Absolutely and mind-bogglingly astounding.
Today, in a compelling demonstration of just how compassionate and altruistic some people can be, thousands of people with health insurance gathered on Capitol Hill to protest a bill that would provide some coverage for those who are not covered.
What happened to the grand American tradition of at least being a little ashamed and even secretive about your selfishness? Now, apparently, you can boldly and even proudly trumpet your belief that your good fortune should not be extended to others.
I can’t believe that some of these soldiers of the selfish revolution © didn’t at least wear masks.
Yes I’m angry. But I learned a long time ago to always look for the sadness underneath my occasional ranting and raving. And this time it wasn’t hard to find: I share a country with at least some people whose social conscience ends right at the place where the needs, sometimes the desperate needs, of others have to be considered.
Listen to the wisdom of one of these anti-government misanthropes:
“It’s time to make a stand,” he said. “We want to see limited government, not more taxes put in our face. We don’t believe our health care system entirely broken. We need to slow down, stop and start over with this legislation.”
Mr. Scevola said that he had health insurance through his employer. “Kaiser Permanente,” he said proudly. “They are the best on the West Coast.”
I’m so thrilled he is happy with his coverage.
MEDIA AND MAYHEM 
Kaiser Permanente is indeed quite good, but unfortunately they are a business first and a health care provider second, regardless of the silly ads with which they flood all forms of media.
At the risk of sounding bitter – I hope Mr. Scevola loses his health coverage and finds himself in desperate need one day soon.
I just completed the task of finding affordable health insurance for our small company. Because we have an “aging” workforce of loyal employees, we had a difficult time, and Kaiser was one of the most expensive. After covering us for years, they raised our premiums 150%, AND their care was not that great in our area of Lake County, Ohio. We dropped them for a more affordable plan, but we have higher co-pays and deductibles. We are just lucky our small company can still afford to cover our employees at all. We must have reform to break the “monopoly” these insurance companies enjoy in this country. Ever drive down the freeway and see a beautiful, big office building with elaborate landscaping? Chances are it is an insurance company built with your money. And don’t get me started on executive compensation… My doctor deserves the money not the “suits”. North Coast Muse @ http://sally1029.wordpress.com
For all the crap so many of you throw at our Canadian healthcare system, and despite some of the minor warts which I won’t deny exist, we are sooooo much better off collectively than you poor sods in the U.S.
Too bad your health care providers have done such a self-servingly-good job of scaring the pants off you concerning state-run healthcare. Then the Republicans finished the job by spreading their Obama paranoia.
Your country is definitely the loser in this one, whether your people recognize it or not.
Go ahead other commenters, gimme an earful – it doesn’t change a thing!
Good luck in your struggle to change things for the better for ALL Americans, rather than just the more fortunate.
A cousin of mine with dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship expressed it well years ago: “The U.S. is a great place to live if you HAVE money …”.
Nothing’s changed.
I agree, I smoke and over eat, I am way overweight and I just found out I have diabetes. It’s only fair rich healthy people should pay for my health care. I have the freedom to abuse myself thats being a good american. I should nit be punished with higher insurance cost just becouse I love life.
You’ re hilarious. And with a little work on spelling and grammar you could be a real comedian. Lame.
For now I can only say that your silliness is actually very useful.
Because I have never read a more perfect description of the stereotype of the uninsured that the soldiers of the selfish revolution would like you to believe. The picture of the uninsured that they promote is full of fat, lazy, self-destructive gluttons who want us “good people” to fund their debauchery. What pathetic nonsense. Do you really buy this?
Come to New York City and I’ll take you to some children’s health clinics and introduce you to some of these creeps. Together we’ll look for the slobs, the drunks, and the smokers. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about your inevitable disappointment when all we find are uninsured children choking from asthma, unisured parents unable to afford life-saving medications, and kids who go to emergency rooms for an infection of some sort but who are then diagnosed with malnutrition. Really lazy creeps, huh?
By the way, you are sort of right about one thing. Our premiums are higher because of the unhealthy lifestyles people embrace. But you are looking in the wrong place: If you really want to find the overeating, drinking, and smoking, come out to the burbs and I’ll take you on a trip you’ll never forget. We’ve got eaters and drinkers and smokers by the bushel. But I warn you: They virtually all have great health insurance and big houses and big appetites and, yes, your premium is higher to partially subsidize their irresponsibility.
