Americans have always loathed being asked to pay their fair share of anything. This is, after all, the “land of the free—lunch”. If they can’t get it free, they want it cheap—quality be hanged.
I’ve talked about how an American secretary will go to a discount store and buy a dozen cheap outfits that last only months—whereas a European secretary, specifically the French, may buy only three or four outfits—but they will last (and look good) for years.
American car manufacturers understood their market for years—making cars designed to go only about three or four years and then be replaced. Only when cars started to cost as much as small houses did Japanese and European cars that run longer appeal to the American buyer.
GM and Chrysler’s troubles aren’t all of their own making. They have for decades given the American consumer exactly what he wanted (as K-Mart and Walmart did with clothes); they were blindsided by the change in consumer sentiment brought on by high prices.
And—have you noticed?—American voters have made an art of keeping both parties in enough power to ensure that no one will take their government freebies (Social Security, Pell grants, etc.) away and no one will make them pay the full cost for them.
That has gone on for so long that both voter and government seem to assume that it can go on forever—after all, who says that what goes up must absolutely come down? It hasn’t happened in American politics; why should it start now?
Now the people who object to making health care available for all Americans are rallying their troops with “tea parties”. If you don’t have health insurance, the attitude seems to be, “Go out and get a job”--ignoring the fact that fewer and fewer jobs come with benefits.
The hostile attitude toward government comes with a horrific fear of government. The government that we trust to build roads, highways, airports, water mains, sewers—to protect us from the outbreak of strange new diseases, to fund medical research, to fight to keep our oil supplies coming—that government would suddenly be a monster if it took over health care.
By building roads and highways, government has made the auto industry the most heavily subsidized industry in human history. And where would Boeing be if government didn’t build airports and maintain safe air routes? But subsidize health care for the poor and sickly, the under-insured, those in jobs without benefits? God forbid!
It’s a bit like the situation back in the 1760s when the British government asked Americans to pay their fair share of the costs of a war that protected them from the French and Indians. We rioted, we burned houses, we boycotted—until London gave up.
Or in the 1770s when London—admittedly to save some British investors—subsidized a tea company (no American government would EVER subsidize a company, right?) and allowed tea prices to fall far enough that it became cheaper to buy legal tea than the stuff brought in by American smugglers like John Hancock, we held the “Tea Party” to end all tea parties right there in Boston harbor. A huge amount of money was lost.
The British government reacted by defending the investors (again, no American government would act to defend investors over the desires of price-driven consumers, right?)—and we had a shooting war on our hands.
We would have been in serious trouble if the French, our old enemy, hadn’t taken the opportunity to get revenge on Britain by supplying us with 90% of our munitions, cannon, warships and troops. We repaid them by signing a separate treaty with England that left France in the lurch. She went broke, her government collapsed—and we didn’t have to pay.
Yes, indeedy, tea party time is definitely American. Especially when someone has the nerve to ask us to pay for something. We’ll take it free when we can, cheap from the lowest bidder when we absolutely can’t get it for nothing. Ah, piffle.
Showing posts with label Charity Health Care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charity Health Care. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
As Yoda Sees Politics, the Economy and War
The nation feels to me like the clutch is in. Do any of you remember the old stick shift cars—where you disengaged the engine from the wheels by putting in the clutch with your left foot? There was that moment when you felt like nothing was happening.
More frightening were the old propeller driven passenger aircraft. At about what seemed like 50 feet off the ground, the pilot changed the pitch of the propellers. In effect, he put the clutch in. It felt for a second like you were hanging motionless in mid air—until the propellers re-engaged and pulled the airship forward.
Each time that happened I’d remember all the headlines I’d read about planes that got “about 50 feet off the ground” and crashed. That was always the white knuckle moment for me in flying. (Jets never quite did that.)
That’s how Washington, Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, health care reform, the currency problems in Europe, our relations with China (and nearly everyone else) all feel to me. The clutch seems to be in. It doesn’t feel like anything is moving in any definite way.
Perhaps Yoda from Star Wars put it best: “The future, clouded it is.” One article says the economy is showing lots of silver around the linings—the next says we can count on a wave of foreclosures this year and major unemployment for three more years.
Each cites its expert sources. One says we are winning in Afghanistan; the next suggests that the ancient Afghan will to wreak vengeance isn’t going to go away just because we send in more troops and make nice to some village elders.
A single kid with explosives in his underwear makes flying an almost unendurable experience for many Americans. We are warned that international terror is as real a danger today as it ever was in 2001. But when was the last plane actually brought down?
On health care, we are told Obama has found the magic bullet. He will use an old Republican trick of getting the bill passed under the Reconciliation Process where only 51 votes are needed—instead of the filibuster busting sixty.
How many Democrats are looking at the polls (measuring how Americans feel about this particular 2000 page monstrosity of a porked out reform bill) and allowing the urge to survive move them toward a negative vote? Or just an abstention?
