It is a total screw job. As far as I'm concerned, we are officially nothing more than glorified serfs working in sweatshop America. Unless, of course, you happen to be a member of that exclusive country club, Management. If, God help you, you happen to actually produce something tangible for a living, your job, your wages, your very life is irrelevent to Management, except as a number on a balance sheet.
Work, actual production, is valued so little in America that those who do it are both pitied and scorned. Those people also happen to be the same ones who need a national public health plan, and they are the same ones who will get nothing but a bill from our corporate welfare state.
We have ceased to have a government that cares for its people. We now have a government that cares only for its corporate "citizens", and those lucky enough to benefit* (healthily) from them. How else to explain the idea that we can somehow cut medical costs by maintaining (growing, actually) a useless layer of for-profit bureaucracy? At every level of our medical system, profit will be the primary motivator, only then followed by patient care. We'll be lucky if we can manage to maintain our number 37 place in the world's scale of health care, and we'll be paying through the nose (even more than we do now) to do so.
* This does not refer to people "lucky" enough to have a job.
3 comments:
I agree that it's a really crappy deal. I also know that if the Senate Dems stop now, everyone to the right of Lieberman will frame Democrats as losers for the next election cycle and we'll be that much closer to "President Mitt Romney" or "President Sarah Palin." I hate the fact they didn't start with Single Payer, that Obama wasn't more vocal and visible, that Harry Reid let Lieberman and conservative Dems roll over him, that the Insurance Co. had a seat at the table and that every concession has come from the progressive side.
But you know what? The so-called leaders and spokespeople of the progressive movement (both online and off) basically sat on their hands for the whole summer while people like Glenn Beck riled up a bunch of old, paranoid white people into a frenzy. They waited and waited for Obama to use his magical hope powers to deliver us all from evil, then got pissed when they realized he's a mortal going against an entrenched system that has no plans of relinquishing it's stranglehold of our society.
There's plenty of blame to go around for this thing. I'm with Keith Olbermann (if you can keep the Public Option and expanded Medicare, than take out the mandate) but if this bill is considered to be Phase One as opposed to "see you guys in another 80 years" then by all means pass it and get started on Phase Two.
P.S.: Awesome pic; it really shows where we're at one this thing right now.
Harsh but fair Dave.
The wife and I were talking about this the other evening; this never has been a 'party line' thing. The Last two years of so-called debate on this issue is nothing more than theater - it always has been and always will be about consolidation of power and control. Lets see, who gets something from this or any legislation? 1 - Govt
2 - Union Leadership
3 - Corporations
While the masses bicker and moan about the partisan nature, the ethics, etc the consolidation that would make Franco blush marches on and on and on and on...
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