Well said, Mr. Gorelick. Though stereotypes are often based on generalizations or even facts, in this case, you cannot ignore the fact that poverty and poor health decisions do tend to correlate. I used to live in the deep south, and trust me, sometimes it was more than I could bear to watch people destroy themselves…rich AND poor, regardless of whether they had healthcare.
Now, I live in Italy, thankfully with healthcare again, after not having it for 3 years in America. Even in Italy, certainly not well known for having the best system in the world, I can get preventative and reactive care for a fraction of the cost in America. It’s a shame.
Dude, way are you being snooty at me? I’ve never been to college I bearly got out of high school, so back off. I’m for your cause. No one in my family has insurance back in Mexico, but they will as soon as Obama does what he promised. That day can’t come soon enough, most members of my family have never even seen a real doctor and I’m afraid time might be running out for some on them. The bill needs to pass so I can get my family up here to get treatment, all of them.
I’m not saying that I don’t agree with the health-care plan. I believe that providing coverage to everyone would be a welcome relief to many American’s. That is not to say the people who already have coverage shouldn’t have a say in how it gets done. After all their money goes into it also.
I do agree with you. However, I have always felt the health problem in this country is the fault of the large pharmaceutical companies, and medical doctors who abuse the insurance companies.
If doctors were not so greedy and ministered to patients without having to use (needed or not) expensive equipment, tests, etc., and than billing the insurance companies for excessive treatment than maybe the insurance companies would not cost so much. There was a time when med insurance was not so expensive. Same applies to the drug manufacturers. Who is so foolish as to believe that pills and other drugs really need to cost so much? Nonesense. The American people are being duped–well have been duped for a long time now. I think our Prez and others should look at bringing some discipline to the medical profession and drug makers. In the past we had the AMA which overlooked the medical pro’s and when a health pro did something questionable, it could be reported and the AMA would look into it. This kept doctors in line. Well, the doctors or some group got rid of the AMA and the doctors went wild billing the insurance companies and the insurance companies……….you get it.I am not on the side of the insurance companies but I know it wasnt always like this. The doctors drove the price of health insurance up. This is where we need to put some attention to bring down the cost of health insurance so that EVERYONE can be covered. Not all doctors are thieves, but many are, and they have made it bad for everyone.
I dont understand. Is my comment being published or is this reply box for someone to reply to my comment?
Margo
For every doctor who’s gaming the system and overbilling the insurance companies, there are at least ten “managed care professionals” (some of them M.D.’s as well) who are actually PREVENTING patients from getting the care they need. And why? Because the insurance provider has an inherent incentive to provide the least amount of care for the most amount of money. And NOTHING short of taking medical treatment decision-making power out of the hands of insurance companies is going to change that. An HMO is, by definition, a perfect example of a “fox in the henhouse”. Legislators need to address this injustice as step one.
http://danakennedy.wordpress.com
http://oldcameras.wordpress.com
And this is NOT going to change. Even confessions are made tongue in cheek.
Every overeating, drinking, and smoking slob would change it … if he/she could, but they can’t.
I doubt if anyone could prove that it has anything to do with having a great health insurance program. We’re just selfish spoiled-brat Americans. The rest of the world is on its own.
Hello Steve,
How ’bout we just “cut to the chase”? Here’s my plan: You and all your buddies just start taxing me at a rate of 100% of what I make. Might even be easier if I call payroll tomorrow and have them deposit my paycheck wherever the IRS puts their money. And then the Republicans and Democrats can figure out some equitable means of giving me back some of what I made. I don’t need too much. Just enough to get by. Send me that routing number and account number pronto. Let’s get this party started. Total government control by 2010. And Steve, don’t you worry my friend. We producers will continue to work, sweat, innovate, produce and protect the ideals that got us this far with or without your help. We’ll keep things going so that you’ll have the luxury of using that mind of yours to develop idealistic dreams of global bliss. We’ll keep the lights on for you buddy. And how does that light work anyway? Must be some government worker somewhere doing that for us. And who makes the medicine? Government workers. The steel beams that support the buildings located on the hotspot of intuhlekchewul aktiveuhtee known as Hunter College, CUNY? That’s right. Government workers. All because the IRS took lots of money from who? Love ya baby. Keep it up.
William: For heaven’s sakes, nobody wants to tax you 100%. And while I can’t speak for everyone, I am dead serious when I say that I deeply appreciate whatever you produce, whatever contribution you make.
I respect your comment, its incivility aside, as an honest statement of how you perceive the motives of those who are concerned about providing health care to those who don’t have it. I can only tell you that I hope no sane supporter of reform wants to financially ruin you or rob you or take control of our government as an objective of reform. I certainly don’t.
