| Will President Obama make mistakes? Of course he will. Will he be ill-advised by self-serving, misinformed advisers? You betcha he will. Obama, like all Presidents is, after all, human.
Those of you on the deluded right choose to put every action, word and deed of President Obama under a nano focused microscope while you stood by and allowed a spoiled rich boy, a draft evading, ivy league legacy and C- student, to boot, to fool you over and over again. I'd say you all were a bunch of blithering jackasses but that would be kind of impolite.
Whoops.
In a recent article in the evil doing liberal New York Times, a no count Noble prize winning economist, Paul Krugman wrote:
America's political scene has changed immensely since the last time a Democratic president tried to reform health care. So has the health care picture: with costs soaring and insurance dwindling, nobody can now say with a straight face that the U.S. health care system is O.K. And if surveys like the New York Times/CBS News poll released last weekend are any indication, voters are ready for major change.
And, my dear conservative politicians, you might want to stick this inconvenient, non-conservative fact in your pipes and smoke on them long and hard.
The American people are prepared to pay higher taxes if it means achieving government run health care.
Read it again in case you did not get it the first time.
Americans are prepared to pay higher taxes if it means achieving government run healthcare.
In other words, you can no longer scare and bully us by insisting national health care is evil doing socialism at its worst. Western Europe and Canada, by the way, do far better jobs at keeping their citizens healthy than we do. We pay boatloads more for freighter sized loads of a whole world of less.
The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans - Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! - hoping that someone still cares.
The polls suggest that hardly anyone does. Voters, it seems, strongly favor a universal guarantee of coverage, and they mostly accept the idea that higher taxes may be needed to achieve that guarantee. What's more, they overwhelmingly favor precisely the feature of Democratic plans that Republicans denounce most fiercely as "socialized medicine" - the creation of a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers
Speaking of the ever heinous socialized medicine, no health care provider, as far as I am concerned, could be worst than the for-profit HMOs (Healthcare Maintenance Organizations) that supposedly "manage" the health care of many Americans. I am sure that every American insured by an HMO has more than one or two horror stories to tell.
While nearly 50 million Americans have no health care insurance coverage at all, many who do have the benefit are stuck with profit motivated providers.
Most private HMOs, for example, require patients who need specialists to obtain referrals from their primary care doctor. This process takes time. Appointments have to be made. Forms have to be completed. The bureaucracy engendered by the so-called "justification for special procedures" alone makes it necessary for doctors to hire administrators merely to manage and administer the reams of paperwork involved. Getting an appointment with a specialist can take weeks, if not months, too. And God forbid should a specialist order a test or treatment plan that requires the most advanced technology. A patient will not receive approval for a high tech test or treatment if the gate keepers at the insurance companies deem the procedure as "non-critical" (i.e. it costs the HMO too much.) Patients literally almost have to be a death's door for a treatment to be considered critical. In most cases a less expensive treatment with less accuracy is the preferred option for the gate keepers who are more concerned about their bottom lines than the health and well-being of those they "insure."
If you conservative politicians are so afraid of "socialized medicine" why are you not concerned about the greed driven, profit mongering insurance companies? So, according to the conservatives, it is OK to deny a patient the care they deserve and for which they pay? Why do you think it is OK for the insurance company's gatekeeper doctors to turn a blind eye to the health care needs of the insured? Why is OK to deny expensive treatment that could, in the long run, save a person's life or improve one's quality of life and the ability to function independently and without assistance?
As far as I am concerned, national health care means HMO's without profit driven agendas. Sure, there will be a bureaucracy. Of course there will be inconveniences and waits. But at least I will know that a decision concerning my or a loved one's health is not based solely on profit margins.
If readers would like to sign the petition that gives our U.S. Senators Hutchison and Cornyn a reality check on national health care reform, please click here.
Meanwhile, don't anyone believe a word that comes out of any conservative mouth, and that includes blue dog Democrats, too, about government run health care. Republicans and Blue Dog Dems are merely serving as pimps for their sugar daddies in big insurance. |
