Hobbled Lobbyists

This is what my train ride looks like. A cartoon.

Right now, on the train on the way to work, in the middle of flu season, a woman is hacking. Those near here have moved away for fear of contracting a sickness – on their way to work. I want to tell her she should just stay home. If it gets any worse, she should go to her doctor’s. But the truth is, she’s probably like me. She may not have sick days. She may not be able to afford to take a day off. And she probably doesn’t have an affordable way to contact her doctor.

Now, you would think that Christians would be the first to rise up and say, “That’s unjust. That is a travesty. That is not right. Someone allow this woman to go home and take care of herself. And, if not possible, for a highly-trained capable doctor to treat her without her losing her home.” But then you probably wouldn’t be the “fine Christians” responsible for writing or endorsing this piece by Liberty University’s Karen Fellow Swallows and published by Christianity Today, the flagship American Evangelical publication.

I don’t have enough energy or creativity to express my outrage at Christianity Today for publishing this blog post by Liberty U faculty on how the billionaire “good Christian” owners of Hobby Lobby are JUST LIKE St Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Or about how having them pay into and help provide insurance for their employees is JUST LIKE forcing Quakers to buy assault rifles from a gun dealer, or forcing an anti-porn professor to buy Hustler for her students. Of about how taking contraceptives is JUST LIKE getting an abortion.

No one should be forced to answer such stupid, anti-science, greedy-defending, ignorant bullshit. Jesus had nothing nice to say about the wealthy, about those who shore up their grains while their neighbors are starving, or those who refuse to pay their workers justly and abundantly*.

Rather, I’ll let you read a couple responses from Fred Clark, aka, Slacktivist – first on the martyr complex, and then on the company town that Hobby Lobby and its defenders are defending. And then there’s the abortion nonsense, which I think was perfectly covered by Love, Joy, Feminism a few months ago.

And there’s this wonderful succinct analogy, far more sensical (because it compares apples to apples, rather than to space craft, as Evangelical logic on this topic is wont to), by Rebecca Trotter that I found in the comments in the first Slacktivist blog:

[V]egans often hold very strong ideals regarding the immorality of using animals for food, products, research and the like. So does the vegan business owner have the right to decree that their employees not use their paychecks to purchase animal products? Can they offer health insurance which doesn't cover any medical treatment involving the use of animal products or animal research? I think any rational person would say no. The vegan can make their own choices and try to win others to their views. But they don't have the right to dictate that others conform to their practices by reason of their employment.

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*For a regular dose of what Jesus and the prophets had to say about wealth, see Commie Pinkos Wrote My Bible 

Misdirected Moral Outrage in the Pro-Life Bible Belt

 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

 John 10:10 (NIV)

I have come so that you may have life...

In a statement published Monday morning, Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) “proudly” declared that he will decline to implement key tenets of the Affordable Care Act — a move that will see his state forgo an estimated $164 billion dollars in federal aid and leave over 1.2 million low-income Texans, who would have finally been eligible for health care, helpless and uninsured..

With his announcement, Perry becomes the sixth governor to refuse implementing a key aspect of the Affordable Care Act: the Medicaid expansion and the state-based health care exchanges. Republican governors in Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Wisconsin have made similar decisions.

So, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. The Bible Belt. The heart of the Pro-Life movement. Solid Southern Baptist strongholds. Where is the moral outrage from the Christian churches in these states?

But the thief...

They're certainly willing to shut down abortion clinics and allow poor mothers the chance to raise their children alone or with minimal assistance - and STILL deny them necessary medical assistance.

Nearly 25 percent of Texans — 6.5 million people — do not have health insurance, including more than 1.2 million children, and the state’s health care system ranks last in the nation overall.

Why are 1,200,000 children denied basic health care coverage in the state of Texas? That is a lot of children that the governor who hosted a prayer before he announced his presidential run is willing to let suffer. Those same people who hosted his prayer rally, by the way, were not praying that these children would be covered. They were not praying that the state and legislature of Texas would care for the sick, the dying, the young, the poor, the imprisoned.

...the thief comes...



To be honest, I wonder if these churches are good for anything some days. They sure don't seem to want to follow the example of Jesus. And I'm sick of their bullshit. I'm sick of their lies and their deceit and I'm sick of them blaming Muslims or Gays or Wiccans or Mexicans or the Lazy Poor*, or Atheists or Libruls or the Black Scary Man in the Oval Office for all the problems in the world when they are actually praying, lobbying and fighting against protection for the sick and the poor. Because Lord knows, they aren't doing a thing on their own. They talk a mighty big game, but when it comes down to it, they are not putting their money where their mouths are. They won't. They can't if they tried. But in all honesty, they won't.

...he comes to steal...

