Health Care Reform Vote On the Way?
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Gads, I hope they pass this thing and be done with it.
Yes, I DO hope they pass it. It's imperfect, but it's better than nothing. As I mentioned, th is hit home a few days ago when I discovered a friend of mine is on the verge of losing coverage.
I'm going to point to a couple of article, via @ebertchicago. The first is from Salon.com. These folks are not normally your bastions of conservatism, but the author points to several conservative sites as she discusses the Tea Party demonstrations in Washington. D. C. yesterday. State your opinion if you wish, but calling people the "n word" and taunting a person with Parkinson's goes to far. I have friends who have attended some Tea Party rallies. I don't agree with them politically on many things, but they're the last people in the world to pull these kind of stunts. I'm sure they're appalled that a group they support engages in these kinds of tactics.
The second piece is from conservative David Frum. It's a very thoughtful piece on how the far right fringe has probably caused the Republican's version of Waterloo. The money graf:
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a
huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners
and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even
more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on
television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the
cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.
The shrill, angry voices on the far right - those who refuse to believe facts - have dominated this discussion for far too long. Death panels? Yep, they're still talking about that today. Please, tell me how funding for voluntary end-of-life counseling equals an all-powerful group deciding who lives and who dies. We've lost several relatives to lingering diseases (or just plain old age). What's wrong with providing the patents and their families resources on how to deal with that sort of situation? What's wrong with pointing them to a hospice or counseling? That's a far cry from deciding who lives or dies.
If nothing else, we need to end the whole pre-existing condition fiasco and make it more attractive for younger people to get on board with health insurance.
This is part of my conservative upbringing: Buy into insurance when young and healthy, and it'll be there when you need it. There's a vicious circle going on: Young people decide they don't need insurance (yeah, I can get behind the idea of paying the bills), and so the older and less healthy are left behind. Premiums rise, which make it more difficult for younger people making less money to buy in. And so on.
One thing that worries me is that we have one of the highest childhood asthma rates in the country. Will these children be able to get health insurance, or will they be denied due to a pre-existing condition? Many of the same folks in Washington adamantly against health care reform are some of the same people who support the industries that cause the pollution that is a cause of childhood asthma and other health problems. This is the kind of thing Dickens would write about if he was alive today. These kids aren't asking for asthma and related health problems. Yet, it would be just fine to deny them health insurance when the time comes. What is wrong with that picture?
I don't think of myself as some left-wing elitist. I belong to a family that has worked hard for what it has. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I have relatives who turned down welfare because they didn't want government handouts. I just don't understand why someone can pay into health insurance for years and then get kicked out on some idiotic condition while the folks in charge of the insurance company rake in millions. Yes, it is a scenario right out of Dickens. And it makes me ill.
ETA: It passed. And whoever called Stupak a "baby killer" has no class. Would someone please explain to me why preserving the lives of unborn babies is more important than providing care to those who are already here? I'm for both. How can we talk about preserving life in terms of unborn babies on one hand, and on the other, callously dismiss the idea of providing for those babies once they've been brought into this world? Dickens would have so much fodder if he were alive today.
Tags: Life Politics
Filed under: Life Politics
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