Doctor, Doctor (Give Me The News)

Health care in the United States, as debates go, is raging ahead full throttle. Health care in the United States, in practice, has been in a slow state of decline and decay and is just about at the point of unworkability today.

The numbers tell the story. One out of every six dollars spent by Americans goes to the health care industry, even with over 50 million uninsured among us. The cost of premiums has quadrupled in the last ten years. 80 percent of those polled want serious reforms, with nearly three-fourths favoring a "public option" to compete with Big Doc.

Of the two major political parties, only one has shown any willingness to take action with this runaway ambulance headed our way. Harry S Truman introduced the idea in 1945. Bill Clinton, God love him, gave it a whirl in the early '90s but was rebuffed by conservatives who were somehow scared witless by the likes of "Harry and Louise". (Liberals were more preoccupied with Thelma and Louise.)

Now Barack Obama is following through with his promise of reform, including a public option, whether the Republicans want to play ball or not. His plan will cost a trillion dollars over ten years - by most informed estimates - and has something in it to offend everyone. Even those who choose not to have health care may have to pay into the system to compensate everyone else picking up their slack.

It has become apparent that the GOP is at the beck and call of anyone making money off the illnesses of others: For-profit hospitals, HMOs, Big Pharma, they can all be found squirming around in the pockets of those who most vocally oppose the president's plan.

The health care industry can't reduce your costs and premiums, but it can spend millions of dollars on lobbying firms, which recruit the most willful of idiots to disrupt town-hall meetings in the most obnoxious of fashions. It's nothing new. One of those lobbying firms, Freedom Works, is headed by the appropriately-named Dick Armey (former Republican Speaker of the House).

This is the same circus-tent crowd that dug in their heels and pinned back their ears when Obama rolled out his recent economic stimulus plan. I guess they just wanted to see their mission (destroying the American economy through corporate deregulation) come to its inevitable conclusion; fortunately, cooler heads prevailed at the ballot box.

The Party of No hides behind an anti-spending argument that runs 180 degrees contrary to their behavior when Republicans held Congress. That's why only a paranoid minority believes or supports them. Spending is a serious enough issue, and that discussion should be left to serious enough people.

Let's look at it, though, since that's their stated scrimshaw of a position. One trillion dollars for health care, that's a lot of cabbage, all right. It's about as much money as we've spent fighting a fraudulently-conceived war in Iraq. A trillion and a half for the stimulus, why, that's just about the amount of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (less interest).

Really, if deficit spending needs to be explained, that's so easy that even right-wingers ought to be able to understand. We're putting all of this on the national credit card because it needs to be done. The public elected a president and a Party that expressed interest in doing just that. Who said that line about "will o' the people"?

The sad fact is that all of this stuff - the bailouts, the stimulus, health care - could have been paid for in cash had George W. Bush and the Republican Party not already pissed all of our money away. So it does not seem unreasonable to take that money back and put it where it belongs.

For our national malady, that would seem to be just what the doctor ordered. If conservatives want to refuse treatment, well, that's why modern medicine invented the feeding tube.

pH 8.o6.o9