Surprise! Universal health care really is a matter of life and death.
Single payer, no rickety plans, just do it the Fuck
like all the other civilized nations do. Xan nails it in this comment, which ought to be permanently front-paged on every fucking liberal blog in the world forever. Sarah advocates early testing, which in a sane world might make sense, but:
[XAN] I was trying to agree with you. You have “choices” about living longer only if you are worth keeping alive. That means having money, since money = worth.
I have no money. I am not worth keeping alive. Check CD’s post on the story about where the US ranks on rate of death from preventable diseases. Hint: dead last, you should pardon the expression.
Therefore I will not live no matter what stage my (entirely hypothetical) cancer is caught at. Catching it “early” will only make me, or you for that matter, depressed. Why bother?
I am not worth keeping alive, under our system as presently constituted. Anybody who wonders why I support John Edwards as persistently as I do should keep in mind that he is the only fucking candidate who thinks I am worth keeping alive. That kinda means a lot to me.
I feel exactly the same way. I go get tested, and the results are bad. What can I do except go die anyhow? Test or no test, the end result is the same, but if I get the test, I lose happiness, which I do have, but which is all I have. What does the knowledge get me? The time to "settle my affairs"? No thank you.
There's a woman who runs a small store in my town. The store isn't big enough for her to afford health insurance. She has varicose veins, and can't afford treatment. So, when that condition acts up, she walks around with her feet bleeding out.
In America. In the Year of Our Lord 2008.
NOTE As if it ever made sense to voluntarily get your health information into any kind of a record, let alone one that tags you as having a pre-existing condition. Shit, it would make more sense to do whatever it takes to go to jail. Awful though that would be, at least there's a clinic on the inside.
NOTE Oh, and with Xan, I support Edwards. He's the only one who gets it. Fuck "unity" and fuck "experience." How about making sure people don't die when the only medication they need to live is money?
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the health care revolution
is coming. i don't doubt it, although i'm not sure how it will play out, that is, if it will be a 'revoultion' or The Revolution.
but now that people are losing their houses, and even democratic pols are speaking of taking away Social Security and giving it to the same people who are responsible for all those foreclosures...no. i just can't believe our wholly uncivilized system is going to be allowed to remain the same, in the next decade or two.
the boomer bust is coming. boomers are aging and the last group to enjoy good coverage, and many of them won't have the coverage they thought they would, a la GM negotiating away retiree benefits that were supposed to be locked in. boomers' children, people like me, literally can't work enough hours to pay for the coverage our parents need, and even if we did, it's harder and harder to get health care that is more than stop-gap and minimal. kids coming up under me will most certainly not be in a position to provide care for themselves and their elders at the same time- they'd need to get middle class jobs for that and those are disappearing rapidly.
more than any other issue, i think progressives should make universal health care their rallying cry. i'm sorry edwards hasn't gotten more coverage, and that he's not quite as shrill as i'd like him to be. i suspect if more people heard him talk about the issue, they'd choose him. whatever the case, one day soon a very smart pol will ride the health care crisis (because let's face it, for ~100m of us it's a true crisis) to big victory.
off topic
latest on White House email ligitgation blues
Kucinich
>just do it the Fuck
like all the other civilized nations do
>I support Edwards. He’s the only one who gets it.
What?? Edwards's platform is not Just Do It. Only Kucinich stands for that.
But The U.S. Has The Best Health Care In The World!
Right? Opponents to universal care argue such a plan will destroy the best healthcare.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority. . . . it is the one guaranty of human freedom to the American people. - Frank Irving Cobb
The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority. . . . it is the one guaranty of human freedom to the American people. - Frank Irving Cobb
Oh, yeah, right, Kucinich
Go away, Kucinichistas.
Supporting Kucinich would be a quixotic gesture, regardless of his actual platform. Kucinich totally lost me anyhow, by throwing his Iowa support, such as it was, to Obama on some bizarre "good only in Iowa but not one week later" rationale. Eesh.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I should have been clearer
My post was not meant to say we all should vote for Kucinich. My point was that it's incorrect to say that Edwards would move directly to single-payer. Kucinich shows us what it would be like to have a candidate who does say that. One may reasonably believe that Edwards is the best option; one may not reasonably believe that he supports single-payer.
Kucinich shows us what a candidate who does support single-payer sounds like. If you support Edwards, you need to do so in the face of his support for something different, and not pretend that that's what he's doing. Edward's plan differs only in modest degree from Clinton's - even Krugman says that. That's what I meant.
The Way to win whilst dying
Why get tested for anything if you have no money and you're just going to die?
Oh the joys of pauperhood. My wife who is smarter than me sez your headline sums up exactly the reason why she doesn't want to ever see the inside of a doctor's office or hospital. Why bother? In her words, it'll only make you and those who love you anxious and miserable, and then you die. Stuffed to the gills with chems and pharms, with your family beyond broke.
