Messing Around With Worly
Health Care Reform: Red vs. Blue = We All Lose
Somewhere between the rainbows and unicorns the Democrats promise we are getting, and the post-apocalyptic socialist state the Republicans predict we will be subjected to, lies reality.By Clarence Worly, Guest Writer, 3-27-10
 |
|
 | |
|
I grew up getting the news from my father who interpreted Walter Cronkite broadcasts for the rest of the family. Dad would accept the details with which he agreed, reject those he didn’t, and that became inarguable fact around our home. For example; hippies were murdering drug addicts, draft dodgers were sub-human cowards, rock music was for San Francisco homosexuals and all Democrats were communists. Life was pretty cut and dried at my house in 1960s Eastern Idaho.
I offer this background because it’s 2010, we have sweeping change in our nation with the Health Care Reform Bill that was just passed, and I have absolutely no idea what the hell that even means. There are too many slanted sources of information to wade through. I know what my Dad would say, “Obama? He’s a goddamn communist and I wouldn’t believe a word the bastard says.”
Sorry Dad, at this point in my life that kind of wisdom really doesn’t help me get to the bottom of one of the largest and gooiest pieces of legislation ever signed into law.
This is what I have discerned so far: the Democrats claim this bill is a great start but will need some tweaks as we go. The Republicans retort that it is the end of democracy in the United States and this aggression will not stand. CNN is televising the downtrodden unemployed in Detroit rejoicing in the streets because they will finally have the ability to seek medical attention without having to mortgage their homes with loan sharks to pay for it. FOX is focused on isolated mobs of angry NASCAR fans making their first trip to Washington. These “patriots” are protesting the possibility of higher taxes and our inevitable trek down socialist lane by yelling racial slurs at our lawmakers while holding picket signs that read “ Obama’s Plan: White Slavery”, “The American Taxpayers Are The Jews For Obama’s Ovens” and “Barack Hussein Obama – The New Face of Hitler.” The concept of credibility seems to have eluded most of the folks opposed to Health Care Reform.
Even Idaho’s Governor managed to get his 15 minutes of fame on FOX by filing suit against the Federal Government hours after the President signed Health Care Reform into law. I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish other than letting Washington know that Idaho is one red state that ain’t happy about all this blue legislation. Maybe Butch knows of some hidden clause in the U.S. Constitution - perhaps written in invisible ink - awaiting UV illumination from his secret decoder ring, which allows state law to trump federal law. I suppose another possibility could be Governor Otter is just another grandstanding dickhead who wants to ensure he is re-elected by spending our tax dollars on a frivolous lawsuit, just to appease his politically inbred constituents, but I would like to think better of him.
The Democrats paint the bill up to be the legislation needed to fix our health care woes in the U.S. and as Vice-President Biden put it, “This is a big fucking deal.” The Republicans counter with “We have failed to listen to America.” For every positive in the bill brought forth by the Democrats, such as “Reform will cut the federal budget deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years, and a whopping $1.2 trillion in the following ten years,” the Republicans counter with “This is a grim moment for millions, and will put the federal budget in a downward spiral that will burden future generations.” Couple this partisan rhetoric with the fact there are in reality, two separate bills (House and Senate) stacked on top of one another along with most red states attempting to tie up Health Care Reform in our legal system until sometime in late 2789 and you have all the ingredients for a classic case of primates, fornication and footballs when it comes to actually putting this plan into action. Way to work as a team, guys!
As I endeavor to glean credible information out of this mess, I have reaffirmed my decision to become an Independent and look at both parties with skepticism. I have yet to meet a politician from either side face to face and not felt the need to be disinfected immediately afterward. American politics in general, and especially those who run for public office, give new meaning to words like smarmy, disingenuous, and conniving. Every time I get wrapped up in one of these national deep-seated emotional issues I feel the need to gargle with mouthwash to get the taste of hooker spit and MD 20/20 out of my mouth. Most of them are morally bankrupt assholes more concerned with furthering their careers than doing the right thing for our country.
Somewhere between the rainbows and unicorns the Democrats promise we are getting, and the post-apocalyptic socialist state the Republicans predict we will be subjected to, lies reality. In Clarence Worley’s world, if you adhere to either side you get peanut butter or you get jelly on your sandwich, not both.
