Time to mount the blog-pony today and allow the muse back in the house, because life still matters every day. What a month since mid-July. Contentious news everywhere with a stalled bottomed economy while health care reform talk fills the airwaves and print mediums. Representatives hold town hall meetings and get shouted down by the angry and unruly.
I am not sure why making fundamental changes to such a broken health system here in the U.S. deserves the pitchforks and torch treatment usually reserved for old Universal monsters. You might think that all these average looking white people do not feel the need to eliminate the very real threat of bankruptcy over a medical problem. Maybe these people protesting public discussions on the health issue think the private insurers will resort to payback and raise their deductibles and premiums for having the audacity to propose a public coverage option. No one could be stupid enough to buy into the idea that this is communism or evil socialism with the state dictating to you your medical reality.
When I hear Republicans state their party wants to insure that a government bureaucrat never gets between you and your doctor you know they mean it. But they will not do one thing to keep that insurance company bureaucrat between you and the doctor, because that insurer has paid a whole lot of money to both Republicans and Democrats over the years to make sure the government is totally ineffective and worthless in addressing this important social issue. Granted, Republicans have gotten a far larger share than the Democrats over a 20 year period, but it just goes to show a shrewd gambler will cover both sides of his bet.
What is interesting today is the talk from the health insurers and their PR firms indicating they too want reform, just not a public option which could threaten or impact their profit taking. Insurers really want a double mandate, which means simply that everyone must buy insurance in America, and all companies selling insurance must sell to everyone. We will get some version of this as our health care reform.
The public option is much like the public vote, it stirs the passions and beguiles the believers of the cause that a change to their way of thinking is possible. America has always been about the money, and finding new and ingenious methods of shaking down commoners to reward the powerfully entrenched wealth holders. Nothing in the ballot boxes ever changes that fact. The evidence that each new generation finds a small group of people with a great concept, and that a few of those innovators are rewarded extraordinarily, does not mean that life in the middle or on the bottom has really changed that much.
This is not to say that breakthroughs like the automobile, the airplane, the radio, the television, the Internet, and the bomb over the last century have not had major impacts on how society works. This is only to say people have always been nomadic, and on the move from the dawn of our period on the planet. We have always used communication to further our nomadic quests, and have availed ourselves of ingenious methods from smoke to birds to broaden a talking point's reach. Some group of people always found the biggest club to wield over the competition.
The uses of patriotism, religion and fear of the unknown are the tried and true methods of maintaining obeisance to those in control. How little we have progressed to see these old canards of the corrupt used so effectively on the public today to foil dreams of rights and raising health standards for so many.
Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs knew we were Beat fifty years ago. The toys of escape have changed, but our real fortunes have not.
The Bird is recommended listening and still a great symbol of defiance in either hand.
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