Why are they so angry?

If I was constantly bombarded with the heaping shovels full of horse crap coming out of the mouths of people like Rush, Hannity, Savage, Valentine, Malkin, Coulter, Kristol, Krauthammer, Hume, etc., etc. I too may start believing that our rather moderate President is a communistic devil, the Democrats his evil minions and that the wicked darkness their doing.

I would say it also has to do with a political awakening for many of these people. For many years they have unwittingly sat back and accepted or even worse, endorsed those policies that have been destroying our country from the inside out i.e. the weakening of our civil, worker, environmental & human rights, deficits induced by tax policies that benefited the well-connected, socialism for the rich and corporate welfare.

The fact is there are many people out there that are getting left behind. They live in a reality they don’t understand and they’ve been raised with obstinate ideologies that use words like “ought” and “should,” which only leads them to find disappointment. They’ve also been taught to believe that change and different cultures should be feared; they’re losing “control” and they wish to return to a world that never was.

But the truth is that there has always been people like this. They have fought every progressive initiative this country has ever enacted and surprisingly the history shows that they have used almost identical methods. The GI bill and many of the benefits for soldiers and veterans, which have built the middle class and created the economy we have come to take for granted, was adopted despite their resistance and shouts of “socialism.” Government programs implemented by government bureaucrats like Medicare, Medicaid and nearly every piece of infrastructure in this country, as well as governmental mechanisms used to protect citizens and businesses alike, have had vicious resistance from “red” baiters.

These same people cheerfully endorsed policies like the invasion of Iraq (or Vietnam and Korea) which will cost this country blood, treasure (upwards of $3 trillion) and respect in the world - where’s their indignation? When Bush and the Republican party passed the multi-trillion dollar tax cut without offsetting the loss of revenue with a loss of services, where was the outrage? When they passed the deficit enhancing $1 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit who was crying “socialism!” at the town hall?

Or take it a step deeper: when the Republicans failed to mobilize to end abortion, to add a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, or failed to put forth policies to reform the health care system for the 6 years when they had total control, who was putting together astroturf bus tours to stir up rage? These problems just didn’t happen overnight but rather have been neglected for decades and Republicans have offered us only more of the same.

Nobody who is a regular visitor to the Fox news channel or AM talk radio would believe this but when you get past their self-interested propaganda and look at what’s truly happening in this country, you may come to realize that the Democrats are acting patriotically by doing what hasn’t been done for so very long, in order to pull the cord on the parachute before we smack into the jagged bottom of the abyss. The rip cord is attached directly to health care and if you don’t like the size of the federal government, believe it is over-extended and takes too much of our hard earned money, than the behemoth that is health care spending in this country, whose yearly costs is equal to all the tax revenue that the federal government takes in in a year, you must conclude that we must radically reform it.

As for the tea baggers, they’ll shout and bitch and moan but despite their declarations that this is being “shoved down their throats” the reality is that Americans overwhelmingly support reform and being that all that is reaching them is disinformation about the proposals, we’re going to get it, whether they like it or not and believe it or not, it’ll be good for this country. Finally.

(Cover photo by Flickr user cosmocatalano used under a Creative Commons license.)

JP Wilberforce’s Ideas on Healthcare Reform

TheIndyVoice.com would like to welcome our newest columnist, JP Wilberforce.

There has much talk lately about deficits and governmental spending.  Believe it or not, increased taxes are not the scariest thing that could happend to this country.  National and not just federal bankruptcy is a very real possibility and it could occur for a reason not usually spoken of as a cause.

Simply put, healthcare costs could lead to economic disaster if this nation doesn’t do something radical to contain them.  Many people today rail at federal deficits that are in the 3% range of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but by 2017, just 7 years from now, healthcare will devour 20% PER YEAR of our GDP.  Our economic competitors presently spend just 7% (or less) of their GDP while we spend 15.6% right now.

TAXES ARE NOT THE ISSUE –> COSTS ARE!

And they are literally eating our country alive.

The goal with health care reform and the introduction of a public health insurance option is to drive down these costs while improving outcomes for patients (greater choice, etc.). It seems that the reform emphasis thus far has been on the uninsured and the underinsured, but the only way that we are going to drive down costs is if employers and their employees are given an incentive to move from their private for-profit insurer to a public non-profit one. After all, government run programs like Medicare do with 3% administrative costs what the so-called “efficient” private for-profit insurers do with +20%. Reform must start with the insured to lower costs.

However, there is very little political support to raise taxes to accomplish this. The good news is that taxes do not need to be raised to insure those that are already insured.  The money is already held within the system - we are already paying the costs - we just need a way to use this money to incentivize both the employer and the employee to choose a public health insurance option.

So how do we create an incentive to have a major shift from private to public insurers? We legislate a voluntary system whereby employees can opt-in to the public plan by having their employer send 3/4’s of the money that is already paid to the private insurers, into the public plan, while a mandate requires the employer to payout the remaining 1/4 to the employee.  Of course, that 1/4 is taxed at the employee’s current income tax rate.

Employers would see this plan as a way of containing the costs of certain future insurance rate increases, not to mention the decreased costs and hassle of having to maintain and administer an employee health benefits plan.  With this option employers will be able to concentrate on their business, instead of the insurance business.  The employee would see it simply as a raise, a way to pocket more of the money they already earn.

There are of course other concerns. Private insurers would essentially be put out of business so we would create an incentive for businesses to get aboard early in the process by offering lump sum buyouts of shareholder equity (by a deadline of course).  At the same time, we offer assurances to employees of these insurers that the public health insurance plan would employ as many of them as possible (with public health insurance benefits of course!).

Doctors will also have concerns.  They can simply be addressed with a compensation structure equal to what Medicare presently offers plus 20%. Doctors choosing to move to the single payer, public insurance option would see a nearly immediate decrease in operating costs by moving from a complicated, multi-payer system that often denies or prolongs treatments and payment, to a streamlined single-payer system that speeds electronic payment to doctors. Superfluous staff presently used in doctor’s offices to administer insurance billing could also receive assurances that they would be brought into the fold of the public insurance provider.

And the national, congressionally charted and overseen, non-profit public health insurance provider would be guided by a Patients Bill of Rights to insure everyone that health and the welfare of people is the ONLY bottom line.

Doctors and patients would be the only people involved with making health care decisions and anyone could use any doctor they choose, anywhere and at any time.

Doctor compensation could be structured so that there would be doctor availability at times convenient to their patients, who usually have jobs and families to take care of.  Healthcare should work on patients’ schedules and doctors should be compensated for working long hours.

For instance, a doctor billing for a patient seen either before or after work on a typical 8-6 schedule would be compensated at Medicare +30%. House calls could be billed at Medicare + 35%.

Most importantly, GOVERNMENT WOULD OWN NONE OF THE MECHANISMS OF HEALTHCARE DELIVERY.  The doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and technology providers would ALL remain private.

Given that our country uses healthcare dollars so inefficiently and patient outcomes in many ways are worse than nearly every industrialized country in the world, there is plenty of room and $$$ for improvement.  Failure to make these radical but necessary changes WILL result in changes to this country to the extent that your quality of life will certainly be affected.  Inaction or even worse, mediocre action, will lead us down the path to national bankruptcy.

Next Page »