Tag Archives: Politics

Health Care Coverage in Parallel Universes

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The American cable news channels are in full parallel-universe mode today, Saturday.

MSNBC had President Barack Obama, campaigning for health care reform in Minnesota. MSNBC televised the president’s speech in its entirety to a crowd of thousands. MSNBC’s cameras showed wide-angle views of the packed arena, people cheering wildly.

When the president explained the problems facing health care in America, someone in the audience shouted, “We’ve got to do something!” Mr. Obama agreed,  “We’ve got to do something.” It was a long way from Washington, where a congressman shouted at the president this week, “You lie.”

President Obama said he’s not going to waste any more time with cynical politicians who are clearly committed to defeating health care and destroying his presidency.

The crowd in Minnesota was “Fired up!” and “Ready to go!”

Meanwhile, over at FOX News, they were covering an anti-health care rally on the Mall back in Washington. The FOX News camera focused in tightly on a knot of demonstrators (two dozen? a hundred?) and one unknown speaker ranting about the First Amendment and “uniform taxation.” One thing you have to give the health-care opponents, they’re not a single-interest group. No indeed, they’ve got a gunny sack full  of gripes. (Correction: Later in the day I learned that there were a lot more than a hundred demonstrators in Washington. There were thousands and thousands. See note from Lizzi in Comments below.)

FOX was in Texas, too, providing air time to some Texan who was complaining about health care for everyone. What an un-American concept! Health care for all, even the unemployed, even the poor, even people with pre-existing conditions.

The Texan said the government ought to stay out of health care, because the government has no experience running such a program. Umm . . . What about Medicare? Senior citizens seem quite fond of Medicare. Who do you think runs Medicare?  What about Social Security, which has one-percent administrative costs? Who do you think runs Social Security?

And so it goes. MSNBC and FOX News, two professional cable news channels, reporting live from  parallel universes.

Paradox of Personal Wants and Needs Writ Large in Politics

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When it comes to government and bureaucracy, most of us simply want to be left alone and allowed to live as we please. Don’t we have enough demanding voices telling us what to do in our families, our personal relationships, our religion, our jobs?  Enough! We don’t need any more demands from government! All we want is some freedom, some independence, some space. And while we’re at it, some respect. “Is that too much to ask?” We shake our fist at big-brother government: “What part of that don’t you understand?”

Paradoxically, we want our needs to be taken care of. We’d like to be protected from the vagaries of life, please. (Vagary comes from the Latin, “to wander.”) We wander through a world of troubles — failures and successes — broken relationships, financial hardships, illnesses. The fears are not so clear when we are young and invincible; it all becomes more obvious as we get older. We want to be protected at least from the most fundamental brutalities, i.e., hunger, pain, violence, and failing health. At rock bottom, we’d really like to be protected from death.

Once in a while, democracy lays bare the paradox, confronting an issue that speaks to our innermost needs to be left alone and at the same time to be taken care of. A life-and-death issue, you might say. No wonder we are angry, divided, frightened and perplexed about health care.

President Obama Declares Support for ‘Public Option’ in a Health Insurance Exchange

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Surfing back and forth between the cable news channels, FOX News and MSNBC, before President Barack Obama’s address to Congress on health care reform, a visitor from Mars would likely conclude that the Fox pundits and the MSNBC pundits reside in parallel universes, or perhaps on different planets. 

No surprise if it sometimes seems that people are brain-washed by either the conservative pundits at FOX or the liberals at MSNBC.

The president attempted Wednesday evening to speak over the heads of FOX and MSNBC, to speak directly to the American people. 

President Obama made his intentions and his resolve clear from the start of his address: “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” 

The president refused to parrot the pundits on either political extreme. He attempted to position himself squarely in the center, saying he prefers “to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch.”

Congress has been pecking at health care for months, in the unlikely hope of achieving a bipartisan agreement. Wednesday, the president finally made clear his own proposal.

President Obama proposed a “new insurance exchange” from which citizens could select  and pay for the health insurance plan of their choice. He proposed that the insurance exchange “take effect in four years, which will give us time to get it right.”

