Criminalizing Citizens
Over on facebook I saw a celebratory post about the Senate's passage of the new healthcare bill. Acknowledging it's not perfect, the post claimed that America is now on it's way to providing health care for all citizens.
Well, no.
What a fantasy that is. Do people really believe that this bill is going to provide health care coverage to people? It will certainly help more people become insured, but it makes criminals of the rest. Simply for being.
I just heard a panel discussion on the radio about the mandate included in this bill that all citizens must buy health insurance. One panelist claimed that all `health economists' support this bill and believe it will substantially lower costs and make it more affordable for many people.
Fine, but it makes criminals of the rest of them.
I live in a county where tens of thousands of people sleep on the streets or under bridges every night, many of them children. These people NEVER fit into people's concepts of full coverage. The panelists were discussing the affordability of new low-cost options, but they had no concept of the real economics facing low-income, chronically unemployed, or mentally ill, etc., etc., people. They are not going to be able to comply with this law.
Now, I understand the necessity of including the entire population in order to have healthy people in the pool. Healthier people's payments allow the usage by less healthy people, or another way of putting it is that people who currently don't require health services are paying for the people currently in need of health services. I support the concept of mandatory insurance. I also understand there are great steps forward in this bill, including barring insurance companies from denying coverage for the preexisting condition of life, for example.
This bill that's forming in the House and the Senate is too severe and corrupt to fulfill the requirements of mandatory insurance. If it had a public option right away, perhaps; but it doesn't have one at all, not even the "trigger," if the Senate's version wins out, and with The Senator from The Insurance Industry sitting in that pretty little chair of his, and with Senator Byrd on death's door, every vote over there counts. So it is likely the Senate's version will win out.
So we are mandating that destitute people pay the morally bankrupt profiteers of the health insurance industry every month just to keep themselves from being classified a criminal. Corporate socialism, since that's what this bill is financially thanks to Lieberman's lack of morality or shame, is being used now to create another class of criminals, by the stroke of a pen.
Perhaps it was a necessary trade-off since there seems to be talk these days of decriminalizing marijuana, that other instance of corporate protection trumping individual liberties by the stroke of a few Congressional or Presidential pens. They need to replace all those inmates in the privatized prison industry with someone, how about the sneaky bastards who want to live under bridges, eat our garbage, and who dare to live without insurance? Cool. Fist bump time.
The argument that these people use the health care anyway is a valid one, but again it isn't sufficiently addressed by this impending bill. When I didn't have health insurance, which has been much of my adult life, I didn't use health services. I found a way two years ago to heal my three broken fingers. That way involved using a service available to me through an employer, not my own but the one I was temping for. A nurse looked at it and gave me the little metal splints and cloth "condoms" to hold them in place, and I took it from there.
I know one thing: If I had been compelled to buy health insurance during this period of un/under-employment from 2005 through 2008, I would not have been able to pay my other bills. Each month for three years I was on the verge of not being able to afford my rent. I might have gone under with one more bill.
I don't believe that we should mandate this on people or criminalize people without a public option.
(Or changes to the bankruptcy laws to remove the draconian protections for creditors put in place under the Bush administration, or various other financial remedies that may decrease the immoral aspects of enforcing this mandate and mitigate some of the barriers to entry into the category of people who can afford it.)
If you think I'm being a bit whacked on this, a bit paranoid, I only submit to you that one of the MAIN concerns of one of the panelists on today's radio talk show was enforcement. She acknowledged that the job of enforcing this was "the devil's work," but stressed how important it was to do so. She cited studies of participation in states with mandatory auto insurance showing 20-30% non-participation.
No shit.
While I support mandatory auto insurance due to the choices inherent in buying a car and driving one as opposed to the lack of choice involved in the act of "being/existing," it's obvious that there will never be full participation. From a "realist" perspective, there will never be full participation because there will never be a day when every citizen can afford it. Never. Not unless we change the capitalist/socialist economic policies and move toward a populist/socialist system, otherwise known in present-day wing-nut America as "socialism" with a capital "Obama."
It seems hopeless now to prevent this travesty from going forward. Democrats do not want to give Republicans a victory, so instead they give Lieberman and insurance industry CEOs a victory. Together, the whole damn bunch of them are sure as hell sticking it to the Man, though.
To the "Everyman," that is.
There's a woman who lives under bridges around here. I don't know her name, but we talk all the time. She sees me reading in restaurants and one time she asked me if I had any books I could give to her. Mysteries. She said she liked mysteries. I do, I said. Now I always keep a book to giveaway in my backpack. Back when I belonged to several book clubs, I occasionally forgot to send back the card in time and wound up with a shelf of books I kind of/sort of don't want to ever read, but might. Well, she can have them.
Anyway, now it seems I should rightfully accept the mantel of criminal myself, the way I'm aiding and abetting a known criminal this way.
Oh, wait. That's the public option. The state has to pay for at least some health care once they become prisoners.
