Health Care Game Over by Jacob Dean
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- Category: Jacob's Blog
- Published on Friday, 29 June 2012 07:54
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How can you remain silent in a time of moral crisis? I can't. I can't sit by and watch my friends on the left blindly support Obamacare without seriously assessing the law or it's effects. We can't celebrate any victories about the law or it's pros, without equally considering the cons and effects to follow. I can't sit by and watch my friends on the right blindly bash Obamacare, only because of the united hell-bent mission to oppose anything and everything Obama, democratic, liberal, progressive, left etc... The funny thing is at this moment, I'm opposed to Obamacare too! Not for the hollow reason the right is, but because it's not the answer...
Do you know where the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came from? It was born in the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and then first implemented into practice by then Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. Later Romneycare was made federal law after it was actually written as the Affordable Care Act. Did I mention written by corporate lobbyists? In the main interests of the corporate state? Big Pharma profits? It's 2000 pages long? $447 billion in subsidies for for-profit insurance interests alone for pharmaceutical and insurance industries? Costs will continue to climb in this for-profit "free market." There are no premium caps. There are loopholes written into the law by insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists. Stop and think about whose best interest was at heart when they wrote this thing. Now it's called Obamacare, just the name is politicizing this serious thing to a point of must support or must oppose for all the wrong reasons. So are you sure you want to cheer this on? Or trash it for all the wrong reasons? Or do you see something more here?
A few months ago back in early April outside of the Supreme Court there were several rallies and protests going on concerning arguments over the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and what the Supreme Court might decide regarding Obamacare. If you had to generalize the people there it could be summed up as democrats and liberals who were there to support Obama first, Obamacare second, and some republicans and conservatives who were there to trash Obama first, Obamacare second. Partisan, sports-like, sports fan-like, competitiveness. There was probably more invested than that, of course it's a grey area when you're speaking in generalities too, but it appeared to be a very shallow, uninformed response. Almost like a blind following support on either side, a support lacking serious depth. But there were a few lone voices that didn't fit into either of the two groups, some of whom seemed to make the most sense in this entire healthcare discussion. Dr. Margaret Flowers was one of those people. This is what she said...
"We have the solution, we have the resources and we have the money to provide lifelong, comprehensive, high-quality healthcare to every person." The answer is Single Payer healthcare but many Americans have not accepted that approach "because people get confused by the politics."
She adds Obamacare's individual mandate does not meet the goal of universality, and we already have in place systems that could achieve that goal and be able to control health care costs much more realistically. Like a Veterans Administration type system (which is a socialized system run by the government) or a Medicare for all type system, a single payer, publicly financed health care system. Dr. Flowers continued...
"If the U.S. Congress had considered an evidence-based approach to health reform instead of writing a bill that funnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care, it would have been a no-brainer to adopt a single payer health system much like our own Medicare. We are already spending enough on health care in this country to provide high-quality, universal, comprehensive lifelong care. All the data point to a single payer system as the only way to accomplish this and control health care costs."
It's obvious what we're doing isn't working. We're not a healthy nation, and only those who can afford it receive the care they need. Those who can't afford it, don't participate in preventative care, wait until it's too late, show up at the ER, live forever in debt, and eventually the unpaid cost becomes distributed down the line and we all end up paying for it anyway with insurance premiums, medical bills, hospital fees, etc... It's a for-profit based system, the only allowed for-profit based health care system in the developed world, and as long as the corporate state determines policy, benefiting itself not us, they can use their money to determine who gets elected now, what legislation gets written and passed, and keep us enslaved to the flawed system.
To borrow a line from Charlie Sheen, are we winning? The nature of the corporate serving media changes whenever we enter a presidential election year, to entice us at a very basic level, competitively. Me vs. You. Us vs. Them. No matter what the issue, idea, practice, law, etc... if the other "team" did it, then you cheer against it. On the other hand, if your "team" did it, then you cheer for it. Regardless of the issue, the outcome of that issue, or any forward thinking consideration imaginable, because that doesn't matter in the "game." What matters is who's winning the "game." How easily we push aside the future of our existence for temporary possessions, power, and wealth. Most people tend to enjoy the competitive aspect of the process, most people like participating in "games." The only problem is, this isn't a game. It's life, our existence, and the existence of our habitat as it is today (what we need to survive as living, breathing, sharing creatures of our earth.) If we lose this, whether by default remaining neutral during a time of moral crisis or we surpass our threshold of salvation and commit self-inflicted extinction, it really will be game over. Refuse to remain silent and stand for your morals, what you feel is right, even if you stand alone.
This blog was written by Jacob Dean on 06/28/2012.