Ending weeks of speculation, the president came down solidly for a “not-for-profit public option” to be available along with private health insurance choices in the insurance exchange.

To those who fear losing their present health insurance, the president said: “Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have,” and he declared, “I will protect Medicare.”

And to those who urged him to fight for health care reform, President Obama said, “I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans cannot find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice.”

He declared that the principles of social justice and the character of America are at stake in the health care decision.

Let’s not let cable news channels trivialize the issues.

— John Hayden

Divide And Conquer — Medicare Vs. Universal Health Care

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All the good intentions of those two dreamers — President Barack Obama and Sen. Ted Kennedy — and their hopes that health care might be available to ALL Americans, have run into a wall of mindless self-interest.

It turns out that Medicare-eligible senior citizens are the new privileged class. People over 65 are the haves; people under 65 are the have-nots.

The virtue of generosity once again is no match for the power of fear and selfishness.

Senior citizens to America: “We’ve got our Medicare; the rest of you can go to hell.”

I never believed the prediction that American democracy would disintegrate into inter-generational warfare over Social Security and Medicare. I was under the naive delusion that America’s  elders would teach wisdom and generosity.

Never mind.  It turns out that as a group, senior citizens appear to be as callow as a gang of teenagers; as greedy as a roomfull of CEOs; as indifferent to the poor as a convention of Wall Street bankers.

If President Barack Obama’s goal of health care reform fails, it will fail because complacent senior citizens decide to make their children and grandchildren America’s health care have-nots.

Ted Kennedy, A Great Man For Our Time

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Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

Sen. Ted. Kennedy has passed away at his home in Hyannis Port, MA.

He didn’t live to see universal health care enacted. He didn’t achieve his hereditary goal of the presidency. He became by dint of long service a leader of the U.S. Senate, perhaps the most admired and respected U.S. Senator, an unwavering voice (loud, too) for invisible Americans, a conscience for U.S. politics.

He carried the torch and handed it forward. He may have been the king-maker for the current American president. Ted Kennedy was the lion of the Democratic Party and of the Senate. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ted Kennedy was a wealthy American aristocrat who was an untiring advocate for the poor.

“The dream shall never die.”

For other tributes from members of the over-60 generation, see Jon Taplin’s Blog and Single for a Reason. As Mary McGrory, then a reporter for the Evening Star of Washington, said at the time of John F. Kennedy’s death, “We’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again.”

— John Hayden

Clarity on Health Insurance and the Public Option

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Updated and revised, 07-31-2009.

The political and economic debate over health care in America is starting to clarify.

Congress is coming to the conclusion that the private health insurance industry is part of the problem. Tailoring American health policy to suit the private insurance industry makes no sense.

Health care policy should be designed to meet the needs of people and doctors, not insurance companies. Did you ever know a friend who liked fighting with insurance companies to get a claim approved? Do you know anyone who likes needing a referral to see a doctor? Do you know any physicians who like the paperwork that the insurance companies impose on doctors and their office staff? 

Finally, do you know any doctors who enjoy having the insurance companies tell them how to run their medical practice?  Do you know any patients who trust their insurance company more than their doctor?

President Barack Obama’s proposed public option is making more and more sense as an alternative for people who are sick of dealing with the private insurance companies.

Universal health care would also be a giant step toward simplifying life for millions of middle-class, working-class, and poor Americans. 

How nice it would be to accept a different job without having to give up your health insurance! What a relief it would be if, even when you lose your job, at least you don’t lose your health insurance! Your children could still go to their pediatrician, not the emergency room. Health care for all would be so . . . well, so equal. It would be so fair.

And for those of us in the graying generation, baby boomers who often find ourselves passed by in this fast-changing economy, what a relief if we at least had health insurance.

Medicare eliminated the specter of poor, elderly Americans unable to afford health care. What if we could do the same for all Americans? 

Health care is one of the essentials of life: Food, Shelter, Clothing, Transportation and Health Care. It would be so much easier to live a simple and frugal lifestyle, if essential health care was available for every American.