In the end we’ll wind up with a revamped health care system a bit superior to what we have now, but not nearly as good as it could have been, thanks to the never-ending partisan pissing contest dragging down what is supposed to be the greatest system of government mankind has ever known. So the good old US of A will keep stumbling down the road to progress, doing the drunken man’s walk because our bleeding heart socialists and jack-booted fascist thugs will be squabbling over which foot should go first.
Yet somehow we’ll manage to get there, even though it’s through the most inefficient, crazy-ass, ridiculous means imaginable.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
If the bulk of patients don't pay out of pocket something that at least resembles the cost to provide that service (currently we only pay 10-13 cents of every dollar) market forces will correct for the difference through higher prices, a decline in availability, and or quality as they have since the beginning of time. The same principles have held true for everything from illegal drugs to hotel rooms. Why would healthcare be an exception?
So, we have over 3000 pages of legalese, the meaning of which is a long way from being known. Over time, each word will be formed into some sort of Administrative Rule, published in the Federal Register, and if there are perceived or real problems with any part, that is what the Federal Courts are for. The Administrative Rules will be the law of the land until challenged. Been that way for some time. What legislators thought they were voting for or against, might not be what the Administrative Rules decree, and at that time, new proposed law to clean up mistakes will be voted on in Congress. They pass these big bills, and then supposedly clean them up later. As we have seen with myriad attempts to simplify USFS administrative rules, most of the time the problems are only exacerbated. Congress votes, courts rule, and forests burn ESA habitat and old growth forests and irreplaceable trees established long before Congress and the Constitution.
So, as many have written ahead of me, we really don't know much, if anything, about Health Care Reform. And we won't until most of it goes into affect in four years. By then, the Health Care Reform ship will be in drydock, and undergoing refitting. That is how these things work. At the least, we know that higher taxes and fees are the norm for now and for at least four more years, in order to build enough money into the Treasury IOU stack to begin offering the promised services. Higher insurance costs will be passed on to the insured, which will be a declining group hoping to hop aboard in 2014.
My wife and I buy insurance for her, and to fill the donut hole in my Medicare. We have a high deductible. Will we still have a high deductible while others have none? Exactly what is "parity" in this "system" of "universal health care--sort of?"
Will doctors still be able to not take on patients who are on some sort of government paid program, which always compensate doctors at a much lower rate for services rendered? (Oregon Democrats on the voting fence were able to ensure Oregon doctors get paid the same as NYC or Miami docs do for the same procedures under Medicare, which is a three fold gain for Oregon doctors and a "yes" vote on the Reid-Pelosi Health Care bill). Do we have doctors enough to take on another 30million patients? This new law has speed bumps, detours, unfinished bridges, conflicting signage, and all the thinkable and unthinkable hazards of a freeway under construction that will have way too much traffic diverted to it before it is ready. Just the way it is, now, when enacted, the Health Care Reform is going to have a fleet of unintended consequences, and that is exactly what you get when you try to assemble a complicated piece of equipment in a dark room with no lights.
I have no criticism of the bill, only the process, because like everyone else, I have no idea what it REALLY says, only what it is PURPORTED to say. But I can say the process was foul, faulted, and unsupportable by the majority, and for that reason, there is political unrest in the states.
The answer, if I were in charge of minority party voting, would be to concentrate on elections in the "flyover" states, and try to have them, regardless of party, be a philosophical middle of the road majority in the Senate. A return to having viable checks and balances in creating and passing legislation.
Why, things are so bad in Detroit that their almost longest serving Representative in Congress (behind Rep Dingle by a ways), Rep. Conyers, turns out to be so poor his wife has to have legal aid defend her in court for sentencing on her guilty plea to conspiracy to take bribes as a member of the Detroit City Council. Now that is tough economic times!!! No wonder he voted yes on free health care for the poor. He is one. That six figure congressional income and health care plan evidently is just not enough to keep him and his family out of poverty. Especially when you lose that bribe money your wife was contributing. I suppose now Conyers will have a civil case against the City of Detroit for loss of comfort from not having a wife to go home to when Conyers goes home to campaign and collect money to campaign. Bing has his hands full. You wonder how a guy not on the take can govern in Detroit.
thirty fifth place for health-care.
People my age have but to walk into any hospital, clinic, or doctor's office to receive assistance from the best educated medical people in the world. How can we countenance that younger people not only cannot do that; but cannot even afford basic care in many cases ?
