Health Care Whimper

In following the 'health care reform debate' that's been raging in the halls of Congress over the past few months, it's occurred to me that, short of the lead-up to the Iraq War, there hasn't been an issue which has illustrated as starkly everything that is wrong and dysfunctional about American society and government. The stated aim of altering the health care system for the benefit of the majority of the nation's citizens has mutated into yet another gigantic package of corporate welfare, with just enough ineffective government dictates to give conservatives a straw-man to flog for decades to come.

The thing that has really annoyed me from day one is that people seem to think it appropriate to talk about reforming the “health care system”. This is odd when we don't have a health care system. We have a health care market. If you have enough money you can purchase some of the best health care in the world, if you don't you can go crawl in a gutter and die. (or go to an overcrowded emergency room, be billed thousands of dollars and not pay) Other advanced, developed nations have health care systems, wherein the society as a whole has decided that health care is a human right, as well as a pragmatic step in maintaining a healthy society, and figured out a way to provide it to everyone, free or at a reasonable cost. There are numerous examples of these health care systems. In Britain the government directly employs doctors, runs hospitals and purchases drugs (the dreaded 'Socialized Medicine'). In Canada, those functions are carried out by private entities, but the government provides comprehensive health insurance to all citizens (Something you might have heard about for a week or so before the insurance companies 'convinced' the politicians it was no good, Single Payer). In some continental European nations people are given tax rebates to pay for coverage from a selection of non-profit health insurance providers. All of these countries ranked higher on an overall health outcomes survey done by the United Nations in 2000 than the U.S, which came in 37th, right between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Well, maybe we don't have a health care system to reform, but thank goodness the populist Democratic Party is in control. They'll certainly get us a health care system.

Well, of course they'd like to, but if they can't get sixty votes, the Republicans might filibuster and all would be lost. So, in order to prevent a potential republican filibuster, the Democrats have used the tactic of preemptively caving to the most extreme demands of the Republicans before they even try to do anything constructive. It's funny, but the last president did a lot of things that the Democrats could have filibustered. They never did though. Of course the operative thing is that the health insurance companies (hereafter to be referred to as 'murderers') have lots of money to give to lobbyists, who give it to people like, Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman, even if they might be in a party that talks a bunch of commie nonsense during the election campaigns. So, before our health care system was ever really honestly discussed it has become pretty much a government demand that you buy insurance from the murderers, who've promised to cut costs a little at some point, or enroll in a tiny government program that's been designed to fail because it (if it doesn't get cut out of the bill completely) will have no bargaining power and will be the option of last resort for people who the murderers decide they can't cover.

Basically our government is controlled by a party of laissez fair capitalists to whom it's more important that the murderers be able to make huge profits than for the American people to be able to afford health care, and a party that claims to care about the latter, until they actually control the government and are up for their share of the murderers' thinly disguised bribery. Apparently, roughly half of the ordinary people in the country are so caught up in jerking off to a fantasy of Ronald Reagan tossing Ayn Rand's salad that they're afraid of such horrors as the government providing them with health care. Well, thanks guys. When this piece of shit legislation is passed and another thirty thousand or so Americans die for lack of medical coverage you can all give yourselves a hand for preserving the wonderful American health care system from socialist attack.