We wouldn’t tolerate $7 trillion sort of inefficiency and loss if resulted from a tax increase or proposed business regulation. Wouldn’t Grover Norquist and his gang be screaming tirelessly, perhaps with cause? Yet as a nation we sit back passively and allow our capitalist economy to be hobbled by solvable problems with the most important infrastructural input of all: the labors of the American workforce. What’s amazing is that American workers today work longer hours and are more productive than earlier generations of workers–despite our health problems.
When the government does or doesn’t do something that is bad for American capitalism, relevant business interests step to the fore to correct the problem. “The business of America is business,” is the famous misquote from Ronald Reagan’s favorite president, Cal Coolidge. So why hasn’t corporate America stepped forward–long before Barack Obama even arrived on the national scene–to complain about the business inefficiencies of an unhealthy citizenry?
What a noble sentiment. And what a spectacularly, blatantly false one. One would have to believe King knows full well it is false, but then again he is a conservative Republican, and conservative Republicans are at this point synonymous with manufactured realities in which tax cuts cause unicorns to fart rainbows of money across the land and decent public education is the gateway to Stalinism. So it is equally possible that King is being honest, at least within the narrow confines of his own head, and he honestly believes that no Americans are out there who do not have basic health care.
But I know some of the very people who King claims do not exist, and I expect you do too. One of my own close relatives suffers from an untreated hernia — simple enough to fix, but untreated because he is uninsured. He has an option, of course. His “option” is to wait for it to get bad enough to cause an intestinal strangulation — a likelihood, at this point — at which point he will be rushed to the emergency room, hopefully operated on, and then receive a bill for some outrageous figure that he will not be able to pay. But he will only receive this treatment if it reaches the point where he will die without it — merely being incapacitated is insufficient to receive health care.
Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a “step-by-step approach to socialized medicine,” will lead to Americans’ dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues. “And if they get there, of course, you’re going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody’s going to say, ‘All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party,’ ” Hatch said. . . .(TheHill.com)
It boggles the mind that he can say that with a straight face. If I had time, I’ll bet I could find at least a dozen similar quotes regarding the New Deal. Well, 70 years later we’re still not a socialist state and we still have a two-party system. True to conservative form, if facts aren’t on your side, try hysteria.
…expanding real competition by allowing insurance companies to issue health policies across state lines, changing deductables[sic] and coverage to encourage people to only go to the doctor when they need to, and to pay more of their health costs themselves directly.
First: I’m no insurance industry expert, but I’m a bit confused by the first statement there. So Blue Cross/Blue Shield only operates in one state? Cigna? Humana? You’re telling me the legal hoo ha that creates separate business entities per state prevents these three (and all the rest) from competing with each other on a national level? Really? I’m not sure how that’s even relevant. My understanding is the industry is driven more my local markets than national ones.
Second: The only people who talk about consumers bearing more of their health care costs directly are the people with insurance coverage good enough that they pay for very little themselves. As someone who has one of these “consumer health plans” and who often wakes up in pain from a bum shoulder that needs some kind of medical assessment, but who can’t do anything about it because he can’t afford a $100 office visit—assuming the doctor doesn’t order an x-ray or (god help me) an MRI, and we’ll just try to not contemplate the possibility of surgery—I have two words for you. Bite me.
Third: The same people who think consumers should bear more of their health care costs are the same people who are freaking out because they think Obama is going to “take away their health care.” So what they are really saying is “Someone needs to bear the costs of health care, just not me.” Self serving bastards.
Oh yippie. Governor and presidential wannabe Tim “hard times in the land of” Pawlenty wants to exempt Minnesota from reality. Isn’t that just precious, and not surprising since he unallotted thousands of the poorest of the poor from …the state’s health care coverage last summer.
Timmy – how about you stop trying to appeal to the “sensibilities” of South Carolina Republican’ts and start focusing on governing your own state for a while?
“Depending on what the federal government comes out with here, asserting the 10th Amendment may be a viable option,” Pawlenty said, when asked about it by a caller on a Republican Governors Association conference call. “But we don’t know the details. As one of the other callers said, we can’t get the President to outline what he does or doesn’t support in any detail. So we’ll have to see, I would have to say that it’s a possibility.”
Pawlenty made it clear that he and other Republican governors will be more assertive about the 10th Amendment: “I think we can see hopefully see a resurgence in claims and maybe even bring up lawsuits if need be.”
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush’s evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US’s major public health body.
In a report that will surprise few of Bush’s critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.
The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
Hat tip to John Cole who observes, “At least the southern states get to lead the nation in something.”
