POLITICS AND HEALTH CARE

I have no intention of making an idiot of myself by joining in a health care 'debate' whose conclusion should be now be obvious to all. A handful of senatorial slurpers at the public trough, led by someone called Baucus, have determined that we, the public, should not have a single-pay system of health care.

I take the following as obvious:
(1) Such a plan takes many years to work out in detail. I was alive and well when it was introduced into the unhealthy, underfed, and grudging population of the United Kingdom. Nearly sixty years later that population is far better off and far healthier. It is not I who would benefit from a US equivalent, but my grandchildren.
(2) There is no such thing as a perfect Health Plan. Any will have its problems and its failures.
(3) It is unlikely that any could conceivably be worse, more ill-managed, more inequitable and more spendthrift than that which the United States now 'enjoys'. I paid a private doctor a goodly retainer each year, but 95 percent of Americans -- not exactly the healthiest nation on earth -- couldn't possibly have afforded this sort of 'private' care.
(4) I have a vague recollection that a sensible single-pay government-run universal health care was what we voted for and were promised.
(5) Anyone with the slightest knowledge of such plans in more civilized places, from Taiwan to Poland, knows that they work. Fall ill from Lapland to Cahuita, Costa Rica (where I live), you will be taken care of without a question -- or a demand for pre-payment when you knock at death's door. In Costa Rica it costs a family $38 p/m for full coverage, including any and all medications. Of course, the local system us not as 'advanced' as that in McAllen, Texas, which has the highest per capita costs in the United States, for the good and simple reason that its doctors and hospitals manage to make sure a scratch on your knee will have you tested for diabetes. In Europe, such health care is part of a government package that includes FREE education for as far as a student can go, FREE medical care regardless of who you are, where, or what your income is. (It gets abused, yes, but the taxes paid for the service more than make up for the abusers), and many other sensible services, such as socially-engineered local and national transportation costs, support for culture and much else.
(6) The bill for this is high: a tax-rate that is something like 38-40 percent of income instead out the American 31-34 percent. It is a tax which -- when every child gets some 300-500$ of go-to-school equipment every year -- does not seem exorbitant.

Since all this is crystal clear to anyone who has traveled, read about or studied how these health plans work (which varies greatly from country to country) one wonders how Baucus and Company have come up with the kind leg of a donkey. I likewise it is worth considering just how powerless we are to get our legislators to do the obvious. Just as clear is a much older story: don't dream for an instant that you live in a democratic society in which access is equal to all and your legislators are reponsive to your desires. Congressional eavesdropping on the national mood is like the pit-patter of distant rain compared to the thunder of Tea Parties, Drug Companies and the likes of Glenn Beck.

It won't do for you to say, 'Throw the rascals out!', for others will follow the present batch.

Did someone mention campaign promises: Health care, a withdrawal from war, transparency, no income tax for those on Social Security, and Yadda-Yadda?