They can be involved on ocassions. They can help run soup kitchens. They can run pantries and do all this stuff, but in the end, they argue against anybody else helping the poor. They argue, in oddly, the one place where they seem to care about coercion, against taxes being used as instruments of justice (though they're awfully quiet about any other form of coercion - including the violent coercion of war which takes a much higher claim and is much more coercive). It doesn't seem to bother them much that tens of thousands in the US die from preventable causes due to lack of adequate, preventative health care (and no, the Emergency Room is neither adequate nor preventative) because they are poor.

...he comes to kill...

Rick Perry, governor of Texas. Rick Scott of Florida. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
Men highly favored by the pro-life Christians in their state.
Men who are all claiming warfare on a government policy they don't want to lose to - even knowing the policy benefits their coffers. AND, more importantly, knowing that refusing the policy will end up killing many of their states' poorest. Literally, killing them.

Where is the pro-life movement here? You know where. They are protesting the Affordable Care Act under the pretense that it may drive up abortions. For all their outrage at the taking of life of the pre-born, they are doing a damned good argument that there is no justifiable reason for a child to come into this world at all. It's all bloody hell, this world that they are working so hard to destroy.

... he comes to destroy...

The NRA profits off of massive death in Mexico and the US. Any questioning of policies that lead to massive gun shipments between places with weak gun laws (AZ, IN) and stronger ones is charcterized by them as being unAmerican and antifreedom. It also opens up the possibility that the questioners will themselves be under fire.

Since when was an imaginary concept of freedom more important than actual lives of actual children, women and men?

Oh, yeah, when it's directed at the white, rich boss on the hill. The one who comes to town to steal, kill, destroy in the name of his freedom. His freedom is the only one that matters anyway, right?

But I have come to offer you abundant life...

Dear pro-life movement, choose you this day whom you will serve. I shall serve the Lord. For it is the Christ who gives life to the fullest. It is the Christ who loved us while we were yet enemies. It is the Christ who freely gives healing, who attends to the sick, who welcomes the unclean, who sets the prisoners free.

Oh, there's that word. Free. Used for prisoners, at that. Not necessarily, in Jesus-context white, rich men, generally speaking.

May all be free.
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*AKA, Black and Latino families on welfare or in poverty. The white or rich folks who get 'gubmint handouts' are okay. They can't possibly be lazy, amirite?

The Strings Attached Are Attached to All of Us

We live in this big, intricate, messed up, imperfect world filled with imperfect humans. And it seems like most of us know that and take that for granted. Most American Evangelical Christians sure do. What many of them don't seem to notice, or at least acknowledge, is that we also live in this interdependent, intricately connected, living, breathing society.

Society is not just a concept. It's not an out-there thing disassociated from our everyday reality. It is very present and it is very real. We may not be able to touch it like the hard oak of this heavy but falling-apart table I like to rest my feet on occasionally, but it is every bit as real as the sweat gleaming off my forehead.

So it bothers me to no little effect when people complain about having to participate in society and act as if they owe it nothing - as were the basic arguments raised this last week over the healthcare ruling from the Supreme Court. It's an argument that the poor are using the government to steal from the rich (rather than the truth that the rich are stealing from the poor), or that we're being forced to buy something we don't need. And for all the problems of the Affordable Care Act - and there are many, many - these reasons don't come into play, but expose a deeper problem in contemporary American society and politics: we believe we do not benefit from the very systems that benefit us and we believe that our benefit is not the result of exploiting the very poor of our country and the world.

But first the good stuff. We benefit largely as a result of shared work. That's how a society functions. Everybody puts in; everybody gets results.

The dreams we have, the work we do, the benefits we enjoy, the language we possess, the identities we carry, the food we eat (less that you hunt and grow), the health care we enjoy, the cars we drive, the streets we roll down, these are all effects of the shared work of society. One cannot decide to not participate. One cannot decide that they owe nothing to society nor that society has not given them and continues to give them what they need and often what they desire. If these people want to live like a hermit, fine. Let them fix their own water, electricity, food. Keep them off our roads. Allow them the privilege of developing their own language for their imaginary conversations with imaginary friends. They need to stop using ours for their fantasies.

Look, a socialist road!

Now, if you drive, you have to have insurance, right? Because you're socially responsible for the economic burden that could happen due to any accident that may occur to or as a result of your car. It's part of the price of participating in sharing the roads. Sometimes the cost is nearly unbearable, but when we run into a problem, we're better off for it. That day may not happen for some of us - but it could happen to any of us no matter how safe and responsible we are (or believe we are) as drivers - and that is the point.