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to
the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
You really need to get one of these secret decoder rings.
So now he only sees patients in his office for physicals and check ups, and referrals. His malpractice insurance dropped by $70,000 a year. His income does not meet his professional expenses most months. Most of his invested retirement went south in the Wall Street fraudulent mortgage deal. He is mining the IRS for a living. That will run out, and he will quit altogether. He loved being a family doctor and caring for people. Lawyers, state fraud investigators, hospital administrators, federal fraud investigators, bad attitude nurses, all drove him out. "I am a doctor, not a target," he once told me. "I am here to help people, and I end up being a target for the low lifes of law, bureaucracy, humanity." And then he has a long list of expletives with which to describe the remoras of medicine, the lampreys of law, the egomaniacal hospital administrators making medical decisions with an accountant's pencil. He is the quintessential angry family practice doctor who thought naively twenty-five years ago helping the poor was part of the job. He didn't know that they looked at him as an ATM for their benefit because Legal Aid told them so.
No tort reform in health reform was a gift for trial lawyers. The trial lawyer leech will bleed money out of the Reform. Billions. Medical malpractice insurance will not go down. More patients, with many being not insurable before, with more untreated ailments, will bring on more John Edwards type lawyers convincing juries doctors are uncaring money grubbers with no concern for patients and their well being. That is not reform. That is business as usual, and business as usual was the highest barrier to adequate health care. Practicing medicine to pass the test of attorney's has not been abated by one iota. That I know. Obama said so. Pelosi said so. Reid said so. So, if you wonder why medical numbers in the U.S. are lower than other countries, ask why child mortality by beating death, being shot, being grossly neglected by "care givers" becomes a stain on medicine and medical care. This deal of some minorities not reaching age 21 at a rate higher than others becomes an indictment of medicine? It is an economic result from bad choices, bad social science, and societal discrimination. But not that of medicine. Doctors don't inject the drugs, snort the fumes, pull the triggers. Gross obesity and dietary deficiencies abound in an economy that has special funds to make sure Women, Infants, and Children get adequate nutrition. Is a fat kid getting "adequate nutrition" or is that kid getting way too much to eat, and way too little exercise? And why does that become a stain on medicine? We keep on beating up on doctors with phony claims and bad statistics, and we go nowhere as the trial lawyers get more of the economy, all the while the accountants show that money as part of the health care cost in the GDP...Have a trial lawyer treat your cancer. He or she is getting way too much of the health care dollar, so they should use that brain to cure someone.
Life expectancy and infant mortality have proved to be flawed metrics of healthcare quality. WHY? because both vary greatly between racial and ethnic groups from state to state and across counties unfortunately reflecting lifestyle choices such as diet exercise and smoking rather than simply access as the problem. The melting pot of the U.S. is typically compared to homogeneous European counties. A prime example, compare a state like Utah with any country and it's off the charts compared to other European countries, Texas on the other hand, not so much.
Have you considered the many favorable statistics of the US system such as the doctor to patient ratio which is much higher than European and Canadian systems, the U.S. also pay doctors and nurses better because it is not constrained by government.
Middle aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice that of the U.S. Three times as many women have never had a pap compared to in the U.S. and only one in ten Canadian has had a colonoscopy compared to a third of Americans.
Maybe this explains why Canadian death rates are 25 percent higher for breast cancer, 18 percent higher for prostate and 13 higher for colon…or maybe because 27 percent of Canucks wait more than 4 months for surgery compared to 5 percent of Americans. My feeling is that it’s because no individual, group, or government bureaucracy can more accurately and efficiently predict and coordinate the needs of a market more than price, the great but ever ignored invisible hand .
There is no kid in the US denied care at an emergency room. The fine is a half million bucks if you turn someone away. Half the kids in my State don't have up to date immunization shots. That is not the fault of health care insurance. That is the fault of parents not getting the job done. Little kids don't get health care in a timely fashion because their custodial parent or parents don't take the care to make it happen. The health care system cannot make parents do the right thing. All too much of infant health problems are from abuse and neglect by a parent or relative. Even if the kid is in the Health and Human Services Program, has a social worker, parents seem to still be able to kill them, abuse them, hurt them permanently, both physically and psychologically.
