Letter to Obama

Here's the letter I just President Obama:

Dear President Obama,

I am very distressed to read on the Huffington Post that you are a) refusing to step up and support your party's efforts in Congress to include in the health care reform bill a robust public option that would let the states opt out and b) throwing your support behind the alternate plan, supported by Senator Snowe and the insurance industry, of a public option with a "trigger." This is unacceptable. Let me be very clear, Sir, and repeat myself: this is unacceptable.

I voted for you because you promised change, but letting the Republican Party continue to set the terms of debate on every imaginable issue including health care., and letting corporations set the terms and conditions of Federal oversight--whether it's the banking industry or the insurance industry--simply accelerates our national demise. I have watched and waited for you to step up and start enacting real change. I have defended you against friends and acquaintances who have said that your continual capitulations to the wealthy and the powerful have undermined any effectiveness you might have had.

And now I say to you: stop it. Stop pandering, stop capitulating. I say to you, step up, now, for a robust public option. It's the only hope we have of creating a health care system that takes care of people first and profits last. And believe me, Sir, if you think that this kind of capitulation will protect the Democratic Party or your own re-election efforts, you are seriously wrong, because I and every liberal and every progressive in this country will throw our weight behind whatever third party candidate offers him or herself as the candidate of change.

Your fellow citizen, Christina Hauck.

How I Got My Numbers

In my last post, I suggested that health care reform as it stands now offers us a choice between paying 12.5% or 4.5% of our income for health insurance. The larger figure assumes that the Baucus bill or some close variant of it passes and every American whose employer does not offer medical insurance is required to pay it on the open market. The smaller figure assumes that somehow Congress finds the will to create a single-payer system similar to Medicare.

I have to admit that I haven't actually seen the case put this way before. Here's how I arrived at those two numbers:

The Baucus bill widely assumes that most Americans now buying health insurance on the open market are paying about 12.5% of their income and that it is reasonable to expect them to continue to do so. It offers some kind of Federal tax subsidy for people who can't afford that: I'm not very clear on the details.

According to Representative Anthony Weiner of New York, Medicare currently spends 4% of the money it collects on overhead and administrative costs. Private insurance companies, on the other hand, spend about 30%. So I figure that if we can collect 4.5% of everyone's salary or wage and if we require a matching contribution from employers then we'd have a pool equal to 9% of the nation's payroll and we should be able to insure everyone.

Actually, I don't know how much money that would generate or if it would be enough to actually insure everyone. But my figures seem reasonable.

A Simple Choice

When it comes to health care reform, doing nothing is not an option. And it looks like everyone is going to have to buy some kind of medical insurance. The only question is, how much are we going to have to pay?

The choices seem pretty stark:

Would you rather pay 12.5% of your income for health insurance or 4.5%?

If you'd rather pay 12.5%, then you must be for the Baucus plan. The good news about this plan is that it won't increase the federal deficit for the first ten years of its implementation and will actually decrease the deficit for the next ten years. The bad news is that 12.5% only covers the cost of insurance; it doesn't include your deductibles or co-pays. Have a bad year? You might end up paying 25% of your salary. But don't worry: your federal taxes won't go up.

If you'd rather pay 4.5% (and who wouldn't) then you are probably all for single-payer health care. The bad news? You'd have to pay more in taxes. The good news? Even a child could figure that one out.

What Americans Want

To judge from the neverending flow of spam that I routinely flush down my computer's toilet, Americans want two things, urgently: smaller bodies and bigger penises.

Even though we have no real stake in the matter, being relatively slender Lesbians, Margaret and I put our heads together and came up with a solution: a surgical technique that suctions unwanted fat from the body and deposits it into the penis.

Maybe this is just the impetus we need to pass a health care reform bill.

But don't worry. It won't cost taxpayers a penny. We've crunched the numbers, and we predict that this new procedure, marketed with all the care and expertise given any new medical product, will generate enough new tax revenue to pay for itself. We also expect a huge tax windfall from the sale of the numerous, um, supporting products that hugely endowed American males will soon need, for example, a jock strap capable of supporting a 50 pound penis. Some exceptional males will no doubt need specially designed wheelbarrows to haul around all their junk.

