Health Care Reform

"Over 60% of Americans are not happy with Obama Care."

I, for one, am one of them.  However, the reason I am displeased is that we didn't get Universal Health Care or even a strong Public Option.  What we got instead was a bill watered down by health insurance lobbyists and their conservative cohorts, that lacked serious reform.  While Republicans claimed,  "No one reached out to us."

This is the oldest of plays ran by conservatives, since the legislation began.  The Democrats want to enact a project and say that it will cost $1 million dollars.  Then the notion enters the process, where Republicans say they will only fund the project at $500,000, and needing their votes, Democrats relent.  The result is legislation that is ineffectual and not supported by the public because it doesn't do the job the originators said it would.  This is exactly what happened to the Health Care bill.

The issue isn't that we shouldn't fight the notion of Universal Health Care.  We already have it, except that the current problem is that it is the most expensive care one can purchase.  People without health insurance don't just stay home and die.  They wait until they are in pain, and then they show up at the E.R., where Doctors provide them care, as their oath dictates.  The two problems with this system are first, that E.R. care is super-expensive, and second, that it is oftentimes too late to affect positive results.  So, patients don't pay their huge bill, and they don't get the results they could have with an earlier diagnosis.  In the end, taxpayers and insurance holders get the bill, anyway.

What we should have done was allow everyone access to clinical care, where illnesses can be treated both inexpensively yet effectively.

The Democrats' problem is that they can't or won't make the argument that "We" have a duty to our fellow citizens, and that when one of us falls to injury or illness, "We" are supposed to be there to help one another.  That Republicans were able to successfully argue that: "Money = Medical Care" & "Rich = Head of the line.", is just loony, to me.  Where in the world of medicine, other than America, do you get to demand that you get to move to the head of the line, because you have more money???  In the medical world, there's a term called "triage", meaning literally 'sorting of patients'.  If you come in with a gunshot wound, you get to go ahead of someone with an ingrown toenail.  The worse off you are, the more immediate your care becomes.  Your ability to pay isn't part of the medical equation, nor should it be.

The notion that the poor don't deserve basic health care is inhuman, not compassionate, and is the very definition of incivility.  That Republicans successfully defeated both Universal Health Care and the Public Option baffles me, especially when Democrats control both the House and the Senate, as well as the Executive Branch.

What else can be said, other than Democrats are weak, ineffectual, and lacking in an ability to construct and deliver good arguments.