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The Healthcare Crisis (as if enough hasn't been said)

We're stuck in a shithole.

Even if i told you so, i still had just a bit of hope left-over from the 2008 campaign. Now that Obama has stopped pushing full steam ahead for the public option, causing somewhat of a revolt in The Party, good people like myself who really wanted to see Obama act on change are left wringing our hands.

Health-care reform without a public option is not only bad news for everyone whose income doesn't allow them to purchase health-insurance now, it's also bad news for those who want to see the big private insurance companies take responsibility for the health-care mess we're in now. When this health-care reform bill finally passes, in oh, say September or so (Obama would rather drop essential parts of the bill than take the chance on not delivering when he promised), all Americans will be forced to have health insurance.

Private health insurance. Heavily subsidized with public dollars. With little or no control over spending and medical costs.

Specter and a few other Democrats are already moving the talk to "co-ops". Co-ops are not a satisfactory replacement for the public option and never will be. Howard Dean correctly pointed out the example of Blue Cross Blue Shield co-op that exists now as little more than an establishment big-business corporation.

Dennis Kucinich notes that:

Removing the "public option" from a public bill paid for by public money is not in the public interest. What is left is a "private option" paid for with public money.

What we still have in front of us is the chance that seems to be slipping away. It's a chance to implement a single-payer healthcare system, with a well-regulated public agency financing healthcare. Bill HR676, the bill co-authored by Kucinich is still alive in the House, and has 87 sponsors. Where's the media when you need it? Even though the majority of the American public is for single-payer, we have been repeatedly told that that option is off the table. Bill HR676 would extend undeniably one of the best public insurance systems in the world, Medicare, to the entire population.

I realize not everyone reading this will agree with the politics of a single-payer system, but can we at least agree that more dialogue about healthcare needs to happen in the public square now? The American media has largely engaged in a sham debate over the "public option" which more and more appears unlikely to ever come to pass. We need to think constructively and creatively as a new generation of human beings and act boldly to prove that the day of oligarchies is over. For our civilization to have a future, we need an efficient and effective healthcare system that both prevents illness and heals us when we're sick. And that's everyone, not just the rich.

06:13 PM

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