A few of us are unfortunate enough to be able to remember the decade of the 1950s. I’ll refrain from naming names. But, I will if I have to.
There was a major scare back in that strange, misbegotten decade. The “Bomb,” of course. No. Even scarier. The Communists had an even more devious plot to destroy the US of A.
What was this nefarious plan? It’s almost too horrible to relate, even after more than half a century.
The plot involved the fluoridation of our water. Yes. Can you believe it? They actually wanted to put fluoride in our water supply. Not just our drinking water. They even wanted to put it in the water we used to wash our most precious possessions: our cars.
Those Communists were so sneaky they tried to trick us by putting fluoride into their own water. Our leaders in government let it happen. Look. See what has become of us. Cruelly, most of our children miss out on the experience of tooth decay, of dental caries.
Not all terrorists ride around on camels. We were terrorized by the regressives here in our own country. For their own purposes they scared us with the threat of good dental health.
In the next decade they threatened us with abortion. Then came prayer in the schools. And they even sneaked in sex education. Now it’s death panels. When will we ever learn?
The regressives told us Roe v. Wade meant that the government eventually would decide whether your own fetus would be permitted to survive. Your kids would be forced to fornicate in class.
They told us that Christian children would be put in prison, or worse, kicked out of school for praying instead of studying before a test. They warned us that kids would have to memorize passages from the Koran, or even worse, learn to read the Apocrypha in Latin (Southern Baptists only).
During the past 40 years that these have been used as wedge issues, those dastardly Democrats have held the White House only 12 years. The Republicans have had control of the Congress for a number of years. They have had both at the same time. Yet, abortions have not been terminated. Schools are at least as secular as ever. There are more teenage parents than ever (The rate is even higher in church-run schools).
If anything, the situation in all of these areas is worse from the standpoint of those who focus on these issues. Why? Because politicians cynically use those issues specifically to make people angry. It is easier to motivate people to action through anger than through logic and positive appeals to enlightened self-interest.
Dealing with those issues in a way that accomplished their goals would merely eliminate the threats that the politicians have for manipulating those people. They have neither desire nor intent to see those putative goals realized.
The politicians use social issues to mobilize the masses. They need numbers of people sufficiently motivated to actually vote. With these angry, motivated voters putting them in office and not paying attention to what they are actually up to, they are free to work on behalf of the corporations that fund them, that fete them, that tell them how to vote.
If people begin to actually look at these other issues, look out; here comes another scare campaign.
Most of the politicians in Washington and all of the corporate lobbyists there see the players as being divided into two teams: tools and fools.
Obama desperately wants something he can call healthcare reform. He also wants bipartisanship. It appears he thinks both are possible. What did he get for those three Senate votes on the stimulus package? He got 40% of that $787 billion as stimulus, and that not focused on the most effective ways. He got most of that 40% delayed until next year. Yea! bipartisan team.
Now he’s working with six centrists, 3 Republican Senators. 3 Blue Dog Democrats, or whatever they are. He has met secretly with them and the president and vp of PhARMA. To get $150 million of Harry and Louise supporting some vague reform he gave up single-payer. He gave up a public option. He gave up Medicare negotiating drug prices (worth far, far more than $80 billion). He gave up re-importation. He gave up rebates to Medicare. He gave up his promise to put all negotiations on C-SPAN.
Sure he got a promise, for whatever their word is worth, of some possible $12 billion tax increase on PhARMA members. Even if this were to see the light of day, it would probably be more than offset by increases in the subsidies the government already provides them.
What about the $80 billion they agreed to? Well, they actually agreed to no more than $80 billion over 10 years. This is about 2% of what the government is expected to spend on drugs over the next 10 years. Most of that is a 50% discount on brand name drugs only for seniors in the donut hole of Part D. Only the promised $12 billion tax cut would be applied to the trillion dollar plus cost they are talking about.
None of the agreement provides for any way to ensure that PhARMA actually contributes a penny. And, every plan being considered by the House and Senate, except HR 676, the Medicare For All Act, with 93 co-sponsors, provides greater income for members of PhARMA.
On Tuesday, Obama praised two Republican Senators. Charles Grassley, the Republican point man in these backroom negotiations stabbed Obama in the back the very next day by claiming his opposition to “death panels” in the reform plans.
Since only one of three House plans and none of the two Senate plans have been written, it’s hard to know where he found those panels. The fact that they don’t exist didn’t bother Charley.
Johnny Isakson (R-GA) was praised by Obama for co-sponsoring what is being mis-characterized as death panels. The next day little Johnny rejected Obama’s praise by saying that Obama lied. It turns out someone was lying, and it wasn’t the President.
Grassley, as one of the three Republicans involved in the negotiations, did all of the damage he could do in those talks. It was necessary for him to sabotage Obama publicly to ensure the continuance of those millions of dollars of bribes from the healthcare industry. Anyone who has even casually watched his career was not surprised that he had no intention of crossing the aisle. A dead giveaway was the lack of criticism Charley received from his fellow Republicans while supposedly cozying up to the dreaded Kenyan citizen.
If these are the friendly Republicans, can bipartisanship be far behind? Every amendment that we know has been offered as part of any of the reform plans has, at a minimum, increased the costs. Many have been designed simply to fatally damage any reform. Obama’s quest for this unholy grail has required him to bar those who support his campaign rhetoric from the table. He declared single-payer off the table before any reform talks commenced.
How about a perspective you don’t normally get? An internal poll of the Republican National Committee showed that 54% thought we have “the best health care system in the world.” That’s surprising only in how low the number is. In response to another question, this poll showed 70% felt that the system is “badly in need of reform.” Does it seem strange to anyone else that the best system in the world is badly in need of reform?
You constantly hear the claim that the majority are satisfied with their health insurance coverage. Just what does that mean? Let’s break it down. Fifty-nine percent of those with private plans get it through their employer. Most pay little or nothing out of pocket. Most have never used it for anything other than maternity and the occasional cold or flu. What’s not to like? Also, they don’t complain about the government subsidizing ALL of these plans.
The highest satisfaction rate is among those with Medicare. There are only two ways I can think of to lose your Medicare coverage. Either move out of the country permanently or die. Private plans can be lost when you lose your job. Private plans have annual and lifetime spending limits. Private plans constantly ration care. Averaging more than two operations a year since being on Medicare, the spectre of rationing has never appeared.
They also seem only to ask for the opinions of people who still have insurance. There are other problems with the methodologies employed by the quoted polls. That may be influenced by the fact that the polls you are most likely to see were paid for by the health insurance industry.
Are you scared yet?
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