumers

It's a distinction that nowhere else in the civilized world would need to be made, but in the United States it takes a Nobel Prize winner to remind us: Patients are not consumers, and to nonchalantly use the two words interchangeably shows the level of corruption that big finance has brought upon us.

Medicare Isn't The Problem: It's The Solution

Robert Reich reminds the President, and all of us in the process, that Medicare is part of the solution in fixing America's fiscal problems. The only problem is that the right-wing echo chamber is fine-tuned to make Americans believe just the opposite.

Republican = Hypocrite, More Examples

Think Progress asks an interesting question: Why Has Every Pro-Repeal GOP Lawmaker Given Their Congressional Staff Taxpayer-Funded, Gov Health Care?
Answer: Because Republicans are hypocrites. I do hope their voters catch on. I have no hopes that they will start changing their vote, but it would be nice if they stopped giving it to the party whose behavior underscores its hypocrisy at every opportunity.

This is America

Ronald Flanagan's two cents? He believes his private health insurer "does not value human health, but rather, the bottom line." Hard to disagree, since Ceridian Cobra Services cancelled Mr. Flanagan's policy because he underpaid his bill by two cents. $.02, that's right.

Now, Mr. Flanagan, a cancer patient scheduled to have a biopsy before his policy was cancelled, is left with no coverage, fighting for his life.

This is America, where Republicans are fighting to repeal the health care bill that Democrats passed last year, which would prevent exactly this kind of gross injustice from taking place.

One word for the Ceridian executives and managers who designed and enacted the policy that resulted in Mr. Flanagan's coverage being dropped for an accidental underpayment of two cents: I hope you will live long enough to regret your decision and to suffer the consequences of it if you don't mend your murderous ways. Needless to say, the same words apply to all the politicians who are fighting to put corporate interests ahead of the lives of Americans, and all those who support them.

Health Care And the Cost of (Republican) Freedom

Republicans are forcing their hand on health care. Short of repealing the Affordable Care Act, which they cannot do--at least while there is a Democrat in the White House, they are seeking to defund the law that Congress passed last year. That is a real threat, one that angers me and those who, like me, suffer from chronic illnesses (not to mention those who suffer from illnesses that will lead to their death if not adequately treated).

I know my case is not exceptional, and that there are many who are in a much worse predicament. And that is exactly what is so frightening about my case: it is so typical.

Currently, I enjoy fairly decent health insurance coverage via my employer, and--as long as I remain employed--the worst things I have to worry about are the yearly increase in premiums, increasing co-pays, and declining benefits (at least until I find out otherwise). However, whether I like my employer or not, and for the most part I do, I do not have the leisure to quit and take a better offer. Why? Because I suffer from two chronic illnesses and pre-existing conditions are, in this country and in this country alone, a curse that never goes away. Even now, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, this is what the law provides for in the area of pre-existing conditions: [emphases added]

For most plans starting on or after September 23, these rules stop insurance companies from imposing pre-existing condition exclusions on your children; prohibit insurers from rescinding or taking away your coverage based on an unintentional mistake on an application; ban insurers from setting lifetime limits on your coverage; and restrict their use of annual limits on coverage.

Starting July 1, Americans locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition can begin enrolling in the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). This program offers insurance without medical underwriting to people who have been unable to get it because of a preexisting condition. It ends in 2014, when the ban on insurers refusing to cover adults with pre-existing conditions goes into effect and individuals will have affordable choices through Exchanges – the same choices as members of Congress.

(Source: The Affordable Care Act’s New Patient’s Bill of Rights)

That sounds like a fairly decent deal. However, notice a couple of things in the preceding paragraphs: annual limits on coverage are restricted (but not banned until 2014, when they finally will be). This may sound reasonable, depending on the limits or the condition a patient suffers from, but it does not offer total peace of mind for the chronically or gravely ill. Also, refusal to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions for adults is not outlawed until 2014. In the meantime, people can enroll in the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), which comes with its own set of concerns.

First concern: PCIP is not available in all states. For example, it is not available in my state of Colorado, because Colorado has opted to run the PCIP program itself. That's fine now, the rates seem pretty reasonable. But as states face growing budget shortfalls, guess what might happen to premiums, deductibles, co-pays, etc.? What then?

