The Republicans and their corporate sponsors have long known that if a governnment option gets a toe-hold it could to lead to a fundamental re-alignment in which many of the middle and working class Americans that they have demagogued to hate their government come to see the very same governnment as a friend and savior of their health. This is what has happened in nations around the world that have national healthcare -- and a government option isn't even national healthcare, but it will be in time because once you take the profit and excess healthcare costs created by private health insurance out of the system, the default will be Medicare for everyone.
Me 'n Mrs. G get Medicare next year. It's going to cost us about $15 Grand to get there. It hurts, but we can do it. We dare not let our COBRA lapse because at our age, anything can go wrong at any moment. Also, we're both motorcyclists and a rousing good broken leg can cost ten times that without insurance these days.
I think my point is that that's a lot of money for younger folks with kids who are just starting out in life with lotsa payments to make. If they don't get their insurance through their work, they're screwed whether they get sick or busted up or not. It's just too expensive.
I bring up my beer run metaphor once again: Everybody, even and maybe especially people who don't need much health care now, kicks in. Everybody gets the health care they need whenever they need it for life, and they will need it sometime. Socialized medicine? Sure, or maybe 'communal' as in 'shared' is a better word. Repugs don't like 'comm'-anything because it reminds them of communists and hippies whom they're scared of and don't like, and they ain't much for 'sharing' anything either, especially at a cost to profit.
Fuck them.
Maybe 'civilized medicine' is a better term.
By the way, I've always gotten my health insurance through Mrs. G's employment. The health care plan at most of the motorcycle shops I've worked at was to drag you out in the middle of the street and call 911. Given that most motorcycle mechanics with sudden onset medical problems are already lying in the middle of the street courtesy of some moron in a Buick, it wasn't really much of a chore for the shop staff. And since some citizen would usually call the cops to come arrest the scooter trash who was blocking traffic and get him outta the way of their important mall run, the shop guys didn't even have to make the call. The Service Manager was more worried about the customer's bike anyway. That they had to go deal with.
We knew Obama in Illinois. As anyone who reads BuzzFlash knows, we fiercely fought for him in the Democratic primary and the general election.
But we did not know that his desire not to alienate the D.C. villagers would lead to his capitulation on change and evolve it into an acceptance that he is not going to risk leadership with the audacity of fighting for what Americans need for their healthcare, and what will be most cost-effective. In short, Rahm Emanuel and others are telling him that the moneybags of the health insurance industry have too much power to be defeated by the President of the United States.
In the case of Barack Obama not taking the fight for the government option to the mat, we may be seeing a serious character flaw -- a man who can't distinguish between the raised expectations of fighting rhetoric and an actual fight.
Mr. President, if those bastards are too much for you to handle, call a meeting of all the insurance and pharma people and their lobbyists and senators too. Have me and Fixer officiate at the meeting. We'll have single payer in ten minutes. Twenty minutes if there are TV cameras present because we'll have to be more gentle. You can get it through while they're all out cold. It'll only take that long because we'll want a smoke break. The 'rhetoric' will be pretty basic and I don't think it'll be much of a 'fight'.
As our BuzzFlash columnist Phil Carpenter noted this morning, if President Obama doesn't get a bill with a full government health insurance option, he may not only have caved into the powers with the profiteering billions, he may have lost his re-election campaign.
Maybe, maybe not. The stoopids amongst us elected a court-appointed Epic Fail president pretty recently. They might re-elect an elected one too.
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