Everybody needs healthcare insurance. There is no getting around that. If you don't have it, but something, anything, unexpected pops up (an unidentified lump, an accident, a heart murmur) everybody else pays for it. Everybody needs it. If you don't want it, it doesn't matter. You need it. That's why it's called "insurance."

Everybody shares the load. That's what makes a society. If you can't handle that, never ask for a job, fix your own water, become a hermit. Because we don't deserve to have to share the cost of society with selfish people who take without considering to help and then want to cut off food and survival functions for workers and mothers and children who do or will or want to give back through their sweat, who create wealth for the privileged classes.

Which brings us back to our second point.

American patriots constantly point out how generous the United States is, both in terms of government and private charity. But we don't acknowledge the strings that come attached. We talk about how much we help Haiti and African people but ignore the fact that they are in such dire straights because of oppressive economic lending practices, because we deplete their resources, because we have installed leaders that were horrible for their countries but were good for us.

That's how it's always turned out, in Southeast Asia, in Latin America, in the Pacific... With our influence and money, we get to curry favors and effectually rob what we now deem "developing" countries so that they need to ask for more favors - wherein we or our surrogates come in to effectively own the country and its resources (be it water, energy, diamonds, gold). To add demonic joy, we love playing these countries against each other to distract other countries in the region while we keep them in check (cf, the Middle East).

These are the costs of society that we need to gather and figure how we can do without and how we can run off. We live in Orwellian times. "Freedom" means the freedom of rich white people to steal from most of the rest of the world and not give a sh*t about the rest of us.

We may be free to dream of a better world for us all, but we're not allowed to speak it outloud, for fears that somehow a better world for all is somehow fascist. I believe conservatives should focus more on reducing the costs of healthcare rather than putting all their efforts in oppressing the poor and keeping them from receiving it.

So some things you don't have a choice on. So what? A lot of people don't get to decide whether or not they'll sleep with one eye open or whether or not their home will be collateral damage for our War on Drugs or our War on Terror or our War on War or whatever other euphemism we can figure for Blowing People Up for Political Expediency and to Extend Our Imperialism and Corporate Interests.

Get over it. Get involved in society and help us find better ways to live and act as a civil social humane society.

Until we get to the point where all are protected and truly represented in an equitable system, though, I believe that the government's obligation is to protect the most vulnerable.

I'm a socialist. But I'm one because Jesus and the prophets taught me to be one. If the Christian Right (and most every interaction with people who complain about having to help other people I have had in the last few years has been with a conservative Christian) does not believe in sharing and helping (and it's pretty obvious they don't), and they can't see where the Bible tells us to bear one another's burdens both as neighbors and as citizens through government, I'm not sure what Bible they're reading. Tt's not the Hebrew and Christian one. It's not the one written by Commie Pinkos. Perhaps the Satanic Bible...

The Odious Freeloaders Ode to the public health system in the United States

Oh, America, how I love, how I adore, how I lavish that you are not like every other wealthy country - and most poor. For when we are sick, you have us fend for ourselves. That can only make us better, and teach us to not be sick or get into accidents if we are poor. And further, it strengthens the teachings that it sucks to be poor. Because there aren't enough lessons out there for the poor. Otherwise, they would quit being so poor already.

Thank you, American Medical System, for practicing expensive invasive medicines rather than advocating for more practical, cheap and less harmful preventative medicine. When we are filled with doughnuts and french fries, you wait until we are gangrene before you take preventative measures - such as chopping off our toes. This must also be a lesson in sacrifice. The poor must bear their weight.

The Old Cook County Hospital Building. I really love the ancient gothic-ness of the place. And that it looks like it's gonna collapse in on itself any minute now.

Thank you, Insurance Companies, for wrestling for more profits during a time when public outcry was great for universal healthcare. When nearly every other country has figured out that profit has no role in adequate medicine, you've successfully confused parties, the middle and working class to fight against their own self-interests and widen your profit margins. Bravo, bi-atches. Brav. O.

Thank you Tea Parties, both leaders and followers, for fighting against your own self-interests under the dumb-foundingly ignorant claims that fundamentally reforming medical care in the US would be more expensive than continuing on the same way. Even though every country with universal healthcare pays roughly half per capita what we do to cover fewer people. More importantly, thank you for fighting against the best interests of the 1/4 of working adults who can't afford insurance and emboldening the insurance companies to squeeze more out of everyone else. You are incredible. And simply astounding.

I want to thank the Supreme Court, for being both partial and childish. Long gone are the days when activist judges applied the constitution to African Americans and women. Now, at long last, we have activist judges who extend the constitution to corporations and profiteers. Three cheers especially for the justice whose wife actively lobbied against health care reform and the Affordable Care Act and who gets to sit on the bench and claim impartiality over this very issue. That was quite shrewd, CThom, quite shrewd.