Also, note that in order to be eligible for PCIP enrollment a) you must have been uninsured for at least the last six months; b) if you currently have insurance coverage that doesn’t cover your medical condition or are enrolled in a state high risk pool, you are not eligible for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan; and c) you must have a pre-existing condition or have been denied coverage because of your health condition. (Source: Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan home page)

The rules that limit to PCIP enrollment are disturbing for the following reasons: first, access to PCIP is limited to those who meet strict eligibility rules; second, even those who are eligible to enroll are subjected to a waiting period of at least six months. Tell me: who pays for medical expenses during those six months?

Overall, the changes introduced by the Affordable Care Act are far from comprehensive or adequate, at least until 2014; they still leave a lot of gaps and a lot of questions to be answered. And yet, they are a step in the right direction because they start addressing the uniquely American system deficiencies that cause people to go without adequate care, or to go bankrupt while they are fighting for their lives, and because they unchain many Americans from the yoke of unhappy employment, allowing them to look for better opportunities elsewhere without the threat of being exposed to loss of health care or unreasonable costs (and you would think that Republicans, who always pose as friends of opportunity and free enterprise, would love that).

These changes seem like a step in the right direction for everyone, except for Republicans. In fact, Republicans are so unhappy with them that they would rather destroy a law which has the potential to improve the lives of countless Americans. Why? Because it is a government takeover of health care and, with it, the government is taking away your freedom. You heard me right: Republicans are STILL painting their opposition to the new health care laws as a principled stand for freedom, against a government takeover.

Leave aside the fact that the so-called government takeover of the health care system (the lie of 2010, according to the independent fact-checking organization Politifact) is set to deliver 40 million new customers in the hands of... insurance companies. What freedom exactly is the Affordable Care Act taking from us? The freedom to be sick and die without care? I guess Republicans think that I should thank them because they are fighting to preserve my freedom to die, or to go bankrupt while I try to get better.

The word freedom, in the mouths of Republicans, has lost all meaning. It has lost its uplifting nature and has been disfigured into a scare-word, the dog-whistle that the Republican Party successfully uses when they want the American people to willingly give up something that many generations have had to fight for, or that they are on the verge of achieving. Conquests that have worked for decades like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, are all under assault. How could it be? Because, say Republicans, they are an assault on your freedom. Say what?!?

A crazy gunman loads an extended magazine, capable of holding over 30 rounds, into a Glock and kills 6 and injures 18, so someone says "let's ban extended magazines". Not guns, mind you, just extended magazines. And Republicans scream "Freedom is under attack!", and nothing ever changes, nothing ever improves, nothing ever gets done. And people, increasingly apathetic and dumb, and outFoxed, fall for that trick every single time.

Make no mistake: The Republican Party is no friend of freedom. It is more and more like a tyrannical power that seeks to stifle dissent using patriotism as a pretext, that seeks to destroy critical thought (see their proud, avowed anti-intellectualism) and any criticism of its "pure" motives. Its only interests are never-ending wars and total deregulation. They do not care about you, they do not care about me, and they will not be happy until we are at the complete mercy of the corporations that they pave the road for.

There is no doubt that the Republican Party has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and of the corporations that the Chamber represents. It is obvious that their god is not the Christian god they profess to worship but Mammon. It is obvious that the only language they hear and respond to is the language of political corruption and bribery. And, for these reasons, it is not surprising that they are hell-bent (and I do hope that it is not just a figure of speech) on dismantling any and all improvements in access to and in the cost of health care services, just as they are hell-bent on destroying Social Security (under the pretense of strengthening it, no less), just as they have successfully fought to weaken unions to the point of irrelevance, just as they have started to starve our public education system by introducing charter schools, which are just the Republican Trojan horse to eventually reallocate all public funds to private schools.

The Republican Party's assault on everything public, everything good, is despicable enough when it does not directly lead to the death of Americans. But when it rises to the homicidal level of denying care to the sick it is not just despicable, it is outright criminal. And those who support Republican policies aimed at achieving the total depletion of the Commons to the sole and reckless advantage of the private sector are accomplices, who should be exposed and treated as such. They are, intentionally or not, acting against the Constitution that are supposedly defending from "the enemy within" (liberals, homosexuals, immigrants, "the Washington elite"). A Constitution, let's not forget, designed in such a manner as to make it possible "to form a more perfect Union", "[to] insure domestic Tranquility," and to "promote the general Welfare" of its people. Sure enough, the Constitution was also established to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Liberty, you know, freedom. The Founding Fathers could hardly have envisioned that the word liberty, freedom, would have become little more than a dog-whistle in Republican hands.