I want to live in a country that continues to benefit from what it is you produce, a country that will be there for you and those you care about if you should ever lose the health insurance you probably have or get hit with an unexpected costly illness that would make it hard for you to continue to produce. (I know, I can hear you saying that you don’t want any handouts and that even if you ever lose your health insurance your self reliance will somehow get you that heart-valve replacement without a handout. More power to you and I honestly hope this is an issue you never have to face.)
I can only tell you that, if I saw this reform effort the way you do, as the beginning of some effort to ruin this country by implementing oppressive control and stealing people’s money, I’d be right there with you.
I just think that, however deeply you believe what you wrote, what you have really described is the nightmare carricature scenario that some opponents of health care reform are using to scare voters. 0
For heaven’s sakes, I don’t want all your money and I don’t want you to be taxed to death and I don’t want your world turned upside down.
I just want the poor and vulnerable to have an option that they can buy to insure that their kids get the medications and therapies they need so that they can become “producers” too.
As to the nastiness and bitterness in your comment, especially about the work I do, I can honestly say that I have felt some of the same mean-spirited and destructive emotions. I can’t imagine there weren’t occasions when I have lost it and even “out-nastied” you. Human here. But reading your comment did remind me just why I fight my own occasional impulse to be hurtful and why I worry about the survival of civil discussion in this country. We don’t have to be mean-spirited, even when we disagree.
This belief in civility is not political correctness, not naive, not weak. It is decent.
Thanks, Steve. I am so impressed by your reply. I don’t have the time now to post all my thoughts. But, I wanted you to know that your tone, call it civility, is the remedy for health care debate disease.
i always thought that different demonstrations did not help people with anything. they can gather in the centre of a city for example, but nobody will hear them. it is just like a passtime. everybody will say: ok, great, you have an idea and try to prove it.
and what? nothing….
I wish the tea-baggers would just go whole-hog and start protesting police departments, courts, public works, and state departments of transportation, too, for the “outright socialism” they represent. If you’re going to go social Darwinist on folks, why stop at healthcare?
Of course, other people’s lives are cheap to people who only care about their own property and well-being.
Hey Website:
Instead of wishing that the “teabaggers” would protest various departments in our country, why don’t you get off your duff and do your part? That is one of the problems in this country—no one wants to stand up and be counted. Its good enough to just leave it for the other guy to do it for us. That is not how this country was built.
We should protest many things that are going on in this country at this time, but we should protest as a whole or as much of a whole as it possible. The power has always been with the people but no one is worried cause everyone knows Americans have become lazy-“let those teabaggers do it for us.” And nastiness seems to be the new communication for some people too.
Health care costs have also been driven sky high by lawyers, who make huge sums from litigating like mad. No one is allowed to just get sick and die, someone must pay, and the lawyers pocket most of the money while patients get a small percentage and insurance companies, pharma, and doctors pay more for settlements. We are all responsible for a badly-grown system, and we need to work together on financially sound ways to resolve the problem. However, bad health care that barely helps poor people and takes away from many others is not the answer. Ramming through a mish-mash of a fix in just a few months is a scary response to a long-term problem. Let’s be thoughtful and careful, or we just might have a worse mess on our hands.
A very good post! It’s always encouraging when people think. Thoughts: At what point did WE allow the health industry, pharmaceutical industry, etc. to become so uncontrollable? Why did WE allow this? At this point in time, we’ve become their prey. Again my question, why did WE allow this? If we refuse to pay premiums as a way to protest, one’s insurance will be cancelled, and in the future, any claims that the protesting individual had prior to the insurance cancelation, will be considered a “pre-existing condition.” It seems the industries have us by our butts.
More thoughts: I’m aghast at intensity of the hatred and rage that is sweeping our country … watching faceless entities raucously shrieking with their hatred. I tend to believe the underlying root of is prejudice, which has been festering for years. Obama’s election seems to have triggered a silent approval to, for lack of a better term, “closet” haters to emerge. We watched as this hated seeped into the infamous town hall meetings in August and most recently, yesterday in Washington, DC. How many realize that the bus transportation, which transported many to yesterday’s “press release” (as it was called by certain republicans), was paid for by the lobbyists who oppose health care reform and the industry ball-busting public choice? Vigilante groups are now accepted … a shocker to me. And on a sad note, the world is watching America’s chaos. I find this embarrassing.
It’s such a touchy argument. I work in medical insurance billing and encounter people all the time that are not covered. It’s a horrible thing.
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