And finally, I want to thank the Western and specifically American socio-cultural-political system. The one that has made leisure a priority, that has sacrificed your health to cosmetic, agri-business, fast-food, energy, and manufacturer industries through which your lives are endangered via the violence of toxins and pollutants in our air, water, land, and food. If it were not for you, Americans would have had to find some other way to get breast, lung, arterial, or rectal cancers (ok, I'm not sure about that last one...). If it weren't for the need to travel uncountable miles every day in order to procure our basic needs, we wouldn't have such car accidents or lung diseases. If it weren't for the artificial and unnatural additives in our daily bread, we wouldn't have such high rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart failure. Moreover, if it weren't for the divisive ways we practice capitalism in this country, we would not be able to have all the enjoyment of practicing so much fun violence. Gangs and their turf wars - as well as alcohol abuse, drug abuse and smuggling, and other signs of eonomic despondency - would be a thing of the past with enhanced opportunities for the unprivileged majority.

So, truly America, stay classy by continuing to fight against your best interests both as individuals and as a nation. Somebody up here is recognizing your good work. But it ain't Jesus.

They're Crazy!

My friend Flaco was driving east down Armitage when he spotted an enraged and drunken man rushing head-long into a pregnant woman sitting at a bus stop. Without missing a beat, he turned the car around and got in between the drunk and the young lady. Before I could ask, Flaco told me that the two were unrelated and never even met. This was not a case of domestic violence. In fact,

"I like to hit pregnant women," the man told Flaco.

Flaco waited for the cops to show. I don't think the woman wanted to wait that long. They carted the man away. Obviously, he was a threat to society - drunk or not.

photo © 2008 Tony Tony | more info (via: Wylio)

But that incident was another in a long line that got me to thinking about mental illness, lack of access for quality care, and stigma.

Take, for instance, the public brouhaha over the arrest of homeless activists in Orlando last week. The demonstrations by Food Not Bombs are there both to feed the hungry homeless (and sheltered-but-barely who are not able to buy food and pay rent) near downtown as well as bring light to a much-neglected reality: we spend more for weapons of mass destruction than we do on "programs of social uplift" (to quote from King).

I was a bit surprised to see how many people opposed FNB and their "fame-seeking" actions. And how unhinged their classless class warfare was in the process. "Families taking their kids out to the park don't want to see homeless men urinating in public/showing off their part in public/talking to themselves in public/shouting obscenities in public..."

Not that any of us should wish any of those on anyone. But it doesn't happen every day, nor with every homeless person. However, the elephant carnival in the public square needs to be addressed: There is a massive disproportion of mentally ill in the homeless population since the Reagan era (and due in no small part to The Vietnam and Iraq Wars). Above all, these people are not to be blamed for the predicament they are in. That is our fault. We have the means but we refuse to offer them the service they need. They are in the streets because WE threw them there. To suggest that they shouldn't even be served food in the park is to continue the lies that we've been telling ourselves for the last thirty years: We're okay; there is nothing wrong with how we treat those with mental disabilities.

It doesn't matter who starves as long as our conscience is not bothered.

Much more can be (and should be) said about this, but I want to try to keep the focus on mental disability survivors and stigma.

My mother moved to the Bible Belt about twenty years ago. While she was in Chicago, she was accepted in our church as family. They knew us and suffered with us through her bouts of bipolar disorder. After she moved, my brother, sister-in-law, and I kept trying to help her find a similar church. And these churches would welcome her (perhaps as a stranger, perhaps as a number, another body to fill their roles). I understand that it's impossible to re-create family. But my mother understood something much sadder, much more real and much more immediate to her.

She would leave every church, saying that she felt guilty and unwelcome - even oppressed - by the god she encountered there.* Oddly enough (or not), it was only in the Catholic church that she felt welcomed. Maybe that has to do with Catholic social teaching. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that they recognize ostracization and empathize with being outcasts in the Bible Belt.

I think of the many runaways who leave home because their mental condition is not appreciated nor understood at home. I think of the many undiagnosed children and adults on the verge of something very dangerous. Because no one wants to admit that they or their loved ones need help. That would ostracize them. That would be crazy.

And then I think of Michelle Bachman and Rush Limbaugh and how, when I disagree with their rhetoric and their policies (or feigned policies) I say that they're crazy.

And that's a disservice to those who survive mental distress.

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*Like it or not, fellow church-goers, we represent the god we worship. If we shun people, then our god shuns them. And I say that deliberately with small letters, because that is not the god of Jesus. Jesus - representing the God of the Bible - did not shun anyone.