Some guy on the radio said that if you smoke, drink, buy a daily latte, get tattooed, have a cell phone, a boat, more than one car, do drugs, ride a motorcycle, and don't chose to buy health insurance, why should someone else pay more taxes so you might be covered by the government? Is health care unaffordable or is it uncomfortable to buy insurance when there are all those other distractions that are more fun? The poor have been covered by Medicaid for a long time. Now we are talking about lifestyle choices between health insurance and pleasure. What about the people who choose health insurance over expensive rides, nice clothes, and a fun lifestyle? Do we punish the higher earners with higher taxes? Or, as it appears to now be, does the government take those choices away, and make others provide for the people who won't avail themselves to inconvenient health care, or the discomfort of having to work to pay for health care?
I believe that something that has no value is worthless to those who don't have an investment in it. If it is free, its worth is dubious and to be scorned and abused. After all, it is free. It has no value. You can't run out of it, and there is no end to it. Sort of like old growth timber, grass to graze, fish in the sea, public education, a clean environment, abundant game. It has little value and is so treated. We just got the Cabrini-Green Health Care Plan from Chicago. The highway department paved over the potholes of poverty with health care asphalt.
So we now will really get to see if poverty is the fault of no access to free health care, or if free health care is the portend of poverty to come. Those are the two arguments. We have free education and are hard pressed to graduate one out of four or even one out of three from high school. Free does not make the poor or disinclined attend school, nor does it make them want to learn while there, nor does it guarantee that all kids have access to the kind of education that they need, from remedial to scholarly. And we have been at this free education for all for over a century and a half. Free has no bearing on quality. Free has no bearing on how society will benefit as a whole. Free is just that, free. It costs the student and the parent nothing. It even includes three meals a day for people below income thresholds. And free health care screening. Still, the free education, k-12, is not availed by more people, by percentage, than were without available and affordable health care. Those dumb shits who gang bang, the high school drop outs, they are not left on the street wounded or dead. The public hauls them to the hospital, tries to save them, and often does. Some get shot again, saved again. Others get care 24/7 at the crowbar motel. All because they willingly chose NOT to get a high school degree. A free high school degree, paid for by property tax payers and income tax payers and sales tax payers. That program is a statistical failure, with a worse record than fee-for-care medicine in terms of helping people. I guess the poetic justice is that if you are too stupid to start and/or finish high school, how can we not figure you will be too stupid to take your kid to the doctor or not abuse them by leaving them unattended to be molested, killed by accidents, or whatever. The failure of public education is a guarantee that free public health care will also fail to meet the needs of the most needy. Parenting is a learned skill. It is not taught on the streets to under-educated unemployed youth. Health care reform will not help those who will not avail themselves to it until it is too late in the disease progression. There is no preventative mentality in the social outcast societies. The Nanny State cannot make people responsible so that savings might be gained in health care cost. That is dreaming.
If there is not enough money to provide "the best", timely, those with means will get it elsewhere, like the Canadian provincial governor who this year went to Miami for an operation he just didn't want to wait the better part of a year for in Canada.
There is a chance that the health care reforms will spread health care to more people. But to say that now everyone will be better off is not true, because we have a huge class of irresponsible individuals in this country who will not take the time to make sure a kid, a mother, a grandparent, has the physical access, the help, to make the appointment, and get the check up, the care. There are assholes outside of the insurance industry, Congress, the medical field, banking and finance. Lots of them, including patients and people in need of care who don't make the effort make or to show up for appointments and then whine when their neglect makes things much worse. I don't believe the U.S. will ever in my lifetime have medical statistics as good as our programs are designed and financed to produce. We don't have that good a citizen in our melting pot. Look at our voting participation, our subscription to free education. Health reform, for the most part, is an exercise in pounding sand down a rat hole, if you think it will make a huge difference in the overall health of obese America, land of unemployment for 20% of the able, where men not working outnumber women three to one now, and education is geared, directed, and focused on "good little girls" who pay attention while boys are stifled by no physical outlets for their energy and taught by predominantly women, you are not paying attention or part of education oversight.
This country has purposefully forgotten boys in education for two generations, and it not only will become a problem, it has become a problem. So if free, nationalized education is ignoring boys, harming boys, why would we think free, nationalized health care will not be directed primarily towards women? They are the majority in grad school, in medical school, in law school. They are by far the majority in public education, and I would assume will also be there in those ratios in public health.