Not one Constitution-loving Republican has yet been able to explain how the Union is made more perfect by leaving people to die without care, how domestic tranquility is promoted by creating millions of angry survivors who know that their dear one's life might have been saved anywhere else in the civilized world, or by creating an ever growing underclass of have-nots, or by egregiously and willfully failing to promote--scratch that: consciously sabotaging--the general welfare of its people.

I will patiently wait for an answer. Until one pre-existing condition or another mercifully finishes its job.

Moral Law

There is law, and then there are morals. Sometimes the two overlap, sometimes they greatly diverge. One good example of that is health care in the U.S. of A. Plenty of laws, not enough morals.

It is immoral to let people die because they lack access to basic health care services, the type of services that are commonplace in other industrialized and civilized countries. It is also immoral to say that we cannot afford the cost of closing the health care gap in this country while billions of dollars are wasted on military enterprise, on bailing financial institutions out of the mess they created, and on tax loopholes for corporations that seek shelter under foreign law, or that outsource living-wage jobs to countries that employ modern forms of slavery. It is immoral, but not illegal, mind you. Just immoral. But immoral for whom?

Christians believe that without God there would be no morals. They speak of God as the source of the moral law, of moral obligation, and of the virtues and goals necessary to morality, without which mankind would be lost in a sea of relativity and subject to the law of the jungle. For them "evil opposes the moral will of God."

Since Republican elected officials are for the most part devout Christians (they like to trot out their Christian faith at every opportunity), it is hard to reconcile their indubitable sense of moral superiority, a sense that descends from their acceptance of and belief in a god which is supposed to be the source of morality, with their unanimous vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The Affordable Care Act is not perfect, in fact it was lacking in many respects, and--as much as it did to close the gap with civilized countries on health care--it fell short of providing the safeguards and protections from discrimination by health insurance companies and providers that civilized nations offer. However, without it, people will die. Not two, or three, or three hundred: 32,000 according to some estimates, more based on others. Not even that knowledge prevented 242 Republicans and 3 Democrats in the House from voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Since Republicans are the party of Country and God, we can presume that in casting this symbolic vote these good Christians were guided by the moral principles acquired through the belief in their God, the source of moral law.

Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the law did not prevent insurance companies form dropping patients that had become to risky or too expensive to cover. It did not prevent them from denying customers coverage for pre-existing conditions. It didn't even prevent them from denying people coverage altogether. The Affordable Care Act closed some of those gaps, though not all. It was a step, a baby step, in the right direction. It was an attempt to reduce the gap between what the law provides for and what is moral.

But for Republicans, paladins of morality that they are, the Affordable Care Act is too expensive, too intrusive into the freedom of Americans (presumably the sacred freedom to be sick without care), and too hard on poor insurance companies because it might push them out of business (in reality all it would have done is to cut into their gargantuan and ill gotten gains.) Is it immoral also? Well, unless you are thinking about the part of it which provides for abortion paid for with public funds (you know, the part of it that does not exist), it would have been hard to call immoral a piece of legislation that attempted to reduce the ever increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots (and the have-not-so-much-as-they-think-they-do-until-they-need-it). And so, with the exception of the non-existent abortion clause mentioned above, Republicans threw everything but the kitchen sink at the law but stopped short of calling it immoral.

And there you have it. The Republican/Christian hypocrisy on health care reform is so thick you could cut it with a knife. It is at least as egregious as the claim that God is the giver of moral law. Either there are no precepts that a good Republican/Christian will not ignore, or the existence of such God-given precepts and their godly origin is highly questionable. Because it is hard to believe that a morally perfect being would pass down to his followers such crappy moral laws that they could be interpreted so as to make the ability of insurance companies to make a profit a higher priority than, say, taking care of the sick and the infirm.

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Republicans

Guess what? The job killing (job crushing, job destroying, whatever Republicans wanna call it) Affordable Care Act does not kill, crush or destroy jobs. On the contrary.

Stop The Presses: Pre-Existing Conditions Exist for Nearly Everybody, Study Finds. Duh.

Seriously, guys. Did we need a government study to tell us that pre-existing conditions affect everybody, sooner or later?

Well, ok, so now we have a study that proves what every person of average intellect already knew. So now let's use it to influence public opinion, right? Yeah, right. I am sure, somehow, Democrats will find a way to screw this pooch, too.