An Op-Ed from Thomas Friedman, which picks up on something I had been talking about here, in regards to the political differences between the US and China, and how health care is being dealt with.
Reading the title I had thought Friedman was going to talk about how much both parties are so influenced by corporate money that in effect the government had turned into a corporatocracy, but perhaps later.
Showing posts with label Health Care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health Care. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Quote #6
Mencius speaks to Republicans blocking health care reform:
"Talk is easy when you don't have to get the job done."
-Mencius
From The Useless Tree, an excellent blog on Chinese philosophy in the present day.
"Talk is easy when you don't have to get the job done."
-Mencius
From The Useless Tree, an excellent blog on Chinese philosophy in the present day.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Quote #4
"Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain."
- JFK
Appropriate considering my post here and his younger brother's recent death.
- JFK
Appropriate considering my post here and his younger brother's recent death.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Health Care with Chinese Characteristics?
This morning waking up from a nightmare a fairly bitter and ironic thought struck me: health care reform would get passed in China.
Of course, the type of sweeping health care reform that we need in America with the type of coverage that we're talking about never could actually get passed over there- most of the populace (900 billion peasants) has never had anything resembling the type of care Americans with decent health care are accustomed to, and the political system is not in the business of giving away gobs of money and or services, and is corrupt beyond anything most Americans could imagine.
The thought was not realistic, just something of an amusement. Chinese leaders are said to be contemptuous of the weaknesses of democracy, and this whole issue is a prime example of why: this health care debate is a whole mess that never would have happened in their country. They don't realize that the strengths of our system lie in these very weaknesses, but that's not for this discussion.
To be sure, our democracy is ideally healthier than their "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" by ten, but that presupposes certain things, some of which have been in the balance for some time, such as a media disengaged from power, and some of which have come up short, such as education. (Shout out to Nate for this.)
Our sort of democracy presupposes an educated electorate, and by educated I mean up to the ability to think critically, rationality. Far from being rational, human thought is predicated on emotions, growing on their root. It is a human capacity, a possibility, but not an inevitability. It is something that people must be educated into, though I don't necessarily mean formally so. One does not teach rational thought like one teaches about the American revolution, one teaches rational thought in how one teaches about everything. It is cultural, not a subject.
Not that there aren't rational arguments in any direction on this debate. There are. But most people are not reacting against a public plan from some disinterested intellectual perch. They are reacting against a fear of change coming from people unlike them whom they don't trust. They reject a public option because they don't like black presidents, they are terrified of socialism, they are fearful of becoming a minority in their own country, and all of this could be summed up by saying they're terrified that they are losing their voice, and so their power. They are not alone; their fear is being drummed up by the greed of people who are benefiting from the current system and likely to benefit from any arrangement without a public option in the future, but the fear is there, and is accessible because of a lack of rational thinking. Democracy is born in rationality, and needs it to flourish. (For the Integral out there we are obviously talking about SDi 5 v SDi4.)
I feel as if these people who are de facto with the insurance companies on this have never actually had to deal with them before, having their coverage dropped for nothing, getting seventy percent of the allotted (already only one third of what's necessary) maximum reimbursement per week because their psychologist isn't in the network (someone I know), or having to sift through claims and do paperwork with most of their energy and all of their out of bed time during chemotherapy.
My family has gone through it as well. When my brother got Hodgkins disease in 2003, we routinely received letters from the insurance companies that his medication wasn't covered. Yes, for cancer. Even with excellent health care provided to employees of New Jersey (my mom), we had to jump through hoops. Thankfully we weren't one of the thousands affected by "rescission," which means cut from the rolls for some technicality just as we needed care, a practice illuminated in this excellent Nicholas Kristof piece. In it, Kristof talks about a health care executive that saw the light as he was preparing response propaganda for the Michael Moore film "Sicko," and testified in Congress about the methods used by insurance companies to purge the sick from their rolls. It's a sort of short tell-all, and it shows the depths of depravity of the system we have, if not necessarily all of the people operating it, and just how desperately we need reform.
But how?
