Just a few short takes in the waning days of summer. Here goes…

Color blind. This week former president Jimmy Carter gave voice to another inconvenient truth; namely that racism is still a force in the United States and that it is a factor in some of the more vitriolic opposition to Obama’s presidency. I would think that this might seem obvious to anyone who’s lived on this planet for more than five minutes and is not a member of the Glenn Beck army of morons. The specious claim about Obama’s non-U.S. birth, his secret life as a Muslim, his resemblance to Hitler or the “antichrist”, and similar bile is apparently rooted in the desire to portray the president as “the other”, the ultimate expression of which, in America, has always been the person of color. Of course, people from the center to the right are jumping all over Carter, accusing him of introducing race into this incredibly high-minded national conversation we’ve been having (ed. note: irony). As always, we’re all supposed to pretend that racism doesn’t exist, except for the black-on-white variety. Carter got the same for his observations on Palestine, which were pretty solid in my view, so I say good on him for sticking his neck out once again instead of resting on his Nobel laurels like most of his colleagues tend to do.

Missile offense. I was glad to see Obama scuttle the ludicrous missile defense plan for Poland and the Czech Republic. The whole M.D. boondoggle has been mostly about profit defense for military contractors anyway, but this intiative to build batteries in Eastern Europe was beyond stupid. The freak chorus of neoconservatives is howling about how this is a cave to mother Russia, but if they say it’s a bad idea, it almost has to be a good one. (One wonders what their reaction would be if Russia were to base ABM batteries in, say, Cuba to protect Venezuela from attack by Israel, which really does have a nuclear capability.) Unfortunately the administration appears determined to place more interceptor missiles in the vicinity of Iran, something that smells to me like a back door build-up in support of a future attack against Tehran. Obama (and likely folks like Dennis Ross) have a clock ticking on Iran that will run out at the end of the year. What then?  

Shocked, shocked! I see the House (including an overwhelming majority of Democrats) wasted no time in cutting ACORN off from federal funds, punishing the organization for the shocking revelation that some of their low-level employees didn’t follow the script when dealing with abysmally poor people. I’m not sure how they think a lot of inner city poor people manage to support themselves. Earth to Congress: there is an underground economy in America. It’s there because the overground one doesn’t work for the poor. Inner city counseling is not an easy job – it’s mostly triage.  Still, I’m glad Congress is holding someone accountable for a change. I imagine next we will bar Halliburton from any federal contracts because their shoddy workmanship electrocuted 18 U.S. soldiers overseas. (Oh, wait – they got $30 million in bonuses.) Or that they’ll cut off Blackwater (now Xe) because they killed a bunch of folks in Nisour square in Baghdad (whoops – still working for us). Or that they’ll bar that firm guarding U.S. facilities in Afghanistan – the one manned by those dudes drinking gin off of each other’s asses. Or that they’ll take back all of the countless billions we gave to major banks and AIG because they were patently irresponsible in every imaginable way and nearly brought the financial system down.

Don’t hold your breath.

luv u,

jp

Politics’ regular season has begun once again. We’ve been watching the training camp stuff all summer, and now it’s time to play for the money, I guess. I’m not great with sports analogies, so that’s as far as I’ll go. No, wait – I lied… President Obama had the opening pitch on Wednesday night (okay, that’s really it) and I’d say he did a pretty decent job of explaining what it is he wants to do. It doesn’t exactly comport with what I think needs to happen to bring the United States to a place where we behave like a civilized modern industrial nation, but it’s a bit clearer than it’s been up to now. While my inclination is to support this – particularly if it includes the so-called “public option” – I am a bit concerned about what this will mean for people who have no coverage at all, or just the sort of lousy coverage I used to carry years ago. I’d like to hear more about that interim period during which the uninsured receive “basic” health insurance. That seems a bit problematic, to say the least, in that it sounds like it would insure people who are more prone to illness (i.e. poor families) in the least effective and most expensive way available.

I’m here to tell you, I have had catastrophic policies before. I have also had standard individual indemnity policies. They pay for nothing. As long as you are healthy and lucky enough to remain out of the hospital, you will see not one dime out of these plans. They have enormous deductibles and don’t pay for any preventive care. From the insurer’s standpoint, that’s a great deal, if the insured doesn’t get badly ill. But if you end up in the hospital, they’re on the hook for some major medical costs – that’s why they tend to cap your benefits… to ensure that you don’t get too expensive in the throes of your misfortune. My first plan ever was a Mutual Of Omaha policy (actually, several policies) that worked like this – if you had a partially reimbursable expense (I never actually did, but it was theoretically possible), you pay for the care and they would send you a check…. eventually… maybe. It was kind of iffy, to say the least, and definitely set up to keep the money flowing in one direction – from you to Omaha.

The funny thing was, they were in the process of discontinuing this class of policy, presumably because it was not profitable. I’m not surprised, frankly. Any policy that encourages you to ignore your illnesses for as long as possible, to not receive any diagnostic care or testing, to avoid contact with health professionals who might actually help steer you in a positive direction (i.e. eat better, don’t smoke, etc.), is not going to have particularly good outcomes. People are going to get badly sick, discover illnesses at later stages (when treatment tends to be most expensive), and ultimately cost more than those who receive strong preventive care. That, I think, is one of the traps the Obama health plan might fall into – offering minimal care to people who can’t afford better, even though that approach eventually costs more (and creates greater misery in the process). What the hell, we are the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth. It’s a scandal that almost 50 million people have no health coverage. We need to make certain people get the right kind of care, because it’s the right thing to do. Oh, and it will save money besides.

So, hey… here’s an avid single-payer advocate saying, let’s encourage our legislators and our president to pass a bill that will help those most in need. Let’s put that stake in the ground – then we can start working on putting a stake through the heart of this ludicrous privatized health insurance scam we call a “system”.

luv u,

jp