Double-Speakeasies - or - How I'm Taking It Personally Now

Freedom vs. Slavery.

photo © 2008 Tony | more info (via: Wylio)

That was the main meta-story in the US of the mid 1800's. Except it wasn't just the Northern abolitionists saying that about the Southern slave states. It was how Southern plantation owners framed the struggle to their poor white neighbors. "If the slaves were free, they would take all of your jobs, rape your wives, be a drain on the economic system, raise your taxes to serf-like levels. A free negro is a threat to our great civilization and will end your freedom as you know it, as well as their own."

Any of this sound familiar?

Yesterday I realized, for the first time, that my daughter has what could be described as a "pre-existing condition." After several months of a persistent, standing pneumonia that doctors could never quite figure out, over Thanksgiving weekend we found out she has bronchiectasis. There is no cure. We have to treat her half an hour three times a day by hooking her up to machines. Each day. For the rest of her life.

I lay awake at night and hear her struggling to breathe. I can feel her air trying to go through her airways, while they're blocked up with mucus that she can't get out of her system easily and automatically like most of the rest of us.

There are others who are in worse situations, of course. And I've long advocated for universal, affordable health care (preferably Single Payer, the system Canada uses). But now it's intensely personal. If the little gains we received under the recent health care reform bill were rescinded (without a better plan in its wake), my child's health will be affected intensely.

I wish that the current Republican crop weren't just trying to score cheap political points by comparing health care reform with slavery, or death panels, or whatever current lie is fashionable. Because it seems obvious to me that 1) universal health care works in every developed nation but this one; 2) leaving one-tenth of all Americans without insurance is

disgusting, uncivilized, and un-neighborly - it leaves tens of millions of Americans without recourse but intense debt and allows easily preventable diseases to build until they become lethal; 3) arguing against universal health care is immoral and indecent.

We can argue about the means to the ends of universal health care. Many of the suggestions for reform that Obama and the Democrats brought up last year were, in fact, originally Republican ideas - including the mandate. Including the public option. But then those suggestions were labeled toxic and slave-inducing by the same people who supported them some fifteen years prior.

But much of the rhetoric being used against the new reforms assume that covering everybody is murderous. It's the double-speak of the 1840's all over again. And again, the people that profit most from these lies are not those that are defending them (with their votes or lives), but those at the top that spew them. Those that are defending the lies actually have the most to lose. Consider the white sharecroppers who barely got by on the sweat of their brow but were led to believe it was the Africans' fault that they may die as poor as they entered into the world, if not worse.

The lie was, if the dark-skinned ones get free, the white worker will become their slaves. Forget the fact that they were just a step above the slaves themselves because of the practices and policies of the ruling class...

The lie is, if the uninsured are covered, there will not be enough medicine for the working class and the senior citizens. Forget the fact that the cost of insurance is rising astronomically every year so that businesses cannot afford to keep up anymore. Forget the fact that insurance companies employ teams and teams of numbers-crunchers to figure out how to deny care costs. Forget the fact that it's a public health issue. Forget the fact that we spend twice as much of our GDP as other countries (that actually cover everyone) do on health care, yet still 1/10th are uncovered, a significant fraction is under-covered, and many more claims are unfairly, unjustly denied. Forget the fact that racial and economic disparities in coverage lead to tens of thousands of deaths a year.

And I can't help but feeling that every time someone argues that any viable progress in reform leads us all to slavery, they are arguing that my daughter doesn't deserve to live.

Please explain this to me.

Chicago Tuesdays: Why Local?

Tonight a few thousand Chicagoans are going to be grilling mayoral candidates about issues of local interest at UIC. While most of the world is interested in Rahm "Hammer" Emanuel, this forum excites me with the possibility of introducing Miguel del Valle to these entrenched citizens. Community activists of the most pure type, they are here to fight for the rights of their families and their neighbors. And I love them for that. (Suck on that, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin)

Speaking of Beck and Palin (and.... SUCK IT!), I realize that they are the big names. That if I want traffic to my site, all I need to do is talk about them - or some other big national name, but the KKKlowns tend to be the biggest draw - and then post a link on some sort of (usually left-leaning) political-interest/humor site. But the problem is, as much as I can't stand those ignorant racists and the profit-induced lies they spew, they really don't have much to do with the everyday mechanisms of our daily worlds (well, maybe they helped destroy true health care reform. Thanks for letting my extended family members suffer, a**holes!).

Although all politics ain't local, much of it is. The groundwork sure is. It seems obvious that most of the concern for politics in this nation only occurs every four years, at the election of a president. But of course, with the division of power in this country, and with its immense size, the president really only has so much power (though executive orders and the scope of the military industrial complex and 'homeland security' industrial complex, etc., have enlarged it in scary proportions lately). Localized communities, however, have more access to their local pols and policies.