I am praying that, as Howard Dean said, Obama has been rope-a-doping the Republicans, displaying that they're not really interested in sitting down and working out the kind of reform that we need, and therefore should be largely ignored. I'm looking for one of those powerful speeches to come just before the fall legislative session begins, outlining the necessity of reform, pushing the public plan as the only legitimate option, and calling out the opposition, all in a straightforward and rhetorically excellent manner as only Obama can do.
But as I said, I'm at the point of praying, and am not a religious man.
As lofty as my love of the country grew when it elected a black man with "Hussein" in his name, so hard will it crash back into tempered cynical realism if we get change all insurance companies can believe in, as evidence of it not mattering who you vote for, or why. For the economy, for the people, for business, and as a moral imperative, we need reform. I trust Obama knows this, but we're all seeing that he's somewhat uncomfortable leading against hard-nosed opposition. (Enneagram 9 with a 1 wing? Anyone?) It still isn't impossible, but make no mistake: this is the defining event of his presidency, and his life.
It's almost enough to make one wish for a government that could just magically take all the cars off the roads and shut down all the factories in the area for some large international event, contrary opinions be damned. Don't be afraid, America: it's not socialism, it's socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Of course, the type of sweeping health care reform that we need in America with the type of coverage that we're talking about never could actually get passed over there- most of the populace (900 billion peasants) has never had anything resembling the type of care Americans with decent health care are accustomed to, and the political system is not in the business of giving away gobs of money and or services, and is corrupt beyond anything most Americans could imagine.
The thought was not realistic, just something of an amusement. Chinese leaders are said to be contemptuous of the weaknesses of democracy, and this whole issue is a prime example of why: this health care debate is a whole mess that never would have happened in their country. They don't realize that the strengths of our system lie in these very weaknesses, but that's not for this discussion.
To be sure, our democracy is ideally healthier than their "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" by ten, but that presupposes certain things, some of which have been in the balance for some time, such as a media disengaged from power, and some of which have come up short, such as education. (Shout out to Nate for this.)
Our sort of democracy presupposes an educated electorate, and by educated I mean up to the ability to think critically, rationality. Far from being rational, human thought is predicated on emotions, growing on their root. It is a human capacity, a possibility, but not an inevitability. It is something that people must be educated into, though I don't necessarily mean formally so. One does not teach rational thought like one teaches about the American revolution, one teaches rational thought in how one teaches about everything. It is cultural, not a subject.
Not that there aren't rational arguments in any direction on this debate. There are. But most people are not reacting against a public plan from some disinterested intellectual perch. They are reacting against a fear of change coming from people unlike them whom they don't trust. They reject a public option because they don't like black presidents, they are terrified of socialism, they are fearful of becoming a minority in their own country, and all of this could be summed up by saying they're terrified that they are losing their voice, and so their power. They are not alone; their fear is being drummed up by the greed of people who are benefiting from the current system and likely to benefit from any arrangement without a public option in the future, but the fear is there, and is accessible because of a lack of rational thinking. Democracy is born in rationality, and needs it to flourish. (For the Integral out there we are obviously talking about SDi 5 v SDi4.)
I feel as if these people who are de facto with the insurance companies on this have never actually had to deal with them before, having their coverage dropped for nothing, getting seventy percent of the allotted (already only one third of what's necessary) maximum reimbursement per week because their psychologist isn't in the network (someone I know), or having to sift through claims and do paperwork with most of their energy and all of their out of bed time during chemotherapy.
My family has gone through it as well. When my brother got Hodgkins disease in 2003, we routinely received letters from the insurance companies that his medication wasn't covered. Yes, for cancer. Even with excellent health care provided to employees of New Jersey (my mom), we had to jump through hoops. Thankfully we weren't one of the thousands affected by "rescission," which means cut from the rolls for some technicality just as we needed care, a practice illuminated in this excellent Nicholas Kristof piece. In it, Kristof talks about a health care executive that saw the light as he was preparing response propaganda for the Michael Moore film "Sicko," and testified in Congress about the methods used by insurance companies to purge the sick from their rolls. It's a sort of short tell-all, and it shows the depths of depravity of the system we have, if not necessarily all of the people operating it, and just how desperately we need reform.
But how?
