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Edited on Wed May-13-09 03:33 AM by Mythsaje
What we have in this country is a grand illusion of Choice. Five thousand varieties of toothpaste, fifty different kinds of toilet paper, kinds of deodorant, body-wash, shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, face creams, cosmetics, and whatever else you can find easily at every corner drugstore.
We've got 300 TV channels, dozens of radio stations, as many websites to visit as there are stars in the sky, YouTube videos galore, nearly every song ever imagined available for instant download to computer or Ipod.
We get home loans, student loans, payday loans, credit card debt, child support, house payments (or rent), car payments (or repair bills), insurance fees (be it car, health, home, life or whatever else) taxes, utility bills, fuel costs, childcare, grocery bills, and health care expenses to occupy our minds.
We get twelve years of Republican mismanagement (including the four years when they had Clinton to push around--though, to be fair, they did everything they possible could to keep him off balance the whole time), a staggering, stagnant economy, effective wage freezes, rampant (if not yet epidemic) unemployment, worsening working conditions leading to lower morale, multi-billion dollar corporate bailouts, usurious borrowing rates, predatory credit extortion and/or blackmail (last I heard Radio Shack required a credit check as a condition of employment. Drug testing is bad enough, but checking your CREDIT?).
We have medical bills ruining our credit, preventing us from attaining decent housing, a permanent and worsening problem with homelessness, hunger, and infectious disease.
We get two viable political parties. We get Health Insurance "reform" or nothing at all. We get one war, two wars, or three wars, but we don't get NO wars. We get Don't Ask Don't Tell. We get Defense of Marriage. We get to make bombs, guns, airplanes, or fast food, but we don't get to make anything that might be made more cheaply by indentured Chinese people.
The less important something is, the more choices we seem to have. Isn't that interesting? The things that are really important, well, we get to leave to someone else. Someone more...knowledgeable. Isn't that right? We have our elected people refusing to hear arguments supporting a health care option that 60% of American people support. We have medical and health care personnel being ARRESTED for daring to exercise their right of Free Speech in front of people doing the public's business.
Please, someone remind me who's supposed to be in charge here. It IS still THE PEOPLE, right? It's not a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations, right?
Let me get this straight, MR. BAUCHUS. You allow people employed by the corporations currently already making the vast majority of medical decisions in this country, much to their profit, to speak as they will in this forum, but you will not allow AMERICAN CITIZENS who possess FIRST HAND knowledge of what it's like IN THE GODDAMN TRENCHES and you refuse to listen to them?
So, we get to choose from any one of thousands of kinds of chemical gook to spread on our bodies, but WE DON'T GET TO DECIDE WHAT KIND OF HEALTH CARE SYSTEM WE SHOULD HAVE?
You know what? You're fired. Pack your bags and get the hell out. Why didn't our founding fathers give us a Pink Slip option? Mr. Bauchus--your services are no longer required. Please vacate the public premises at once.
You know what, folks? We should also be the ones making the decisions for the Democratic Party. Not its so-called "Leadership." Every day it becomes more clear that we've bought a pig in a poke. We've been the victims of a bait and switch, fallen for a three-card monte scam.
We get a "Oh, don't blame us. It's those Blue Dog Democrats who are screwing things up. Those Conservative Democrats over there."
How conveeeeenient. Why isn't OUR leadership (except for a few rare examples) talking about Single Payer? Talking about how it will lift a burden of debt not only off our citizens, but also from the corporations and small businesses as well. How THE ONLY reason we shouldn't have single payer universal health care is because a small but powerful lobby in the health care industry itself, and the massively powerful insurance lobby, would really prefer we didn't.
It's not about long waiting periods, or government making medical decisions, or lack of efficiency or cost effectiveness. No, it's about INSURANCE COMPANY profitability. Nothing else. NOTHING else.
Why aren't OUR pundit-types saying it? JUST LIKE THAT? Olbermann, Colbert, Stewart, Maddow, Maher? If they're on the MSM, they should be saying it every time the opportunity arises. We need to be telling the American people straight up that the only reason they have medical debt is because it serves the Insurance industry that they do so. OUR medical decisions aren't in our hands, or in the hands of our doctors. They're in the hands of the insurance companies--and woe to us if we can't pay for it if they decide we don't need something. We're just SCREWED. How could the government POSSIBLY be any worse than that? I mean, seriously--does Congress suffer greatly under the protection of THEIR single-payer health plan? How about Medicare? How about Medicaid? Or SSI?
We should be lighting up every newspaper editorial page, every news blog, every congressional office switchboard, and making sure people understand this. What they're trying to do isn't HEALTH CARE REFORM, it's HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM. They STILL want the same folks to be holding all the cards--they just want to shuffle 'em a bit first.
Don't I remember something about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? Does this feel in any way familiar?
Telephone, telegram, tell-a-friend. Just get it out there. Those involved the most in this decision have no concern for the welfare of the American people.
So, do YOU think we're "in good hands?" Honestly?
Make it KNOWN.
edited to pluralize
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