Apr 24 2009
Single Payer is Off the Table and So is Democracy
Today I watched Max Baucus explaining that single payer health care is off the table. I saw this on a Democracy Now clip; Mr. Baucus was explaining how a single payer system was not going to make it through the approval process so the idea would be shelved in favor of some other nebulous plan that would better serve the interest of insurance company’s. Well, he didn’t exactly put it that way but that is the bottom line.
Americans overwhelmingly support the idea of single payer health care. Personally I think that we should be demanding better than single payer, but even single payer is too much of a threat to insurance companies for our legislators to take a stand on. Oh, how I want to avoid going off and just cussing and bitching for about 3 pages but I will make some effort to restrain myself, some.
Fuck these pieces of shit legislators who are sucking the insurance company’s slimy syphilitic cocks, and doubly fuck the insurance companies! Whew… Ok, I feel better, well not much. Look, folks we are citizens of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. You have all seen the big foam #1 fingers, well, yes America is #1, there is no nation on earth and never has been that controls the amount of wealth and comands the amount of power this nation does. We are the modern day Rome. Yet hard working citizens in this country are often uncertain of how they will get the health care they need and deserve! This is unacceptable, there is no excuse!
There is money in the public coffers to bail out AIG, money to bail out GM, money to fight 2 wars, money for everything except health care. Fuck this, this is bullshit! All this talk about how to get Americans health care “coverage” COVERAGE! Coverage my ass, get these parasitical, blood sucking corporate fucks that call themselves insurance companies out of the health care business. No, I don’t want Single Payer, I want free medical care for all of our nation’s citizens and we should demand just that and nothing less! Why should any group of “share holders” profit because we need health care? They should not. And who in congress has the balls to stand up and say just that? No one, at least no one I have seen. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress” Frederick Douglass. Demand more my fellow citizens. Write your congresspersons; write your mayor, your senator or write the fuckin president and demand that we get the health care we deserve and that we get it now! No more BULLSHIT!
dsent: great and passionate post. I think more people would warm to the idea if they just understood. Single payer is not socalized medicine. The healthcare delivery institutions would still be private, and would have the right to negotiate with the governement. And with premiums approaching an average in the range of $800-$1200/mos. healthcare has become a hidden income tax already.
Vaughn,
Agreed single payer doesn’t even resemble socialism, a lot of red baiting right wingers like to call it that, I imagine De Leon and Marx rolling over in their graves. I think and hope many Americans are starting to warm up to the idea of socialism or at least they are starting to better understand that socialism and capitalism are in no way mutually exclusive. I like that you’re saying the cost of health care represents a hidden tax. Americans don’t like taxes; calling it a tax sweetens the reform sell. I realize that I am out of step; I want no more insurance company’s at all. (Very unlikely in my life time) I simply believe it is not ethical for “share holders” to benefit on the most basic of social services and one that none of us can afford to go with-out. I am not saying I want a government run system but more democratic system that is paid for from the public coffers and one in which quality patient care is the primary goal. Keeping prices under control naturally by not allowing profit to be made from additional charges to the patient. All services should be delivered at the lowest possible cost. Example in the last hospital I worked in it could be the middle of the night and a patient needed a CT and the CT tech could be bored as hell and happy to get a patient but the cost of that CT was far in excess what it needed to be in order to pay medical personal. It was a test that was very profitable for the hospital. Sometimes if the patient had good medical coverage they might get an unneeded CT because it represented profit, but sometimes a patient who was borderline in terms of their need but obviously could not pay for it, wouldn’t get the CT as long as the MD could justify not doing the test medically. The profit margin will always play a role in determining the quality of care a patient gets as long as someone is making a profit on the patient.