Nobody’s counting publicly. Pelosi has a margin of five votes to play with—are they all still with her? What are the chances for success if Congress does what a lot of people are calling for and starts all over again, with something people can understand?
What’s really going on in Iraq? Last week’s “Newsweek” reran the picture of Bush on the carrier with the sign, “Mission Accomplished”. Is it, finally—after seven bitter years? Or is there another joker or two in the deck like there was in 2003?
The DOW seems to be content to jiggle around in the mid-10,000 point range. A little up, a little down, even a bit sideways. Somebody says, “Boo” and down she goes; somebody shouts, “Hurrah” and up she jumps. What’s real?
I’m just sitting in my seat—like in the old airplanes—waiting for the props to start pulling air again. Even the Olympics didn’t seem as much fun as they used to. Does anybody have a clear idea whether we’re headed up or down?
“The future, clouded it is.”
More frightening were the old propeller driven passenger aircraft. At about what seemed like 50 feet off the ground, the pilot changed the pitch of the propellers. In effect, he put the clutch in. It felt for a second like you were hanging motionless in mid air—until the propellers re-engaged and pulled the airship forward.
Each time that happened I’d remember all the headlines I’d read about planes that got “about 50 feet off the ground” and crashed. That was always the white knuckle moment for me in flying. (Jets never quite did that.)
That’s how Washington, Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, health care reform, the currency problems in Europe, our relations with China (and nearly everyone else) all feel to me. The clutch seems to be in. It doesn’t feel like anything is moving in any definite way.
Perhaps Yoda from Star Wars put it best: “The future, clouded it is.” One article says the economy is showing lots of silver around the linings—the next says we can count on a wave of foreclosures this year and major unemployment for three more years.
Each cites its expert sources. One says we are winning in Afghanistan; the next suggests that the ancient Afghan will to wreak vengeance isn’t going to go away just because we send in more troops and make nice to some village elders.
A single kid with explosives in his underwear makes flying an almost unendurable experience for many Americans. We are warned that international terror is as real a danger today as it ever was in 2001. But when was the last plane actually brought down?
On health care, we are told Obama has found the magic bullet. He will use an old Republican trick of getting the bill passed under the Reconciliation Process where only 51 votes are needed—instead of the filibuster busting sixty.
How many Democrats are looking at the polls (measuring how Americans feel about this particular 2000 page monstrosity of a porked out reform bill) and allowing the urge to survive move them toward a negative vote? Or just an abstention?
Nobody’s counting publicly. Pelosi has a margin of five votes to play with—are they all still with her? What are the chances for success if Congress does what a lot of people are calling for and starts all over again, with something people can understand?
What’s really going on in Iraq? Last week’s “Newsweek” reran the picture of Bush on the carrier with the sign, “Mission Accomplished”. Is it, finally—after seven bitter years? Or is there another joker or two in the deck like there was in 2003?
The DOW seems to be content to jiggle around in the mid-10,000 point range. A little up, a little down, even a bit sideways. Somebody says, “Boo” and down she goes; somebody shouts, “Hurrah” and up she jumps. What’s real?
I’m just sitting in my seat—like in the old airplanes—waiting for the props to start pulling air again. Even the Olympics didn’t seem as much fun as they used to. Does anybody have a clear idea whether we’re headed up or down?
“The future, clouded it is.”
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
No Sanity In Sight For Health Care
Suppose you found yourself at the mercy of two care givers who had power over you. One said you needed water, but would allow you no food. The other said you needed food, but would allow you no water. Eventually you would die.
It seems to me this is precisely the situation that American health care finds itself in right now. The Democrats will give it no food; Republicans will give it no water. Unless somebody resolves something—quite soon, the entire system will die.
The Republicans will give it no “food”—they propose to leave up to 50 million Americans with no medical care at all. (That’s what being uninsured basically means—no health care at all.) As more and more voting Americans get laid off, and lose their insurance, that’s going to become a politically explosive situation. Bernanke at the Fed has just said he expects high unemployment to continue through at least 2012.
It’s also going to drag down the entire system as more and more of the uninsured are forced to become “charity” patients because untreated symptoms turn into catastrophic disease. Emergency rooms and hospitals are forced to treat these for “free”—and then pass the cost on to paying patients and their insurance companies.
Everyone loses as rates and costs keep skyrocketing. “Free” ain’t free in a hospital. That’s why you hear stories about a box of tissues costing twenty bucks—that’s how they bill you or your insurance for all those “free”/charity cases.
Democrats will give the system no “water”. They will push for nothing that will cut the horrendous (and rising) costs of our tottering system. Pile on fifty million more patients into our present system and bankruptcy will come all the faster.
But, the Republicans protest, if we insure the uninsured we will need to ration medical care in order to cut costs. To that the first answer is: show us a more vicious system of rationing than the present one where we RATION by eliminating those without insurance from the system.