Take, for instance, two issues we've been dealing with at this site for a while: health care access and affordable housing. Both issues could use some national help, for sure (creating laws that recognize health care and housing as a fundamental human right issue could be one such way, for starters), but, if we're honest, the work to accomplish such practicalities is local. Even if nationally we were to establish, say, Single Payer Health Care, we must acknowledge that that only changes the way hospitals and hcp's are paid, and the way that we - as a collective society - pay for our care. It can't, however, make sure that the hospitals, techs, nurses, and doctors provide equitable care to Black and Latino populations. And their neighborhoods.

Housing is also very local. Of course this only makes sense - after all, prices for a place in Manhattan are going to wildly vary from the same space in Aurora, Cleveland, Chicago, LA, Oak Lawn, Boston, or Seattle. In fact, in Chicago, it should become even more localized. The rubric for measuring what housing is "affordable" in this area is based on not just what the median payment is for a rental in the city, but in the surrounding collar counties - which includes the super-affluent North Shore. So, someone paying $600 for a three-bedroom in Garfield Park (ok, I totally made that up) is not going to be considered as weighty because someone is paying four times as much for something like that in Wicker Park, six times as much in Lincoln Park, and eight times as much in Wilmette. The result is that what is deemed as "affordable" in Chicago is not affordable for the typical working class family. People who typically make $20,000 a year between two jobs shouldn't have to pay half or more than that just to keep their families indoors.

Having said all of that, I'm going to try to maintain Chicago Tuesdays and ask my blogging friends to also have periodical local features (if not local blogs). I'm also in the process of adding a blogroll of Chicago interests. If you know of any worthwhile Chicago-area sites, please keep me informed. Thanks!

* Chicago and suburbs neighborhoods map courtesy of http://www.wildonions.org/Neighborhoods-Suburbs.htm

Baloney!! No one has a RIGHT to health care.

That's the argument I was given just now on a Facebook thread. I guess the argument flows from the logic that because modern medicine (and the ability to mass administer it) is so novel and expensive that there is no precedent for it. It doesn't fit into the rubric of older, now-established human rights. Or at least that's the thought.

The same argument was made before. But allow me the liberty to transpose. Because the underlying, unstated argument is that you can only get adequate health care if you can afford it and/or you're fortunate enough to work in one of the remaining companies that's still covering its employees. It's a bit like saying that you can only vote if you're white enough. Or male enough. Or landed enough. You can only enter into an establishment if you're considered human (read: not like those blackish brutes) enough. Your lips can only touch this water fountain, your children can only enter this school if you are white enough - coming from the God-blessed European roots. Oh, and preferably Protestant...

Yeah, history...

Weekend Links We Like to Link to: Health Care Edition

Don't know how everything is gonna pan out. At this point, nobody really does, right?

Does the US really have the best health care in the world?

How dare the Mrs. POTUS indoctrinate our kids to eat healthy food at a fair! We oughta knock that asparagus outta her hands and replace it with the cotton candy and merry-go-rounds that everybody everywhere associates with fairs - like the ones at job fairs and college fairs! And exercise?! SHAME!!

Pricing. "The block representing the prices paid by American health-insurance plans looming over the others [England, Germany, Canada, Spain, etc.] like a New York skyscraper that got lost in downtown Des Moines." That's it! And why didn't they say so sooner?

The clustersuck that is our system in treating, say, diabetics. Partially because insurance companies - who do not retain their base for any extensive period of time (vs. a comprehensive national plan like Single Payer, et. al.) - are more concerned about holding onto their monies until they need to.

[In] the byzantine world of American health care... the real profit is made not by controlling chronic diseases like diabetes but by treating their many complications.

Insurers, for example, will often refuse to pay $150 for a diabetic to see a podiatrist, who can help prevent foot ailments associated with the disease. Nearly all of them, though, cover amputations, which typically cost more than $30,000.

Patients have trouble securing a reimbursement for a $75 visit to the nutritionist who counsels them on controlling their diabetes. Insurers do not balk, however, at paying $315 for a single session of dialysis, which treats one of the disease's serious complications...

"If a hospital charges, and can get reimbursed by insurance, $50,000 for a bariatric surgery that takes just 40 minutes," she said, "or it can get reimbursed $20 for the same amount of time spent with a nutritionist, where do you think priorities will be?"

In case you missed the story of the fat baby denied health care coverage because he was over the 95 percentile. A little close to home for me, as our daughter has always been in the 99.99999 percentile.

Just. So. Weird. "These are critical days if you don't want health care." At least Sean Hannity Freudiantly spoke the truth. Which I'm sure confused the mess out of him...