Not being as smart as my wife, I think happier thoughts. My favorite way of dying would be the Basic Midair Plane Drop Caused By Some Mechanical Fuckup. If you pretend that the multiscreamitude of your benighted fellow passengers is just some postmodern music somehow piped into the cabin, you can enjoy a nice free-float to Whatever's Next, knowing that (a) the airline will have to pay your loved ones big time; (b) Teh Insurance will be the ones who actually shell out; (c) you won't endure some horrible drawn-out breakdown of your aging-beyond-normal-human-lifespan body parts; (d) no rouged, formaldehyde-injected, prom-drag Clown Corpse for voyeurs to pray/gloat/pretend they almost care over; (e) no Funeral Vultures exploiting your spouse's grief to inflate their already outrageous fees with Extras that Show you Really Do Love the corpse; (f) your remains dissolve and recycle naturally into the general planet.
As far as the screaming goes, I can always switch to Robert Plant, Mrs. Miller, or Toshi Ichiyanagi on the headphones and call it music. (Ideally I'll keep such a CD about my person to whip out in such a circumstance.) (I still use an actual "CD player" with giant old-school studio headphones, for I retain a certain heartwarming nostalgia for the sunset days of the 20th century.) (As an added bonus, the GOSS headphones also totally block out the cruel snickers of an uncaring Outside World.)
Anybody else have a well-crafted scheme for beating the house with yer personal death? Feel free to share: I might wanna switch to your Plan.
I guess what I'm saying...
... is:
1. IIRC, the Edwards plan throws companies and goverments into competition in an arena where companies have to lose, over time, on overhead. So, ultimately it turns into single payer (if the Republicans don't sabotage it, which comes down to keeping them out of power for a generation or so). That may be the best deal we can get, given the givens.
2. I'm not real enthusiastic about the mandates issue. I think it should work like Canada or Medicare. Maybe we can't get there.
3. Tempermentally, I feel that Edwards understands my position on a human level, that Clinton understands my position as a technocrat, and that Obama doesn't understand it at all. (I mean, what kind of campaign throws together a medical plan with a flaw so gross that a newspaper columnist, even one as eminent as Krugman, can find a huge hole in it? Kudos to Obama for then correcting the hole, but the stuff you're truly invested in, that doesn't happen with. I'm sure Krugman thought, hmm, just like the Bush numbers. And who's to say he's not right?)
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Lambert: I think Obama understands your position.....
he just doesn't share it.
In support of this bit of mind reading, I'd point you to this post about the ideological background of Obama's economic advisers:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/0...
You've been turning out a lot of great stuff lately. Thanks.
Slaughterhouse comparison
What is different between our health care system and this nation's slaughterhouses is after you die (perhaps a bit younger than you had hoped for) you stand a decent chance of being buried with your tumors* (should you have them)--with cattle at slaughter the tumors are sliced off with chainsaws and the remaining meat is then sold to the public. Nothing like the sight of shredded tumors on the killing floor to get one's appetite roaring!
And if you are a meat eater, don't take this personally. Nothing says "woe is me" better than a nice fat steak cut for you from the same assembly-line/profit motive process that denies you health care. Closed system, big circle of life kind of thing.
++++
*Should you be cremated any tumors remaining in your corpse will be mixed in with your ashes.
++++
I Do Loves Me Some Barney Frank.
He asks some questions of Obama that I think deserve an answer.
Refight the Nineties?
Of course, the comments do have the OFB
squad telling us all what Obama really means.
"I can live with this chronological anomie"
Go, Barney, go!
Mistah Speakah!
Man, if it were Barney Frank in the House, and Chris Dodd in the Senate, we might be getting somewhere.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Heehee, pooka(2), come sit by me
Your line
reminds me that I must one day get around to doing my rant about the funeral racket and laws rigged to make your scenario one of the few ways to get out of this life without having to spend time in their clutches.
Even donating your body to science doesn't work; the law sez yer stinkin' carcase has to be hauled to the Body Boyz by, you guessed it, a licensed mortician. Getting lost at sea is another option although, like your hypothetical Last Plane to Darksville, requires the wherewithal to finance the trip.
The Modern Way of Death system dates to, wouldn't you guess it, the Civil War....maybe ChiDy and I can tag-team the subject one of these days and compare the customs of the Sumerians with the practices of the present day. My bet is that the Sumerians come off looking a lot better in competition. :)
slaves were valuable property, and the sumerians
took care of theirs, xan. there were laws in place very, very early on about the correct treatment of social inferiors, and more than once the law codes laid out harsh penalties for those who took advantage of widows, orphans and the poor.
indeed, if those laws were in place today, certain health care execs would've had their hands cut off and their eyes gouged out long ago...