Talk about making her scream.

How Many Ways Can You Spell Hypocrite?

So it seems that the man who got the tip of his pinky bitten off during the anti-health care rally not only provoked the attack by punching the other man in the face, he actually has Medicare and used it to pay for his hospital bill.

I was reading some posts in response to a story about this at the Washington Post but I just don't have the stomach for it. Apparently, when Move-on.Org sponsors a rally that's not civil dissent it's a way of stifling dissent and a prelude to the Nazi takeover. But when conservative whack jobs bring handguns and assault rifles to health care rallies that's not a way of intimidating anyone who disagrees, it's simply an exercise of the constitutional right to bear arms.

Well, this is what we get for refusing to fund our education system: a nation of people who can't think.

Oh, yeah, one more thing: I refuse to refer to the amputee as the "old guy" or the "poor old guy," because he's only 65, and baby, that ain't old.

I Was Right (sort of)

In my last post, I suggested that we might get through the Hysterical People by asking them questions and helping them to focus on certain facts. To a certain extent, I was right.

Apparently, a left-wing Democrat, Rep Anthoney Weiner of New York, got through to a right-wing talk-show host, Joe Scarborough, by asking simple questions: what is an insurance company? what do they bring to the table? why is their overhead 30% when Medicare's is only 4%? why can WalMart offer $4 prescriptions?

But my questions were way to hard and--I'll admit it, sarcastic and hostile.

You can read about it here.

Thanks to Klugman

Paul Klugman's recent column on the health care debate was very helpful. It may offer a way to help the Hysterical People (not all of whom are also Stupid People) understand the various options available to us. Here are some questions I imagine asking a Hysterical Person, if one should cross my path and be too exhausted to emote:

1) So you really think that Britain's Health care system is abyssmally bad and couldn't possibly work here? (Imagine here tearfully sincere nodding.) Then you should be writing your Senator and demanding that we immediately dismantle the VA Hospital System, because that's run almost exactly like Britain's NHS.

(How you can tell a merely Hysterical Person from a Really Stupid Person (or RSP): the RSP will simply deny the truth of what you are saying OR will accuse you of something nefarious, like Not Supporting Our Troops. Sarah Palin, anyone?)

2) And you REALLY don't want us to try anything like the Canadian system, right? (Vigorous nodding.) Well, then, you'd better get on the phone and demand that your Senator sponsor a bill dismantling Medicare right now because Medicare works just like Canada's system.

Klugman's most important point is that what Obama is proposing looks more like the Swiss model of health care, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to make sure everyone is insured. I don't think the Hysterical or the Stupid People need to hear that!

By the way, Klugman thinks the Swiss plan is workable. I think it's not, primarily because the Federal Government tends to draw its regulators from the very industry they are supposed to regulate and they seldom have the will to get the job done.

But I agree wholeheartedly with his last point: "all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies."

Thanks, Paul.

The Nature of Debate

Well, I am still waiting for the Great Health Care Debate to begin. But so far all I've seen is obsessive TV coverage of lunatics who believe every damn lie the Fox Network feeds them and shout and scream and wail and wave their guns around.

(Suppose the anti-war protesters has acted like this way back when Bush was starting his own private Oedi-war. Think we would've gotten a shred of respect?)

So, two ingredients for a good debate: debaters possessed of FACTS not fantasies and a willingness to LISTEN and RESPOND to what the other side is saying.

If We Can Do It For the Military . . .

we can do it for everyone!

Great interview the other night between Bill Kristol and Jon Stewart.

Stuart got Kristol to admit that a) the government runs the best health care delivery system in the country and b) only the military deserves that level of care.

Kristol, who never stops grinning no matter how stupid he looks or sounds, wouldn't admit to the logical inference: the rest of us are getting second-class medical care.

Stewart couldn't stop grinning, and neither could I.

Health Care Scams, Er, Subsidies

I just read this article in the NYT.

My immediate reaction is that Congress is trying to expand the existing for profit health care system rather than admit it is broken beyond repair.

All those "subsidies" will end up in the hands of the insurance companies who will continue to invent ever more ingenious ways to avoid paying for health care.

What a scam.