An American Cry for Help

I make no attempt to hide my admiration for the eloquent and passionate diatribes of Keith Olbermann as he rails against the Party of No and their obstructionist and (when you get right down to it) un-American ideologies. I forget the Congressional rep who called out the Republicans last week as being wholly owned by the insurance industry but he is right. Lobbyists for the insurance companies are spending billions of dollars to buy Republican obstructionism to try and save their profits at the expense of our people and our economy. We have a desperate need to reduce the black hole of health insurance in America. The insurance companies are the de facto death panels that Sarah Palin has talked about, they make decisions about care based on their profit margins, not on customer service, not on taking care of their customers, not on anything but trying fatten out their profits. Its despicable and wrong. The quoted bit below is the very end of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment from Wednesday before the Blair House health care reform summit. Please take the time to read the whole thing through and then tell me that we don't need universal health care. I dare you. Emphasis is mine.

And to the politicians who go into Blair House tomorrow for the summit: I have some requests as well. Leave your egos at the door. I want, I demand, that you give everybody in this country a chance at the care my father has gotten. And I demand, that you enact this most generous and most kind aspect of the reform proposed: the right to bill the damned insurance company for the conversation about what to do when the time comes, the Life Panel.

And I want all of you to think of somebody lying in a hospital bed tonight who needed that care and needed that conversation, and imagine that that is your father, or mother, or son, or daughter, or wife, or husband, or partner. If you cannot do that, if you cannot put aside the meaninglessness of your political careers for this, my request to you then, is that you not come back out of that meeting for you would not be worthy of being with the real people of this country who suffer, and suffer again because you have acted on behalf of the corporations and not the people.

If you cannot do this, go into that room and stay there and we'll get new ones to replace your worthless roles in the life of our country. My father cannot speak for himself. He appointed me to do so for him and I haven't the slightest doubt he wants me to say this tonight, right now. He mouthed the words to me and I will now give them such voice as I have to you going into that summit tomorrow. Help. Help. Help. Help.

If you have read the entire comment and you are unmoved then I honestly do not have anything further to say to you, perhaps ever. Our nation is in crisis and we have one side trying to do something and the other side doing nothing and worse, trying to prevent anything from changing. All in the name of goddamned profit margins and shareholder dividends while families go bankrupt, families members are allowed to die while awaiting permission from their insurance companies to get medical treatments and those same insurance companies try to cook up new ways to screw over their customers to add even more money to their profits.

It would make me sick but I can't get sick because I can't afford to.

Healthcare Chart Breakdown

Found over here at the Wonk Room. Seems pretty clear to me.

Add in Anthem Blue Cross's latest giddy proclamation that they are raising rates in California for nearly a million people by, get this, 39%! Why? Because they can and because they want more, more, more of our money. Their total bullshit rationalization is that, due to more people being unable to afford their insurance coverage because it is so high, they have to raise rates on people that can afford it so compensate for their lost revenues.

Which is, of course, utter bullshit.

The people who have no choice but to pay their exorbitant rates have pre-existing conditions and can't afford to lose health insurance for even an instant lest they find themselves completely unable to secure any kind of coverage at all.

The facts are that the United States of America is the last industrialized nation on earth without universal healthcare. Why? Because our supposedly elected representatives are pretty much owned by Big Pharma and Big Insurance who don't want to see their swollen revenue streams dammed up by little things like rationality, honesty and fair access.

Something like one third of every single dollar that goes into healthcare in America goes to administrative overhead. Think about that for a second. Think about the thousands of different providers who each have their own special filing procedure, think about all the people in all the medical offices across the country who have to fill out forms for each specific provider. Think about how much of our medical services get compensated by Big Pharma to push drugs.

Our healthcare system is seriously broken and in need of a fresh start without insurance companies acting as the de facto Death Panels the Republican asshats are so fond of invoking. Folks, there are death panels now, they are faceless nameless paper pushing bureaucrats who can conveniently lose your paperwork while waiting for them to authorize your liver transplant just long enough for you to die before it processes.

We don't just want universal healthcare, our nation's survival depends on it coming to fruition. Not just from a financial standpoint either. We are falling behind the rest of the world in almost every area while trying to convince ourselves that America is still the shining beacon of awesomeness it has been. Our education system is atrocious, our infrastructure is aging and failing and our healthcare system is a bloated special-interest owned cash cow for Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

Links from the Intertubes!

First up, an explanation of how tech support really works via XKCD.

What Does the Internet Think - get an answer about what the internet thinks about anything you care to ask it. A cool rough polling system.

