Look, See, and Here We Go…

Whenever I see or hear “Look,” “See,” or “Here We Go” as an introduction to something more, I anticipate the speaker or author to try to set me straight about something on which we disagree–that is, to convince me to change my opinion to be more in line with theirs.

Now I need to use one of these, or perhaps all three, myself. Let me first say that I’m not in the habit of trying to convince people of anything they don’t want to be convinced of, so most of the time I don’t pontificate, and allow others to come to their own conclusions. Sometimes their conclusions agree with mine, and sometimes they don’t.

At this moment in time, I’m noticing a trend–perhaps it’s a figment of the imagination of the American media that they are thrusting on us–of everyone’s putting Obama down. It was predictable, right? Six months in, and the honeymoon is over, so now people are jumping on bandwagons left and right–but mostly to the right–to denounce anything this new president is trying to do to resolve any of the numerous mega disasters he has inherited. It took eight years to create the current situation, so why do people now think that 1) the current mess is the fault of the inheritor, and 2) everything should be fixed within these first six months, and if not, this president has failed?

Let’s talk about this week’s hot potato: Health Care Reform.

Look. This country’s health care is out of sight, out of control, and out of reach as far as being accessible and affordable to the masses. There are millions out there who are working full time and yet can’t afford health insurance or health care, not because of spending the money they earn in lavish and irresponsible ways, but because the premiums for health care insurance, and the cost of healthcare without health care insurance, are just way too high once food and shelter are paid for. Hard to justify paying for health care insurance instead of having food to eat or a roof over your head.

I’m one of the lucky ones, and not because health care insurance is provided with my job. I work for myself, and so have to provide that, and everything else, out of my pocket. I am very fortunate that I can do that. Many self-employed people cannot.

It costs me just over $300 a month for my coverage with Kaiser–and that’s for a policy with a high deductible, given that I’m just one person, and a generally healthy one at that—knock on wood. But $300 for one person is $600 for two people, and it’s into the stratosphere when you start adding dependents into the mix.

Many employed people work for employers who cannot provide health insurance for their employees. It’s as simple as that–and of course it gets as complicated as you want to make it when you start considering all of the ins and outs, but let’s just stick to the simple facts. Health care insurance under the present ‘system’ is not affordable to the masses. Period. Plain and simple.

See… there are other countries in this world who have government sponsored and/or run health care, some in addition to private providers, and although no system is perfect, and for the most part, these systems provide what our system does not–affordable health care for the masses. And guess what–for all of our clinging to what we think is “the best health care in the world,” (is this because of propaganda or arrogance?) we’re wrong. Our health care is not #1–hard as that may be for us to accept, but check the statistics and you’ll see for yourself.

I know, I know. Government run or sponsored anything is counter to the foundations on which our country was built and considered to be of some evil conspiracy to do us all in. Fine. But things change, times change, and things and times definitely have changed, and so we need to change something major in our system that responds to those changes so that people are not dying for lack of the healthcare they can’t afford. Doesn’t that make sense? Let’s move into the preset, get off the paranoia wagon, and get real.

If everyone who is so opposed to a government sponsored health care system that would co-exist with the current private one, is so sure that that would be the ultimate evil, then please come up with another idea that will solve the problem while keeping us all out of Haides. I’m sure President Obama and all the rest of us would be happy to hear it, so please speak up.

And I know–again–that it’s much more complicated than I am describing here, but my point, as well as the bottom line is, that what we now have is not working–at least it’s not working for millions who literally cannot afford health care insurance, and therefore healthcare. Something needs to be done.

Here We Go… For a good and in-depth overview of what exists now, as well as what is being proposed, Mitchell Bard, columnist on the Huffington Post, has a good handle on it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitchell-bard/congress-is-behaving-as-i_b_241453.html .

The battle we are engaging in is so much wasted energy being spent defending what doesn’t work, and what’s the point of that? Shouldn’t we instead be coming up with new ideas that are better than what we have and perhaps better than what’s being proposed?

As anyone familiar with the difficulty in getting an alcoholic on the road to recovery knows, the first step is getting that person to acknowledge and accept that a problem exists. Without that, nothing will ever get resolved or even improve. That’s where we are now with health care–we, ‘the person-with-the-problem,’ have to acknowledge the problem. Continuing to stick our heads in the sand is destroying us.

President Obama has presented a plan. You don’t like it? Have you got a better one? Let’s hear it.