There is something absolutely pernicious about refusing to give up steak in order to give a little gruel to a man on the verge of death by starvation. And that IS the attitude of many of the tea party goers who are so afraid someone may tamper with “MY Medicare” they are willing to let millions suffer and thousands die rather than have any limits imposed on themselves.
(That kind of supreme indifference to the well-being of one’s fellow man goes so far beyond the pale of charity as it is enjoined by Christianity, Judaism or Islam that it is absolutely breath-taking. And so much of the indifference is justified in the name of “religion”!)
Democrats and Republicans glare at one another over what seems to be an unbridgeable gulf. Neither will give in. More importantly neither will acknowledge that without action on both fronts—cutting costs AND caring for the uninsured—our present system WILL collapse.
Can it be done? Are “water” and “food” mutually exclusive, like having one’s cake and eating it too? No, not at all. It’s perfectly doable. You do two things. One) you throw all Americans into ONE insurance pool. That’s spreads the risk as equitably as it possibly can be.
That means, two) a single insurer. Just one, for the whole country. Since that will be the only buyer in the entire US for all drugs and medical supplies, it will have a lot of clout when it comes to holding the line on fees and prices. That will cut costs. (Think how many people in hospitals and doctors’ offices currently draw salaries for trying to meet the different requirements of fifty or more different insurance companies, all with different rules!)
Having no more “charity” cases (that all of us with insurance pay for now) will also cut fees and costs enormously. With a “single payer”, costs will be cut, no one will be uninsured and efficiencies will be forced out of our currently grossly inefficient system.
Whatever rationing this might result in will be far less than the rationing we have now. No single payer could be more subject to fraud or more lethargic about guaranteeing the best care for the buck than what we have now.
But Republicans and Democrats go on glaring. That status quo wins again.
It seems to me this is precisely the situation that American health care finds itself in right now. The Democrats will give it no food; Republicans will give it no water. Unless somebody resolves something—quite soon, the entire system will die.
The Republicans will give it no “food”—they propose to leave up to 50 million Americans with no medical care at all. (That’s what being uninsured basically means—no health care at all.) As more and more voting Americans get laid off, and lose their insurance, that’s going to become a politically explosive situation. Bernanke at the Fed has just said he expects high unemployment to continue through at least 2012.
It’s also going to drag down the entire system as more and more of the uninsured are forced to become “charity” patients because untreated symptoms turn into catastrophic disease. Emergency rooms and hospitals are forced to treat these for “free”—and then pass the cost on to paying patients and their insurance companies.
Everyone loses as rates and costs keep skyrocketing. “Free” ain’t free in a hospital. That’s why you hear stories about a box of tissues costing twenty bucks—that’s how they bill you or your insurance for all those “free”/charity cases.
Democrats will give the system no “water”. They will push for nothing that will cut the horrendous (and rising) costs of our tottering system. Pile on fifty million more patients into our present system and bankruptcy will come all the faster.
But, the Republicans protest, if we insure the uninsured we will need to ration medical care in order to cut costs. To that the first answer is: show us a more vicious system of rationing than the present one where we RATION by eliminating those without insurance from the system.
There is something absolutely pernicious about refusing to give up steak in order to give a little gruel to a man on the verge of death by starvation. And that IS the attitude of many of the tea party goers who are so afraid someone may tamper with “MY Medicare” they are willing to let millions suffer and thousands die rather than have any limits imposed on themselves.
(That kind of supreme indifference to the well-being of one’s fellow man goes so far beyond the pale of charity as it is enjoined by Christianity, Judaism or Islam that it is absolutely breath-taking. And so much of the indifference is justified in the name of “religion”!)
Democrats and Republicans glare at one another over what seems to be an unbridgeable gulf. Neither will give in. More importantly neither will acknowledge that without action on both fronts—cutting costs AND caring for the uninsured—our present system WILL collapse.
Can it be done? Are “water” and “food” mutually exclusive, like having one’s cake and eating it too? No, not at all. It’s perfectly doable. You do two things. One) you throw all Americans into ONE insurance pool. That’s spreads the risk as equitably as it possibly can be.
That means, two) a single insurer. Just one, for the whole country. Since that will be the only buyer in the entire US for all drugs and medical supplies, it will have a lot of clout when it comes to holding the line on fees and prices. That will cut costs. (Think how many people in hospitals and doctors’ offices currently draw salaries for trying to meet the different requirements of fifty or more different insurance companies, all with different rules!)
Having no more “charity” cases (that all of us with insurance pay for now) will also cut fees and costs enormously. With a “single payer”, costs will be cut, no one will be uninsured and efficiencies will be forced out of our currently grossly inefficient system.
Whatever rationing this might result in will be far less than the rationing we have now. No single payer could be more subject to fraud or more lethargic about guaranteeing the best care for the buck than what we have now.
But Republicans and Democrats go on glaring. That status quo wins again.
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