Can we talk? #11

Can we talk, Facebook?

I'm scared. About this health care reform we're trying to pass.
Not that it won't pass; that it will.

If you know me at all, you know that I'm a hard, hard leftist (because of my old-fashioned values). To the left of probably 52 of my 55 friends on this thing. So it's not my politics.

It's not what I want. There, I said it. It's not what I want. It's not good enough.

First of all, get ready to hear some whining. Because every single time the new system fails anybody, and plenty of times when it doesn't, be prepared to hear about it on every network, at 5 after the half hour for the rest of your life. It's going to savage the liberal leaning our country has right now. I already hear endless repeats of the "Canada goes to the U.S. for health care" story, see a story on the news about how their system has failed someone every day.
(Never mind that the Canadians overwhelmingly love their system and have overwhelmingly rejected every attempt to privatize). The death panel thing will never stop, even though all that's being proposed is regulation on insurance companies, and a government controlled insurance company to keep the competition honest (but that company will probably have to have claims adjusters just as private insurers already do; the closest thing to a death panel in America after a Grand Jury).

I want honest to goodness socialized medicine. What we are talking about right now is recreating the mortgage market of the early 2000s with the healthcare of tomorrow; private insurance companies competing against a central, government backed institution to keep the competition honest.

We know how that turned out. Just yesterday I was reading about the securitization of health-care policies. I was immediately terrified, and you should be too.
You can trust the American corporate structure to do one thing; attempt to make money. The way I see it, there's two fundamental ways to make money; exploitation and innovation.
Insurance companies are not innovators.
They will find a way to keep the premium policies of the young and the healthy on their table while offloading grandma and your sister with leukemia onto the public option, raising their own rates to make more profits even as the public option becomes more expensive by necessity. They will. Even if the way doesn't exist, in the future there will be a different president or congress who will make that an option.They already move health-care premium securities; it's not hard to imagine expensive cases being dumped onto the state in a smokescreen of healthy kids, the exact same way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up with all those bad loans. Or maybe we'll see cashouts, like we did with Enron; greedy executives stealing the premiums of hard-working Americans, paying themselves huge bonuses and leaving America (That's you and me) to foot the bill when the company cannot meet the obligations it has already been paid for. But the smart money says we'll see both.

I'm for this option because I think it's better than nothing. Japan has a somewhat similar system and they are better off than we are for health care. But it's not what I want. It's not right.We deserve better and can do better. Of what good comes being the greatest nation on earth if we treat our citizens so?
I believe in the inalienable human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have a right to live. If your child or mine comes down with a terrible illness, they don't deserve to die just because you get laid off. Or because you run out of money after selling your business, like they did. We have a right to liberty, and to me that means, amongst other things, not being a slave to a debt that came about through no fault of your own or even through the fault of others.