A Votre Sante

First, to respond to Terry's lament, I was indeed referring to the liberal/radical protesters from the '60s and early '70s who were loud and disruptive en masse (Chicago, Washington, etc.) Hey, even I walked out of my 1970 college graduation because of Cambodia. But while these were more generational outcries from idealistic mass movements, the current Tea Bag/ Town Hall protestors are either United Health employees forced to attend or fringe loonies who popped up as Joe the Plumber-wannabe whack-a-moles with no ideals whatsoever and a moral compass pointing directly south. And didn't you love Barney Frank telling that moron that she was the intellectual equivalent of a dining room table?

When I study a political problem I try to determine which arguments are valid from either side of the question. I generally approve of the current health-reform plan, and certainly agree with the Public Option (it's an OPTION, Republican morons, not an obligation!). But I also see where those expressing fiscal concerns have a reasonable isue upon which to debate, if they ever permitted debate. Medicare is in financial peril in the long-run, and Obama just today announced that the Federal deficit is likely to be bigger than he projected. Of course if people were just willing to pay a little more in taxes, but... AAAUUUGGHH!

I am not an expert on medical care or the insurance so I can only speak of my personal experience with various purveyors of health insurance. And all my experiences, save my current membership in an HMO, have been negative. In the early '70s I had an appendectomy for which Blue Cross would only pay $350, a ludicrously low amount for an operation that then required a week-long hospital stay. Twenty years later I had an operation that supposedly cost about $4K, but the hospital billing was listed as about $30K. I did not have to pay most of that, but someone did. Or not. My last experience with a commercial insurance company involved recompense for a colonoscopy (a procedure which, as a preventive measure, ought to be covered), which was practically nothing. It was then and was so mishandled because of clerical incompetence that I ran away screaming to Kaiser. At least then I'd always know what I needed to pay, and an open-heart operatioin would cost me no more than the co-pay.

The most dire problem with the current system has long been the arcane actuarial/accounting practices of the Medical/Insurance complex in whicht medical procedures are billed at at least ten times their actual costs. For insured people somehow the pay-out is no worse, but if they are uninsured, suddenly they have to pay $85,000 for a $8,000 operation. That is, well, very bad, and can be life-ruining. And Medicare is rife with the same kind of fraudulence. When my mother was getting routine medical care she was always outraged by the insanely high costs that would appear on her statements, even if she didn't have to pay. But doctors then routinely (and still do) bill Medicare excessive amounts. She was (and still is, fortunately) a staid and non -argumentative type, but even she wanted to scream to her congressman about the fraudulence.

That is the kind of nonsense that has created the financial hole of medicare, and obviously needs to be adressed as part of Obama's "cut the inefficiency" plan to finance the health-care reforms. But we all need to radically alter the way we have accepted these practices because they were simply too complicated to decipher, with all the coding and extra hospital fees, blah blah blah.

The biggest irony of the Rejectionist response to health-care reform is that the insurance industry is likely to do sensationally well by insuring the last 20% of Americans. But they are still clamoring for more concessions, including a particular vile one that would allow the companies to reduce insurance payments after deductibles to 65% rather than the conventional 80%. Without the Public Option, the insurance could well collude and add more burdens to American's medical payments.

But let's not talk about that. Let's all go to Sarah Palin's Facebook page instead and worry about Death Books for Veterans. That ought to be illuminating.

Notes and Comments

I was hardly the only person caught up in the frenzy after Sarah Palin attacked Barack Obama for his plan to institute "Death Panels" in his proposed health care legislation. Even she backed off the claim, sort of, by a subsequent Facebook column asking for civility in the debate. I bet those who believe the death panel calumny are not willing to let it go so easily. My Facebook comment suggested that to use horrific lies about a President trying to kill your kids and parents to instigate hatred toward said President was tantamount to treason. Keith Olbermann followed up with a 14-minute rant last night targeting Sarah and her weird compatriots that expanded on my thoughts. His commentary was, as usual, pompous, long-winded, sanctimonious, and largely correct.

I wonder how often in Sarah's future the "Death Panel" fantasy will be played side-by-side with her quitting-Allaska valedictory demanding that the press "stop making things up."

Although the town-hall disruptions have been obnoxious and counterproductive in many ways, it is also fair to say that in the past, liberal and radical-leaning demonstrations have been just as loud and strident. Tea Bag apologists suggest this, and it is a valid point. Protest itself is a genuinely American privilege. But the difference between the two types of protests is that leftists tend to rage against war, poverty and injustice, while the Health Care zanies are screaming against what is essentially a very benign piece of legislation aimed at improving the lives of all Americans. The only beneficiaries of the potential failure of the health-care bill are the Insurance industry (and any stockholders of such), as well as any Republicans who seek political advantage next year thanks to a failure of an Obama initiative, as happened in 1994 after Hillary-care flopped.