I am not speaking as some red neck misogynist, but as a grandfather who is spending time in the education process of two grandchildren who have working parents, or did. Just one now, the mom. I go to parent-teacher conferences, open houses. I have two eyes, and still can hear. Boys cannot be boys in today's public education. The whole of it, K-12, is now arranged like a sewing circle, where the girl child is taught the skills of womenfolk. Boys who have more effeminate approaches do well, and boys who are competitive, robust, full of energy, are a distraction and treated as outcasts, from the principal to the teacher's aides. Why is there a full time policeman in a middle school, armed and with his or her own office? Because women can't handle kids? I was sort of taken aback when I read Nicholas Kristoff yesterday, and he wrote that he is seeing the same thing in public education, that it no longer addresses the particular needs of boys.
I heard a man who leads a NGO that has over 600 homeless kids as clients in Portland say that schools no longer have anything to offer many boys in their early teenage years, but street gangs have everything they need. That is why they are so successful at recruiting and schools are not. The structure, the risk taking, the outlet for energy, the chest bumping and "king of the hill" competition is all there in gangs, thus they are by default taking kids out of school, and putting them on the street in criminal activities. Somehow, that ought to be an outrage, but is not. The education establishment is female driven, discriminates insidiously against boys, with teaching predominantly provided by the female brain for the female brain. The result for boys is often first seen in the emergency room, and has become a public health care problem that skews our American health care provider results as to child mortality and care costs. Poor public education pushes boys out of education and to poor health results for life. But both are cost free, right?
What classes--specifically--are you suggesting?
Silicon Valley operates with a predominance of Asian engineers, many of whom are now going back to Asia because they can live there so much cheaper and still profit as well as here. The big impediment to immigration reform is the inability of US industrial and techno companies to import enough really smart foreign help. And they say that the brightest of Americans continue to follow education paths to investment banking, law, journalism, politics. Or as the sports agent said in the movie, "follow the money." Engineers are just higher paid line workers. Or so goes the thinking at US universities. Science geeks. The real path to wealth and success are to be found in the afore mentioned service industries that live off other's labor and inventiveness. Those remoras and lampreys are sucking the lifeblood out of America, and will in the foreseeable future. If commerce were medicine, we would have our Goldman sacs removed.
And we could curtail immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
Point of clarification: The above post by TomK is not me. Besides I am not a rancher, almost as if you are insinuating that all ranchers are dumb neanderthal's. TomK actually made a very good point, and BearBait continues to win the argument.
Clarence Worley tries hard to be middle of the road but almost 60% of the country believes Obamacare is bad and how it was shoved down our throats. His assessment of the Tea Party is totally out of whack with reality and there is always a fringe element in any movement but the basic core of the Tea Party are just regular folks who don't like the way the Fed's are taxing and spending.
My grandson who is in college in Arizona told me today that we all need to stand together and fight and realize that in the big picture the NWO is conquering the US and other countries by dividing us on all of these issues and pitting Christians against Muslims, Whites against Blacks, and on and on. I know we have our different political and societal ideals but maybe he is right. We have to look at the bigger picture. We need to protect the political sovereignty of this Nation and join forces to defeat the NWO and stop squabbling about the small stuff.
You should stick to what you know and stay away from physics.
of the health care industry it opens the door even wider. Maybe we will weather the storm but it doesn't look very good right now. I plan to keep on fighting for our nation and republic, and the precious freedoms we cherish. Sometimes the old adage is true, "I see the enemy and it is us".
If you are talking about libertarians and other RightWingCrazies you are definitely on my wave length non-rancher Tom...
Denial of the real world out here won't get you guys very far into the future. More government to take care of you won't ever take care of you. Re-distributing the wealth to pay for this government takeover won't take care of you. Health care rationing won't take care of you. The poor will be probably still have a hard time getting care.
I've worked hard all of my life because my mother taught me there is no such thing as a free lunch. I don't mind helping the needy but not every lazy Tom, Dick, Harry and Susie.
This nation was founded on free enterprise and hard work, and the ability to make something of ourselves. I don't want my tax dollars supporting a bunch of freeloaders.
No documentation needed here Horst, just a little common sense and a hard look at what made this country great.
Limited Government cannot police the world.
Limited Government cannot steal oil from third world nations.
Limited Government has moved 90% of the nation's wealth into the hands of 5% of the nation's population.