I am praying that, as Howard Dean said, Obama has been rope-a-doping the Republicans, displaying that they're not really interested in sitting down and working out the kind of reform that we need, and therefore should be largely ignored. I'm looking for one of those powerful speeches to come just before the fall legislative session begins, outlining the necessity of reform, pushing the public plan as the only legitimate option, and calling out the opposition, all in a straightforward and rhetorically excellent manner as only Obama can do.
But as I said, I'm at the point of praying, and am not a religious man.
As lofty as my love of the country grew when it elected a black man with "Hussein" in his name, so hard will it crash back into tempered cynical realism if we get change all insurance companies can believe in, as evidence of it not mattering who you vote for, or why. For the economy, for the people, for business, and as a moral imperative, we need reform. I trust Obama knows this, but we're all seeing that he's somewhat uncomfortable leading against hard-nosed opposition. (Enneagram 9 with a 1 wing? Anyone?) It still isn't impossible, but make no mistake: this is the defining event of his presidency, and his life.
It's almost enough to make one wish for a government that could just magically take all the cars off the roads and shut down all the factories in the area for some large international event, contrary opinions be damned. Don't be afraid, America: it's not socialism, it's socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Violent Right?
An article from Sunday's NYT by Frank Rich.
Rich, if you don't read him, is an excellent columnist, funny, scathing, sarcastic, and all in the straightforward service of screaming that the Emperor's got no clothes on. He is sharp and lucid as glass when it comes to historical analogies as well, which comes out in this article quite a bit.
One subtle undertone of the column is that the Right, for whatever reason, seems to be legitimized in the US in a way the Left never would be. Perhaps it is that huge swaths of the country are rural, or the sort of suburban sprawl metros that maintain a rural twang even as they reach a million people. Maybe it has to do with our pledge towards liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And surely there's something in it of the protestant ethos of individual responsibility and accountability and belief in a personal soul, which tends the "life" omitted above and that happiness to refer strictly to one's own, and which informs even our atheists' senses of self.
But whatever it is we surely would not be in this situation if there were an equal balance of Left and Right in this country, at least in so far as what is acceptable in the public discourse, or what is weighing down the levers of power. There does honestly seem to be a virtual tie in terms of the private views of the citizenry, wobbling back and forth every few years, but could you honestly imagine a scenario where far-left zealots caused enough of a stink to get anything on the ropes, let alone something (we're not even considering single-payer here) fairly centrist? They are ostracized, not eulogized as the equally imbalanced recent protesters have been, even with much grumbling about how incorrect their take on the contents of reform are. As Paul Krugman writes, it's almost insanity that the Right's 'government is satan always' rhetoric hasn't died off after the actual policies grown from it have failed beyond failure. The question isn't why the right is so loud- they're loud because they've got amplifiers. But why do they have amplifiers in sober thinking people?
That for some reason seems to be at the heart of this whole matter. America has been the greatest force of progressivism in the last two hundred and thirty-three years, through fits and starts, and yet it's as if every positive step is taken against the weight of a begrudging dragging boulder, and mitigated by terribly insensitive acts that would cause, I'm sure, quite a few people to blanch at the first clause of this sentence.
Maybe it's just energy- America and her people are both energetically progressive and energetically conservative, and we get the best and worst of both. Thanks to that. Without it the world would probably either be a right or left dystopian hell. But we could sure use a burst of progressive energy now.
And we'll need it seriously if we're going to get over the money, without which the situation just doesn't add up. Things are going the way they are because of money, and I think the real disenchantment with Obama now isn't just because of the flagging of the public option, it's because the only thing that could possibly be behind it is gobs of questionably earned money. I, for one, voted for the man mostly because I thought he could be the kind of rare person to point this out and step around it, which is really the only way to make this work in the long run. As an optimist I hold out hope, since the O-man's pattern so far has been staying out of the fray until everyone thinks the game is up, descending, and laying down the law, no strings attached, which is why so many people look to him as a sort of savior figure. The race speech, the clearest example of this pattern, is much less important in the long run than the current debate, but Obama must know this as well. My confidence in him would be destroyed if a bill passed that screwed me (no income no health insurance 27 year old male) but it remains, waiting for the man to work things out. He certainly has the ability to. It would be a shame if he didn't realize that, and it will ruin his presidency if he doesn't act on it.