Oh. And, just in case you thought some of the vicious reaction against "Obamacare" was due to the whole Black "Kenyan" outsider problem, the conservative freak shows once again reveal that they're also equally misogynist.

Health-Care Reform - or - The History of the World, pt. 5b -Edit

These are in large part responses to some questions I've been hearing (and to be honest, re-hearing and re-hearing) in regards to health care in general in the US, mostly by US citizens who are fearful of losing rights and what they perceive as the slippery slope towards Communism. In lieu of a narrative or even a framing device, I give you points:

• I do not consider myself to be a liberal. To me and many others, the term brings up images of naive folk who believe that people are, in their hearts, nice and good and gentle. We could all just get along if only we were allowed to. I tend to think that we all have goodness and corruption dwelling within us. And if the bad within us is not checked in social (and not just private) settings, well, some pretty monstrous and heretofore unimaginable events have happened just within the last century. People - in other words - need protection from people. And not just the scary, boogie-woogie men that lurk in shadows and alleys, either. We need protection from systems of people - which is where the worst that could happen not only does, but is condoned and justified (think Aushwitz, think Taliban, think Enron, think Manhattan Project).
• If the federal government is something to be scared of, so are big, multinational corporations. And there's more money in those corporations than there are in the government. So, guess who has whose ear? But also, guess who, in terms of medicine and health care, is wasteful, uses large sums of government monies with no re-pay for their own profit, has immense overhead costs, limits patients' ability to see doctors and to get treatment off-campus, will deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, and is generally not affordable for members of the working-class who do not have jobs that pay a huge percentage of the insurance costs?
  
• As the economy continues to suffer and bleed (although more slowly) while health care costs continue to rise, those companies will not be able to afford to foot the bills.
• The Health Care bill making its rounds through the legislature is weak, ineffective and will probably end up doing more damage than good, convincing Washington and Joe SixPack that universal health care is a bad idea. Now, it may be a step in the right direction, and may be an impetus for some strong change, but I will not argue nor speak about the current health bill. As far as I'm concerned, it's a bad compromise, watered down by Big Pharm interests who are still threatened by it enough to send misinformation by paid think-tankers.
• Who would dream of privatizing the military? Yet the military is run by Washington and is a pretty smooth machine.
  
• And the post office. I constantly hear complaints that amount to a pandering, "We don't want our hospitals to be run like the post office." What?? Are you kidding me? The hospitals would be run by the staff and administrators, same as always. They would be paid by one single insurance company. That's the main difference: Single. Payer. Health. Care. Furthermore, if the insurance companies were to be run nearly as smoothly and effectively as the USPS, I would be a very, very happy man. I have lost less mail sending and receiving during my whole life than I have lost claims, files, and complaints sent to the insurance companies during my daughter's first year of life.
• My wife and I easily spent the majority of our adult lives without any sort of health insurance. Where it not for SCHIP (an imperfect program, cf. the fourth point), our two year old would have been uninsured for most of her life as well - especially since my insurance ran out when she had turned two months old. Not a good spot to be in, for sure. To boot, we would have run in immense debt and would spend years trying to pay that off rather than, say, send her to preschool so she can begin her education amongst her peers.
  
• Under SPHC, every one puts money into the pot. A three percent flat tax rate should be equal to or less than what is being paid now by most of those who are insured. As far as the companies, they will also pay at a rate around or less than what they pay now. Now, as per companies that do not now pay, I for one would be only too happy to see the largest retailer in the world finally give to the system that they have been stealing from. Although the costs may, at first, be a bit steep for many small and start-up companies, they will have the added advantage of not having to worry about hassling with a medical benefits package (and that would save money and time that would otherwise go to Human Resources and paperwork), and not have to worry about not having insurance as a carrot to get the better employees. Likewise, employees can relax and work where they want to and where they feel most needed and otherwise compensated as long as health insurance is not a worry.
• Edit: Malpractice insurance will also drastically reduce. Think thusly with me, if you would: If the majority of money rewarded in a malpractice suit goes toward future operations to remedy the operation in question. But if all future operations are already paid for, that would reduce the settlements to, say, punitive and work-related damages, (reduced?) lawyer fees, etc.
  
• All this talk asserting that socialized medicine will turn our country into another Communist/Marxist state is... I don't know, why don't you yell at Great Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway... you know, the Soviet Bloc run by Mao, Lenin and the Anti-Christ?
• And the Republican strategy for reforming the health industry in the US is based on the promise of tax rebates. Tax Rebates? Seriously?? And not even guaranteed but suggested? How will this help the working poor? Seriously, they barely pay taxes in the first place. Who gives a crap about taxes? Seriously!! I can't think of a more silly idea. I'm offended by the idea...
  

