There is a friend that I have from my college days (well, before Rutgers, there was Bergen Community College for me). We actually have not seen each other, or really even spoken to one another, for years. But we do keep in touch in that distant way. So, I guess what exists of our relationship (we were never romantic, by the way) is the very essence of what people refer to as "Facebook friend".
In any case, she began to rail on Facebook a couple of days ago about Obamacare. She checked the website, as she put it, "just for shits and giggles", and basically worded it more or less this way: she just wanted to see for herself how much of a rip-off it would be.
Later on, in one of those weird strings of Facebook conversations with oneself (presumably, she assumed there was a captive audience waiting the results of her status on checking the Obamacare website with bated breath), she kept adding updates, explaining how she was not eligible, according to the website.
Now, I have seen and heard plenty of complaints and/or criticisms of Obamacare, as have we all. Most are not on Facebook, but in everyday conversation, or in the Op/Eds of newspapers (local or national, it hardly matters), in magazines, on the radio or television, and so on and so forth. You cannot escape it.
So, that was not surprising here. What was surprising was that this woman, as I remember her, was usually fairly open-minded, and her political stance, such as it was, tended to be more towards liberal views, than conservative views.
Yet, there she was, railing against Obamacare. A healthcare system that has not been fully implemented yet, that is still in the testing grounds, yet to emerge properly in order to be judged, for better or for worse.
It is not clear yet whether it will pass this test, or fail this test, before the American public.
Yet, what seems to me to be all too clear is that healthcare in the United States has failed up to this point. It is a system that is based on exclusivity, like so much else in this country. if you are well off, then you are also well taken care of. But if you are not wealthy, then chances are, your healthcare coverage (assuming you have some) may not be very good at all. You might not even be covered, if you are deemed to be too costly, or have the infamous "pre existing condition".
And, of course, let us not forget the fact that, until very recently, the numbers of uninsured in the United States stood at over forty million people.
Forty million! In the richest country in the world, this was the amount of people that had not health coverage.
And even those who were insured often had to pay the highest prices - by far! - of anyone in the world for medicine and healthcare. The prices in the United States are staggeringly high!
No wonder it was always coming up and being debated. The system was failing the very people it is supposed to be a benefit to. Yet, it failed people in many ways, and Americans had the dubious distinction of being the only industrialized nation not to have some form of universal, affordable healthcare coverage for it's citizens.
In other words, the United States remains the only industrialized nation where people lost their homes, their jobs, their livelihood, and sometimes even their lives, because of the exaggerated costs of medical coverage that they could not afford.
It was not always the case that the United States stood alone in this category. I remember back in the eighties, when there was another country that shared this distinction, but Americans might not want to recall this. The country was South Africa, and this was during the repressive days when the country was the last remaining, officially racist country. The system was outright designed to benefit whites, and not blacks. Like much else in that country at the time, it was just one more in a long list of preferential treatment based on race that a small white minority strongly benefitted from. Not exactly something that you want your own country to be compared to.
Things changed in South Africa. Apartheid was discredited, and then, step by step, repealed. Before long, there was an election for all races, and a new leader was chosen - Nelson Mandela. Reform had come, and South Africa focused on making things more fair and equitable in their nation. One of the biggest priorities was to institute a better healthcare system that served all South Africans, not just the privileged few.
And that left the United States as the sole nation without such a system in place.
I know the arguments that people make. Such a system is tantamount to "socialism", it is a first step towards government takeover, and thus, to "dictatorship". Like many other people, I remember protestors in Washington holding up pictures of Obama with a Hitler moustache slapped on.
Fact of the matter is, any and every time healthcare reform is brought up, there is incredible resistance to it. heated resistance. Some people express their anger in outrageous ways, like parading around the capital city with pictures of the President with that Hitler moustache attached. Things were perhaps a little more reserved and scaled down in the days when Clinton was in the White House and pushing for healthcare reform, but again, there was some incredible opposition.
Of course, people have a right to get offended by the possibility of sweeping changes, and have a right to voice this disapproval. Our right to protest is protected, after all. It is one of the fundamental rights preserved in the Bill of Rights.
And indeed, this is a serious issue, and we should proceed with caution. By all mean, we should monitor the system, and make sure that there are no abuses or glaring abuses and general unfairness embedded within. On some level, it is good to see such skepticism, and careful attention and scrutiny to a government program. It is almost (and this is a qualified almost) the way the system was supposed to work - with an informed citizenry carefully monitoring their government overseers.
But here is what I don't get: why all this automatic, knee jerk assumption that President Obama (or Clinton before him) was trying to screw the American people over, while allowing those who outright have screwed the people over off scot free? Why are corporations, who clearly are responsible for the outrageously high prices, and who have been raking in the profits for many, many years and even decades now, getting a free pass from such skepticism and scrutiny?
How come Americans are more worried about an alternative system potentially failing to truly address and remedy the abuses within the existing system, yet allow the very system that has undeniably failed the American people to continue to exist, mostly unchanged?
