Tag Archives: health care

Political Rants

We’re not doing this for our health

News flash: our health care system is broken. That is to say, it is broken from the standpoint of the people who need medical treatment. From the industry investor standpoint, it’s working just fine. People are making a killing, quite literally, from COVID and other illnesses, lending credence to that line from our song Well, Well, Well: “from every misfortune a fortune is made.”

I say this on a week when women’s health is under attack to an even greater extent than usual. The Texas anti-abortion law, which the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to go into effect, has effectively made abortion illegal in the lone star state, regardless of what their moronic governor claims. This inevitably will be followed with similar restrictions in other “red” states. But even under the best of circumstances, women have trouble accessing and affording care precisely because of the kind of system we still have.

Promises, promises

When he was running for president, Donald Trump promised that he would replace the ACA (“Obamacare”) with something much better, a plan that would cover everyone, etc. Of course, that was a transparent lie that he had no intention of even pretending to make good on. Then last year, when he was running for president, Joe Biden promised adding a public option to the ACA. No sign of that yet, either.

I don’t know what Biden’s plans are for the reconciliation package with respect to health care. What I do know is what he said during the campaign. Back then, he claimed that workers loved their employer-based healthcare and suggested that they had “negotiated” for it. I pointed out back then on my podcast Strange Sound that this was balderdash. Less than 15% of American workers (generously) have union contracts. No one other than a subset of unionists ever “negotiates” the particulars of their health coverage with their employer. The plain fact is that employers provide substandard coverage to their employees, by and large, and that it leaves tremendous gaps.

The six thousand dollar man

As some of you know, I spent about a week in the hospital at the height of the COVID first wave back in April 2020. (It was an ailment unrelated to COVID, as it happened.) After I got out, I got bills that amounted to about $6,000. Now let me be clear – if I did not have health insurance, provided by my employer, the cost would have been much higher. But with this great insurance that Joe Biden suggested I love so much, I was six grand out of pocket over an unexpected illness. I opted for a payment plan with the hospital (which, I should point out, receives a lot of public subsidy).

That is not the way it works in civilized countries. In civilized countries, they do their best to make you well, and that’s it. No bill, or none of any consequence. In Britain and France, I believe, they even give you money when you leave the hospital, under certain circumstances. Why are we not a civilized country? I don’t know. Ask Joe Biden. And every other president, for that matter.

I am fortunate that i had the resources to bear that cost with only minor sacrifices. Most people – including many with employer based coverage – are not that lucky. We need a system that works for those people, not the people who seek to profit from our misfortunes.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Joe’s Lunch.

China ate Joe Biden’s lunch – that’s one of the many incoherent things Trump said during Tuesday night’s debate. The fact is, though, that Biden kind of ate his own lunch in Cleveland this past week, and it probably didn’t taste all that good. I don’t claim to be an expert on debates … and I don’t think anyone is an expert on whatever that Tuesday night clusterfuck was supposed to be … but Joe left a whole lot on the table in that exchange. Like most mainstream Democrats with their heads stuck in the “I’m not a liberal” nineties, he gave away the store to Trump on a number of points, particularly having to do with police conduct, health care, and so-called law and order.

So, okay, I’m not affiliated with the Biden/Harris campaign, but here are a few suggestions for the team on what Big Joe might say in response to some crazy shit coming from our president:

Health Care – At one point, Trump bragged about killing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. That was a great opportunity for Biden to point out exactly how the administration is trying to kill the whole bill in a case that will come before the Supreme Court right after the election. That’s when Joe should look at the camera and say, “Folks, Trump’s using that to get the Supreme Court to strike down all of Obamacare. He’s trying to cancel your health insurance and take away your protections for pre-existing conditions!”

COVID-19 – Trump was happily calling COVID the “China Virus”. Biden’s rejoinder (again, to the television audience) should be, “Look, folks. More than 200,000 people died while he was saying the virus would just go away, or that it was just a hoax. For that reason alone, it should always be referred to as the Trump Virus. He likes to put his name on things, so he should be fine with that!”

Extremism – Trump was accusing Biden of not being in favor of law and order, talking about how dangerous movements like ANTIFA are in his imagination. At that point, Biden should have talked about the posse of heavily armed right-wing thugs that took over the streets of Louisville, KY, in recent days, or the right-wing teen who killed two protesters in Kenosha, WI a few weeks ago. Joe should say something like, “How is it law and order when your followers start intimidating and killing people with semi-automatic weapons? Why do you defend killers and thugs?”

The Environment – As he often does, Trump claims to want “clean air and clean water.” There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary, and Biden shouuld be loaded for bear on this. But he should also say to the audience, “Folks, this is how much he cares about clean air and clean water. He appointed a coal industry lobbyist to run the EPA. And as a result, [INSERT FACT HERE]”

Hey, Biden … dig in, man. No charge. (Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?) No, you don’t have to thank me. And there’s plenty more where that came from.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

The loudest voice.

I haven’t been watching the Democratic National Convention in its entirety, just pieces here and there. It’s no surprise that this thing is unlike any political convention we’ve ever seen before. What’s kind of astonishing is the degree to which it looks like a long political ad, with some variations in production values. A lot of it is just a crap show, putting a spotlight on some never-Trump Republicans and various center-right figures. I keep expecting some kind of technicolor tribute to Ronald Reagan, or a cameo by George W. Bush. Stuff like that makes it a bit more like drinking urine than it should be, but then I am a leftist, which means I’m just supposed to suck it up and offer my unqualified support. Still, being asked to sit through Colin Powell is a bit beyond ridiculous, in my humble opinion.

I have talked about this on my podcast, Strange Sound, so I won’t go into great detail, but my decision to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket is rooted in the notion of harm reduction, some of the contours of which have been highlighted throughout the virtual DNC. The fate of undocumented immigrants, the so-called “dreamers”, as well as refugees from both state sponsored or tolerated violence and economic hardship, hangs in the balance – a second Trump term would spell disaster for them, and very likely for so-called legal immigrants as well. It would not surprise me to see a second-term Trump move to strip legal residents of their rights, then perhaps naturalized citizens, particularly if they are members of the communities he most despises. (I can picture an Ilhan Omar-focused executive action revoking citizenship from those who escaped Trump-dubbed “shit hole” countries.)

Then there are those who depend on their health insurance … like just about everybody at some point in their lives. A second Trump term would mean a death sentence for many of those people. Hell, the first Trump term was enough to dispatch more than 170,000 unnecessarily. Single-payer advocate Ady Barkan made this case quite eloquently at the DNC in one of the better speeches. For as little effort as is involved in casting a ballot, it seems to me that we should listen to the voices of people on the edge of disaster, for whom four more years of this might amount to a death sentence. As I said on Strange Sound, we don’t need to invest in the new administration – quite the opposite. We need to be ready to push them from day one. And they will need to be pushed. The lobbyists always have the loudest voice, but we have the numbers. We can flip the tables of the moneylenders if we all do it together, but we need to have an administration that will respond to pressure. Trump won’t. Biden will.

That’s my two cents. What’s yours? Leave a comment or a question. Excoriate me. Shake your cyber fist! Always glad to hear from you.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.