For sure, there are other areas that could not be feasibly addressed by any government action yet would drastically cut costs while improving health and national proficiency. Regular exercise, cutting out of junk food, eating organic, alternative medicines, drastically reducing air and soil pollutants, perhaps making such dangerous and costly habits as excessive drinking as taboo as we have smoking, etc, etc. We also need to move away from this culture of medicine as business, where doctors prescribe what will get them the most money (some articles are attached below and they give examples, including the Mayo clinic and a community in Texas, will provide examples of what to do as well as what not to do), regardless of whether it's in the patient's best interest or not.

Some other reading that may or may not be about single-payer health care but may lead to an intelligent conversation about affordable healthcare in this country anyway:

NY Times on a hospital that pays its doctors by salary, thus drastically reducing its costs (yet, oddly enough, is not being modeled in the bills in DC).
A fairly exhaustive FAQ's page about Single Payer Health Care.
A long but extremely informative (and well-written) piece by Dr. Atul Gawande on the culture war of medicine as business and how it is destroying us.
Stephen Colbert interviews Aaron Carroll on SPHC.

A Modest Proposal for All Those Trying to Enter America

It appears that with every problem in these United States that we have, every time a resourceful citizen dreams up a possible and viable solution to a fundamental problem of the peoples (be it health care, economic prosperity, national safety, job retention, or problems in the bedroom with a member of the fairer sex), another road-block is thrown onto the streets. That roadblock is called "illegal immigrants." They apparently are the reason that we cannot afford childcare, welfare, health care, nor, apparently, Bel Aire.

Now, I know the answer that you are thinking to that ultimate question. We should run over those roadblocks and their children. They aren't even supposed to be there anyway. And that is a good answer, four years ago, when we could afford Expeditions and H2's. But this is a new, ecologically-friendly Depression-lite era, and unless you have a chipper in front of your Prius, that thinking just will not do justice for this day. We need a bold and creative plan of action that will once and for all solve the problem of too many immigrants.

Now you will notice that I did not say, "the problem of the immigrants." That wording is too broad. It does not tell you what it is that is wrong with immigrants. For surely not everything about immigrants (nor immigration) is amiss. Most reasonable men (and some of the more reasonable women folk) will agree that at least a small amount of new blood is good for the soil of our country. Who else will work crappy jobs for piss pay? The un-Americans, that's who!

So, we do not need to completely plug the holes, but rather to control the flow of foreigners coming into our land, dating our sisters, and eating our children. I, fortunately for you, dear reader, have thought long and hard for many, many minutes about this thingymabobby.

It has struck me that the path to legal immigration and citizenship is wholly unlike the path that our forefathers took in founding this wonderful nation. George Washington never had to take a test that asked who George Washington is. No, the Washingtons worked the fingers of their slaves to the bones and threw tens of hundreds of thousands of voluntary military men into the range of fire for the right to be called a citizen of the United States of America (or, as it was called in the time, "America: F**k yeah!"). True heroes opened up the borders of what we would define as our God-given rightful land by heart-wrenchingly creating and then breaking peace treaty after peace treaty, raping, declaring war on, and/or enslaving brown-skinned people from

Our new visitors need to demonstrate that they have the same heart that our great forefathers did. It seems to me that very few, if any, of the recent migrants who have darkened our shores (be they via the Pacific, Atlantic, or Rio Grande Oceans) have raped, murdered, mangled or so much given a smallpox-infested blanket to an Indian. Obviously, there aren't enough Indians around for large-scale genocide in these times (Oh, the old glory days...), but that will in fact open up the stakes, for they will understand that they are being hunted down and will go into hiding.

The practicalities would work out as thus: by lottery we will choose, say, 2,000 "undocumented" immigrants for short visa stays per month. Within that month, they are expected to unload, pay their respects to the great centers of our nation (the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, Wasilla, Savannah plantations, etc.) and then commit random acts of genocide on the Indian population.

However, if the foreigner has the ability to import a boat load of free laborers upon his or her arrival, that will also prove his or her character. The new arrival will not need to undergo the month-long process, but will be granted immediate citizenship upon arrival and a recitation of The Pledge of Allegiance (preferably with bombs bursting in air in the background). I mean the new arrival who owns the boat and the laborers, not the laborers themselves. They will each represent 2/3's of a person.

One perceived side-effect for this ultimate solution would be that there will be fewer casinos. Not to worry, since the gaming centers run on reservations may be staffed by Natives, but are not owned by Natives. Although, for nostalgia's sake, I'm sure you will be greeted by a tall, dark and handsome man wearing loincloth and carrying a tomahawk and peace pipe -- just like the Iroquios, Mohawk, or Fighting Illini.

That is, if you are a citizen.