20 Reasons to Ditch Soda - they had me at "a 21-year-old woman, drank up to three liters of cola a day and complained of 'fatigue, appetite loss and persistent vomiting.'”

Someone’s gone and hacked a “don’t worry be happy” Billy Bass fish to read out tweets…

Five Reasons Parents Need to Stop Saying "Good job" to Their Kids - can you say "praise junkie?", I thought you could.


10 hot news items you might've missed: Damned atheists, quivering seamen, perverted iPod

Stand Up for Health Care Reform - via the LiveStrong Foundation. The campaign centers around two main tenets:
No American should be denied health insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

No American should lose their insurance due to changes in health or employment.

Why We Need Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance

Found via Amy's Google Reader Feed. Makes sense to me and not just because I need health insurance, no really, that's not the only reason. We need universal healthcare because it is the right thing to do for all Americans and will, in the end, save lives AND money (regardless of what the fear mongering owned by the insurance company party of NO reps would have you believe).

Putting on a Religious Hat

I heard something interesting on the radio earlier today. It was a hypothetical question that the Bible humpers like to invoke when it suits them. What would Jesus do? Well, let's apply What would Jesus do? to the current healthcare reform debate in America.

Would Jesus want every man, woman and child in America to have access to medical care and not leave the decision in the hands of faceless profit whore bureaucrats in insurance offices? Hmmmmm. That's a tough one.

No wait, no it isn't, its simple. Fucking hell yeah Jesus would want everyone to be able to go see a doctor.

Would Jesus want the current healthcare reform legislation currently on the table? Maybe not but its a damned sight better than letting insurance companies make decisions about who lives and who dies.

And let's quickly touch on the "death panel" fear-mongering by the Republican obstructionist cabal. Despite what the High Priestess of Ignorance, Her Resignedness Sarah Palin has said, there are no death panels, no mention of something like them, no discussion whatsoever of panels that encourage hospice over care. And yet, in April of 2008, the same High Priestess of Duh proclaimed a need to educate elders about their "options". The very same options that have inflammatorily been labeled as "death panels" today were something she pushed just over a year ago.

Now, back to the What would Jesus do? that we started out with. Would Jesus want a faceless bureaucrat deciding who gets funded for a life-saving operation or who gets put off another month in the hopes that the victim patient will just die and no longer need the care they've paid the insurance company for in the first place? I'm not much of a Jesus interpretist but I'm pretty confident he'd say "Hell no".

Do I pretend to understand the intricacies of healthcare reform? Nope. Do I think providing access to healthcare for all Americans is a long term good idea that will extend lifespans and, be still my heart, save money in the long run because prevention is way cheaper than cure? Yes. I think the current situation is a joke but its a joke without a punchline. Yes, this is a personal thing with me. I got laid off in June and am about to lose my health coverage. Yes, I can spend some of what meager unemployment income I will have on COBRA. And yes, I have been looking for a job, there aren't many offered in my fields and what jobs there are get inundated with applicants.

But all of that is beside the point. Universal healthcare is the right thing to do. It is the right thing for the United States to do. Maybe the current proposal isn't the right one but the concept of coverage for all Americans is the fundamental good that this nation should be focused on. Not the ridiculous rhetoric from the GOP that does nothing but attempt to derail the process and keep the power in the hands of insurance bureaucrats with a clear and obvious conflict of interest (you know, the one between caring for customers and not spending money so that it can be given to shareholders? yeah).

What would Jesus do? He'd want people to be cared for regardless of age, race, sex, social class or religious belief. Because that's the kind of man he was and that's what he stood for. Which is, to be truthful, pretty righteous.

It is the religious interpretists that pervert his message to their own ends that would have you believe Jesus wouldn't want all people everywhere to have access to healthcare, yes, not just Americans. It wouldn't be inconceivable to me for the US to provide healthcare to anyone who wants it and needs it.

Let me wander off topic for a just a moment and wax poetic about what I'd like to see America mean again. I want America to be a shining beacon of truth, justice, harmony, kindness, intelligence, morals, ethics and caring for all men, women and children. We could also stand to cut down on being so goddamned wasteful too.

Okay, I'm taking off my hat, I think its starting to cut off the blood supply to my brain. And yes, bust my nuts with your logic about why universal healthcare is the devil's handiwork. I'll still believe that universal healthcare is a universally good thing.

* Note: That graphic up there was liberally borrowed from What Would Jack Do? Go read his blog, he kicks ass all day, every day.