Healthcare Reform

March 25, 2010

There is way too much "spin" surrounding the issue of healthcare reform and not enough rational thought and civil dialogue. 

On the Right, we have talk radio and Fox News appealing to that sector of the population that favors Saturday night bar brawls. You know the type….the slogan spewing, prone to violence Tea Baggers.
 
Then there are the bleeders from the Left. All they do is whine that the bill President Obama signed didn't go far enough. Yet their Liberal brethern cut deals with the health insurance industry that guarantee higher insurance premiums, income tax increases, and ballooning budget deficits.

Know this: Neither the Left or the Right “won” with the passage of the healthcare legislation. The insurance industry is the only winner. You, me, Left, Right….we’re all losers.

The insurance lobby successfully put up a furious defense of their "turf" and spent millions buying the votes of our Congressional whores. However, it was money well spent, because their return on investment over the coming years is huge.

Now let's get above all the political "noise" and see what we really have.

The fundamental question is whether a "civilized society” should provide healthcare to all its citizens as a social benefit.

The Right maintains that our citizens should "earn" their healthcare access and not be given it by merely being members of our society.  They say being given access to healthcare as a right of citizenship is "socialism"….. and that socialism is a bad thing. But somehow they totally miss the fact that the Medicare program is socialism.

The objectors to healthcare reform have fallen prey to the propaganda campaign promulgated by the insurance industry. Consequently, they are promoting that industry's best interests on the political battleground.  Further, what they are really doing is shooting themselves in the foot.  What dumbasses! They’ve unwittingly played into the hands of the insurance industry.

The insurance lobby has cleverly diverted the argument from what should be a "social benefit" as a member of society to an argument of “It is the American Way to have profit seeking insurance companies handling access to healthcare”. They say that any other plan is socialism, playing the name-calling card by using a “hot button” term. 

Look who ends up on the short end of this.  Doctors and hospitals do.  So do you, your family and just about everyone you know.

The US is the ONLY industrialized country that does NOT provide healthcare access to its citizens as a social benefit.

Examine who benefits from this lack of healthcare access:  duhhhhh....Corporate America, that’s who!

How do you like seeing insurance company executives making millions of dollars in compensation because they squeeze hospitals and doctors of their honest due and deny sick people access to healthcare treatments?

Look what happened at the first session on Wall Street after the new bill was signed....all health insurance company stocks advanced big time.  There's a reason they did.  The expectations of continued profits – and even increasing profits – are virtually guaranteed by this bill.

And you know how healthcare insurance companies make money….doesn’t take an economist to tell you that by squeezing healthcare providers and by denying care to those who need it allows them to keep for profit more of the insurance premium dollars they collect.

The only real way to achieve healthcare reform is to take the profit away from the insurance industry.  They do not belong in the system. They never really did, if you believe that healthcare should be a social benefit of a civilized society. The system should be free from the profit motive. Other countries having healthcare as a social benefit spend less per capita as a society than the US and yet have a healthier population.

The US healthcare delivery model provides nothing better than Third World results. If you can’t believe this statement, then look it up at the World Health Organization’s web site.

If we truly want healthcare reform, then we’ll drive those leeches who've been profiting from the misery of millions out of the system and keep them out.

But....our country is soooooooo corrupt that it'll never happen.  The lobbyists and whores in Congress will see to that.

The Constitutionality aspect of the currently passed healthcare legislation is intriguing.  Keep in mind that the stakes here are huge.  The insurance industry has hired the best of legal minds to beat this policy initiative any way they can. One way is for the insurance lobby to fund a questioning of the healthcare bill's constitutionality.

The core question according to Constitutional lawyers is whether the government can mandate – as it does under this new legislation – that citizens purchase health insurance from private companies or else pay a penalty.  It's almost like Congress demanding that Americans buy only Chevrolets.  And that is crazy.

The lawyers who specialize in Constitutional issues involving commerce say that strictly speaking, insurance companies' business transactions are traditionally not considered "commerce" as originally defined by our Founding Fathers.  As such, then Congress has no authority to legislate rules involving the purchase of insurance by its citizens, because Congress' authority only extends to that which is considered "commerce".  By extension then, as the argument goes, the healthcare bill is unconstitutional.

The smart money is betting a close call if the question goes to the Supreme Court, but they are also betting there aren't 5 Justices who will vote the bill down as being unconstitutional.

Personally, I'm not so sure of that.  Over the last decade or so, the Court has become politicized along Party lines....just look at its Gore vs. Bush decision in 2000’s presidential election.

One last thing: and that’s the true cost of this program.  The bullshit artists at the Congressional Budget Office seem to think that it won't cost us.  To me, without crunching any numbers, their statement defies logic.

Here's what I think will happen:  Insurance company profits will go up, income taxes will go up, hospitals and doctors will continue to get squeezed to a point where some of them will leave the business, access to healthcare will still be limited or denied…. and ....the budget deficit will continue to increase.

It’s insane....this whole thing.

This insanity is brought on by corporate and individual greed along with the collapse of our citizens making decisions intended to improve our society on the whole.

MP