I'm writing in English, which is strange in itself since I really love my own language, Finnish, and since I detest the power position that the English language has in global communucation... but I'd get way too many complaints from American friends if I didn't write in a language comprehensible to them.

Mar 12, 2010

Shorter rant about healthcare

I don't even want to listen to the news anymore. I'm so tired at how it seems impossible to make a legislation that would allow everyone in the US to have some decent health insurance. I blame mostly the two-party system - since there are only two big parties that can be counted they tend to define themselves as the opposite to the other (not quite and not everything of course). So then when one tries to do something the other can always say that this proposition stands for all that we hate. This applies to both parties equally...

I guess normally it's no big deal but right now I'm worried for a lot of people who would need this legislation. There is a friend who is graduating and doesn't know about a job - and she's had a lot of health problems so she really has no chance to get insurance privately. I was in a similarly interesting situation last year - I had insurance, privately bought since I was working for a temp agency and their insurance sucked - but this insurance would not have covered labour. Only prenatal care. We were too "rich" for Medicaid (almost anyone is) and therefore, if I had gotten pregnant, could have faced about $10,000 if c-section had been needed. How can people afford to live in America without good jobs that give them good coverage? And yet, many don't have those good jobs. In my last job I saw enough credit reports with horrible medical bills - and often sad stories behind. In fact it was so common that it was already an accepted explanation for bad credit scores: got sick, lost my job, couldn't pay the doctor's bills. True, people can leave them unpaid and just face economical disgrace, low credit scores and still not die - but I don't see that as an attractive alternative, and I'm not the only one.

So how can it be that this rich country can't get this thing done? Politics. Nobody will just swallow a bitter pill and support something - everyone, in both parties, is performing for their voters: "See, I won't give in, see!"

8 comments:

  1. Many people believe people are poor because they don't work hard enough, don't know how to spend money, and would spend their money on cigarette and alcohol instead of paying for their insurance. They say they have no money to pay for such people and it needs to be fixed. And they LOVE to go to "Save my starving children" for volunteering. I wonder whether they have ever thought about who they are trying to serve in their volunteer activities are probably those who need insurance most.

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  2. The best part of universal health care is that it's all free! Nobody has to pay for it!

    Har.

    As much as people complain about health care in the US, a huge percentage of it is already socialized, and millions of people get care paid for out of taxes paid by others.

    So far so good. Unfortunately, we're at the tail end of an era of false prosperity. Asset bubbles in our great western nations have made everyone feel rich and goosed tax revenues to pay for all this stuff. Those bubbles have popped.

    The days of easy choices about what to do with the giant pile of tax money is over. And they're never coming back. Our future will be deciding where to cut, not where to spend.

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  3. Hey-we agree on something political! Well, parts at least....
    I also feel the two party system spells trouble for our representatives- some have more alligience to their parties than to their constituants (then again some constituants have more alligience to their parties than to their brains). I am also pretty sure that most major elections are bought by big-money corporations. How do you feel about making all campaigns be financed by the public option instead of private donations? Or maybe stricter term limits?
    As far as fixing healthcare, I'm not sure the answer and my thoughts are too complex and boring to post as a comment. Maybe if we could all agree that access to GOOD healthcare is a human right, not just a privelege for those who can afford it and who choose to pay for it, that would be a start. Then again- it all cost money, so who's gonna pay???

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  4. Yes, now I'll get shot, I know, but I think we should all join the happy tax payer league. I LOVE good things you get for taxes!

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  6. "I think we should all join the happy tax payer league. I LOVE good things you get for taxes!"

    Your attitude is a credit to your character, and I'm sure it breeds peace of mind in your life. But dear Tuittu, you don't need confiscatory taxation to do good things. Even if taxes were to disappear tomorrow you'd be perfectly able to be as generous as you want to be. Taxes are a way for us to force other people to be "generous" the way we want them to. People that are happy in their taxpayer league are so because they know everyone else has to pay into it as well.

    As far as health care, right now that taxpayer generosity is going to be for the benefit of insurance companies that have bribed congress into giving them everything they want. If this health care initiative fails, don't mourn its death. Mourn instead that the process was taken over in the first place by powerful insurance interests.

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  7. I come from a country where everyone is insured. In fact, all small children receive medical care for almost free. You pay 5$ for the first visit and that's it. After this, everything including medicines is all free. And nobody even questions about it. And I think I'm paying more taxes here in the US than I used to in Japan.

    I almost think it's only the matter of whether you're used to the system or not. I mean, for instance, why are many American people okay with free education? Nobody calls it "socializing the educational system"??? Why not de-socializing the educational system, then? Wouldn't it reduce our taxes???

    If one wants to call Japan a socialist country, so be it. I would go much, much further than that.

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  8. Sachiko, you soothe my angry heart... If we lived in the same town still we should form a rant club. All in secrecy of course... don't want people accusing us of the biggest evil ever, SOCIALISM!

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