You know, I don't ever want to travel in a helicopter, especially a tourist helicopter. They are about as prone to danger as buses who plunge regularly down rocky Indian slopes. I cringe when I see helicopters daring the narrow regions between the cascades of the Grand Canyon. as for the sad event recently in New York, I wish the doomed Italian tourists had tried the Circle Line cruise instead. As for the pair of tourists who decided not to take the helicopter flight and are basking in their luck, I suggest that if they had boarded the helicopter, there probably would not have been a crash, since their added weight may have altered the course of the helicopter or changed its timing somewhat. So the real tragedy is that they did not board. But unlike in "Star Trek" films, we cannot read alternative time lines. If only...

And for you, Terry, my take on the Red Sox-Yankees. It's almost axiomatic that Boston buries the Yanks in April, and New York smothers the Sox in August. This year their confrontations have run in the extremes. In the end, though, I suspect that Boston will catch up again or make it very close. The Yanks have a much tougher final two weeks than Boston, and their schedule includes four final games at Tampa, which ought to make for some extraordinary baseball drama, since the Rays are still a strong team just beginning their play-off push.

The Sox have faltered largely because of egregious injuries, especially to their starting staff, while the Yanks have only lost one solid pitcher (Wang) and replaced him with two top-line aces. Sabathia and Burnett match up very well against Beckett and Lester, and the Yanks' Chamberlain and Pettitte are definitely stronger than Boston's Penny and Buchholz. Otherwise the two teams are pretty equal. Another plus for the Yanks this year is their vastly improved defense, especially on the right side of the infield. I predict Mark Texeira will be the Al MVP, and a very deserving one.

And how about that David Ortiz "mea minima culpa" response to being outed in that 2003 Steroid probe. It's lovely that it punctures the illusions of infallibility held by the Red Sox Nation, but also underscores the fact that practically EVERYONE was doing it. In the end, are the arbiters of Cooperstown really going to keep Manny Ramirez, Arod, Clemens and even Barry Bonds out of the Hall? Who will they have left? Coco Crisp?

The True Republicans

REPUBLICANS ARE BIBLE-THUMPING, MINORITY-HATING MANIACS! ALL OF THEM!!!!!!!

NO, YOU SHUT UP!!!!

SHUT UP! SHUT UP! BOO! BOO! BOO!!!!!

Okay, over my more-or-less sixty years, few axioms have held up as truisms. One of them is not to discuss religions or politics (or salaries). Another is that in show business, persistence is the only truth. And the third, a little less famous is this: the strength of any argument is inversely proportional to how loudly it needs to be expressed.

This is why the objections of the fanatics who gathered to shut down public hearings wigth their screaming about health insurance reform are displaying the weakness of their positions. They do not accept the logic of changing the system away from the wasteful current morass piloted by the Insurance industry. (Well, that is what they are being paid to demonstrate, at least). So they spend their idle hours trying to shout down the honest attempts at dialogue being held throughout the country in town hall meetings. This is a deliberate, admitted Republican strategy. Hey, "Just say no!" managed to work insofar as sustaining our damaging and ludicrous War on Drugs. So why not say "No?" to improving the country's health system?

This has become the season of idiocy, though not far removed form last year's August upheaval that brought us Sarah Palin. This year, as Obama's initial efforts at economic reform have started to take hold and are reflected in better stock numbers, reduced rates of unemployment, and stunning successes like the Cars for Clunkers program, the "loyal" opposition has gone haywire in its attempts to refute the success. The "Birthers" have had their moment or utter inanity, and Lou Dobbs on CNN his embarassment, but that hasn't stopped the process of Republicans edging their way toward Idiocracy. How can they help it, when their spokespeople are Palin, Joe the Would-be Plumber, and that crazy lady in Minnesota (not Michelle Bachman, the other crazy one who called Obama an Arab, though Michelle is truly a nut.) When you look at the folks who are leading the town hall disruptions, they all look like people who were turned away from a taping of Jerry Springer.

Since I am pretty rational it still stupefies me that people cannot see that a public option for health insurance will do a lot to lower the price of medical care because of the competition it generates, and because if everyone is insured, all premiums would be less. The Insurers of course do not want competition and are dissing any federal program in their knee-jerk SOCIALIST MEDICINE canard. How many ties must it be explained to the objectors in the room that Medicare and the Veterans Administration are two wildly successful government-run insurance programs? Probably infinity, which is equal to how many times Obama's birth certificate need be published before Lou Dobbs shuts the fuck up.

I'd like to think that the Democratic congresspeople who are being shouted down will still have the fortitude to do the right thing when the health care bill comes to a final vote. But since the Dems are such wusses I fear for the future of this legislation. Republicans may have many flaws in dealing with the rational and the real, but they do know how to act in unison to achieve whatever their goal is, even if it destructive. Blue Dog Democrats are still waffling and have so far failed to see the parallels between now and 1993, when the failure of Hillary-care led to popular disillusionment with the Dems and fed the well-oiled Newt Gingrich insurgency.