Perhaps it's coming. Lefties are fairly outraged by all the blabber about the impossibility of passing real meaningful reform in the face of a bullying insurance industry, and if history is a guide the right is about to become more and more violent, something which can only discredit them (much of what Rich is saying.)
And Washington is not a campaign. That is, he'll need all the prodding from the left and discrediting of the right he can get to sort this out. A speech isn't going to cut it.
It's ironic that I lived through eight years of W and am only contemplating finding a Canadian woman to marry with a Democratic president.
Rich, if you don't read him, is an excellent columnist, funny, scathing, sarcastic, and all in the straightforward service of screaming that the Emperor's got no clothes on. He is sharp and lucid as glass when it comes to historical analogies as well, which comes out in this article quite a bit.
One subtle undertone of the column is that the Right, for whatever reason, seems to be legitimized in the US in a way the Left never would be. Perhaps it is that huge swaths of the country are rural, or the sort of suburban sprawl metros that maintain a rural twang even as they reach a million people. Maybe it has to do with our pledge towards liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And surely there's something in it of the protestant ethos of individual responsibility and accountability and belief in a personal soul, which tends the "life" omitted above and that happiness to refer strictly to one's own, and which informs even our atheists' senses of self.
But whatever it is we surely would not be in this situation if there were an equal balance of Left and Right in this country, at least in so far as what is acceptable in the public discourse, or what is weighing down the levers of power. There does honestly seem to be a virtual tie in terms of the private views of the citizenry, wobbling back and forth every few years, but could you honestly imagine a scenario where far-left zealots caused enough of a stink to get anything on the ropes, let alone something (we're not even considering single-payer here) fairly centrist? They are ostracized, not eulogized as the equally imbalanced recent protesters have been, even with much grumbling about how incorrect their take on the contents of reform are. As Paul Krugman writes, it's almost insanity that the Right's 'government is satan always' rhetoric hasn't died off after the actual policies grown from it have failed beyond failure. The question isn't why the right is so loud- they're loud because they've got amplifiers. But why do they have amplifiers in sober thinking people?
That for some reason seems to be at the heart of this whole matter. America has been the greatest force of progressivism in the last two hundred and thirty-three years, through fits and starts, and yet it's as if every positive step is taken against the weight of a begrudging dragging boulder, and mitigated by terribly insensitive acts that would cause, I'm sure, quite a few people to blanch at the first clause of this sentence.
Maybe it's just energy- America and her people are both energetically progressive and energetically conservative, and we get the best and worst of both. Thanks to that. Without it the world would probably either be a right or left dystopian hell. But we could sure use a burst of progressive energy now.
And we'll need it seriously if we're going to get over the money, without which the situation just doesn't add up. Things are going the way they are because of money, and I think the real disenchantment with Obama now isn't just because of the flagging of the public option, it's because the only thing that could possibly be behind it is gobs of questionably earned money. I, for one, voted for the man mostly because I thought he could be the kind of rare person to point this out and step around it, which is really the only way to make this work in the long run. As an optimist I hold out hope, since the O-man's pattern so far has been staying out of the fray until everyone thinks the game is up, descending, and laying down the law, no strings attached, which is why so many people look to him as a sort of savior figure. The race speech, the clearest example of this pattern, is much less important in the long run than the current debate, but Obama must know this as well. My confidence in him would be destroyed if a bill passed that screwed me (no income no health insurance 27 year old male) but it remains, waiting for the man to work things out. He certainly has the ability to. It would be a shame if he didn't realize that, and it will ruin his presidency if he doesn't act on it.
Perhaps it's coming. Lefties are fairly outraged by all the blabber about the impossibility of passing real meaningful reform in the face of a bullying insurance industry, and if history is a guide the right is about to become more and more violent, something which can only discredit them (much of what Rich is saying.)
And Washington is not a campaign. That is, he'll need all the prodding from the left and discrediting of the right he can get to sort this out. A speech isn't going to cut it.
It's ironic that I lived through eight years of W and am only contemplating finding a Canadian woman to marry with a Democratic president.
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