Never mind. I see now how it works. Carry on, oh great leaders in Washington. Carry on.
Well, no.
What a fantasy that is. Do people really believe that this bill is going to provide health care coverage to people? It will certainly help more people become insured, but it makes criminals of the rest. Simply for being.
I just heard a panel discussion on the radio about the mandate included in this bill that all citizens must buy health insurance. One panelist claimed that all `health economists' support this bill and believe it will substantially lower costs and make it more affordable for many people.
Fine, but it makes criminals of the rest of them.
I live in a county where tens of thousands of people sleep on the streets or under bridges every night, many of them children. These people NEVER fit into people's concepts of full coverage. The panelists were discussing the affordability of new low-cost options, but they had no concept of the real economics facing low-income, chronically unemployed, or mentally ill, etc., etc., people. They are not going to be able to comply with this law.
Now, I understand the necessity of including the entire population in order to have healthy people in the pool. Healthier people's payments allow the usage by less healthy people, or another way of putting it is that people who currently don't require health services are paying for the people currently in need of health services. I support the concept of mandatory insurance. I also understand there are great steps forward in this bill, including barring insurance companies from denying coverage for the preexisting condition of life, for example.
This bill that's forming in the House and the Senate is too severe and corrupt to fulfill the requirements of mandatory insurance. If it had a public option right away, perhaps; but it doesn't have one at all, not even the "trigger," if the Senate's version wins out, and with The Senator from The Insurance Industry sitting in that pretty little chair of his, and with Senator Byrd on death's door, every vote over there counts. So it is likely the Senate's version will win out.
So we are mandating that destitute people pay the morally bankrupt profiteers of the health insurance industry every month just to keep themselves from being classified a criminal. Corporate socialism, since that's what this bill is financially thanks to Lieberman's lack of morality or shame, is being used now to create another class of criminals, by the stroke of a pen.
Perhaps it was a necessary trade-off since there seems to be talk these days of decriminalizing marijuana, that other instance of corporate protection trumping individual liberties by the stroke of a few Congressional or Presidential pens. They need to replace all those inmates in the privatized prison industry with someone, how about the sneaky bastards who want to live under bridges, eat our garbage, and who dare to live without insurance? Cool. Fist bump time.
The argument that these people use the health care anyway is a valid one, but again it isn't sufficiently addressed by this impending bill. When I didn't have health insurance, which has been much of my adult life, I didn't use health services. I found a way two years ago to heal my three broken fingers. That way involved using a service available to me through an employer, not my own but the one I was temping for. A nurse looked at it and gave me the little metal splints and cloth "condoms" to hold them in place, and I took it from there.
I know one thing: If I had been compelled to buy health insurance during this period of un/under-employment from 2005 through 2008, I would not have been able to pay my other bills. Each month for three years I was on the verge of not being able to afford my rent. I might have gone under with one more bill.
I don't believe that we should mandate this on people or criminalize people without a public option.
(Or changes to the bankruptcy laws to remove the draconian protections for creditors put in place under the Bush administration, or various other financial remedies that may decrease the immoral aspects of enforcing this mandate and mitigate some of the barriers to entry into the category of people who can afford it.)
If you think I'm being a bit whacked on this, a bit paranoid, I only submit to you that one of the MAIN concerns of one of the panelists on today's radio talk show was enforcement. She acknowledged that the job of enforcing this was "the devil's work," but stressed how important it was to do so. She cited studies of participation in states with mandatory auto insurance showing 20-30% non-participation.
No shit.
While I support mandatory auto insurance due to the choices inherent in buying a car and driving one as opposed to the lack of choice involved in the act of "being/existing," it's obvious that there will never be full participation. From a "realist" perspective, there will never be full participation because there will never be a day when every citizen can afford it. Never. Not unless we change the capitalist/socialist economic policies and move toward a populist/socialist system, otherwise known in present-day wing-nut America as "socialism" with a capital "Obama."
It seems hopeless now to prevent this travesty from going forward. Democrats do not want to give Republicans a victory, so instead they give Lieberman and insurance industry CEOs a victory. Together, the whole damn bunch of them are sure as hell sticking it to the Man, though.
To the "Everyman," that is.
There's a woman who lives under bridges around here. I don't know her name, but we talk all the time. She sees me reading in restaurants and one time she asked me if I had any books I could give to her. Mysteries. She said she liked mysteries. I do, I said. Now I always keep a book to giveaway in my backpack. Back when I belonged to several book clubs, I occasionally forgot to send back the card in time and wound up with a shelf of books I kind of/sort of don't want to ever read, but might. Well, she can have them.
Anyway, now it seems I should rightfully accept the mantel of criminal myself, the way I'm aiding and abetting a known criminal this way.
Oh, wait. That's the public option. The state has to pay for at least some health care once they become prisoners.
Never mind. I see now how it works. Carry on, oh great leaders in Washington. Carry on.