The United States is one of the few countries left in the world (and again, it bears repeating precisely because it is not a minor point: it is the only industrialized nation in the world) that does not view affordable and adequate healthcare as a basic right. Thus, very powerful and rich corporations that profit, quite literally, from people's pain, is more acceptable to the American people than a fairer healthcare system is. Let us call a spade a spade, after all. When you strip down all of the arguments and examine all of the facts, it is hard to conclude anything different than that. The right of a corporation, such as a healthcare provider, to make more and more profits trumps the right of the people to have decent healthcare at reasonable prices. The American people are paying a very steep price indeed for this right of corporations to exploit them.
And here's the sad thing: on average, Americans spend more on their healthcare than their European counterparts (or citizens of other industrialized countries outside of Europe with such systems in place). That's right, those snooty Europeans, and Japanese, and Australians, and New Zealanders, and Canadians, and yes, South Africans, not only spend less, but far less, for medical expenses on average, than Americans do. Yet, they have a system of healthcare that covers them more adequately than the average Americans do. It is more than those countries, as well. Russians have a better system, as do the Chinese. Even a fairly impoverished country like Cuba has a healthcare system that covers the basic need of it's people better than the American system does, although Americans certainly do not want or like to hear news like that. But if these things seem grossly unfair, that is because they are.
What seems sadder to me is, simply put, Americans are just too God damn arrogant to actually use these other nations as examples that we can learn from. Nope, God forbid! We're different, we're special. We're the "shining city on the hill" after all, damn it! They should be copying us, and not the other way around! So, let's stick to our guns and hope this works, even if we are getting exploited and cheated left and right. If the facts do not support our superiority, then let's just ignore them. Anything, so that we can prove, once again, to be different. To be the exception. The American exception.
Increasingly, it feels like these exceptions are emphasized among Americans just for the sake of being the exceptions. Being different has a certain advantage, right?
Fine. But where is the outrage when something seems so glaringly obvious? Where is the outrage towards healthcare providers with unfair practices, true elites sucking the most that they can from the rest of us? Where are the protestors then? Why isn't that Facebook friend checking some of these prominent healthcare providers "just for shits and giggles" and musing over just how badly they want to rip her off?
Why, in short, is a President's attempt to remedy something that he finds is ailing America being met with far more skepticism than the ailment itself is? Why so much damn anger and outrage at real attempts to make the healthcare system in the United States more fair and equitable, and less exclusive? Less about profits and greed, and more about....well, actual healthcare?
I find that a good question. It is perplexing, to say the least. Americans have a strange attitude about certain things, and many outside of America's borders (and some inside of it) simply cannot understand this mindset. It has now reached the point where it is clearly working against the best interest of Americans. I personally suspect that there is so much opposition to Obamacare being implemented specifically because opponents are those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo are worried that people will actually come to like the new system.
Here is one article that I recommend reading about this very issue, which also puzzles over the strange attitude and strong skepticism (bordering on paranoia, frankly) that so many have about Obamacare.
Animosity Toward Affordable Heal Care Is Hard To Fathom by Cynthia Tucker, October 5, 2013
http://news.yahoo.com/animosity-toward-affordable-health-care-hard-fathom-050012037.html
Part Two
"Let's be clear Obamacare passed the house, the Senate, and was signed into law. The President won re-election by 5 million votes, Democrats picked up two seats in the Senate and more in the House. The Republicans challenged Obamacare in the conservative Supreme Court and they lost. Now they are trying to blackmail the president and hijack the government until they get their way."
~ Bernie Sanders, Independent, Vermont
I was listening to the radio not very long ago, and heard an interview with a Republican (can't remember which Republican), who was being interviewed by WNYC's Brian Lehrer, and this man was talking about the various different options that Republicans had wanted to negotiate with the President.
At least, that was the way that he portrayed it. When Lehrer challenged him on this, he asked Lehrer why he worded it in such a way that made the Republicans sound inflexible.
Lehrer pointed out that all of those options that the Republicans were using to try to open up "negotiations" were focused on one thing: defunding Obamacare. That's it, and that's that.
The few Republicans (and in this case, it is not even the party in general, as a majority of Republicans are against the current government shutdown) that are supporting the shutdown are essentially trying to force their hand, to trump democracy itself in order to have their way. True, they lost a few elections in a row, and lost the legislative battle to stop Obamacare. They then lost the Supreme Court battle, and lost another election since, one in which the President was re-elected. Yet, still, they are determined to go ahead and try to stop this healthcare system, which they still often term a "bill" (even though it has now passed into the law).
Well, so be it. That lawmakers are doing this, at least they are getting richly compensated, one way or the other. I just don't understand the opposition from the average person, not wealthy or vested interests.
Again, I think a lot of it could be remedied if people knew about (or cared about) the actual facts, although far too often, this just is not the case.
Still, we have to try and keep focused, right? The facts as they present themselves suggest that this healthcare system is not the apocalypse that so many seem to fear it is.
But the government shutdown continues.
So, here is another article that shows just how flexible Republicans have been in their current proposals:
"The Shutdown and “He Said-She Said” Reporting", September 30, 2013 by Joshua Holland of Moyers & Company
http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/30/shutdown-imminent-how-he-said-she-said-reporting-helped-bring-us-to-the-brink/
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