Why the hurry?
By claiming that Democrats are pushing health-care reform too quickly, Republicans are asking us to forget anything that happened before the last election. Americans have been talking about this problem for decades now; meanwhile little has been done about it. And as we have continued to talk, the problem has gotten much worse. Now Democrats who made health-care reform a prominent part of their platform have set about making good on their campaign promise. This is how democracy is supposed to work, no?
No doubt Republicans would like to see this — and every other important — question deferred until after the midterm elections. But Republican presidents and congressmen have been deferring or scuttling health-care reform for forty years. To the president they now say, Take your time. To themselves they say, Kill it. They call what’s happening a hurry not because they think health-care reform is too important to rush, but because many of them still don’t see what’s so urgent about helping the fifty million Americans who are uninsured and the many millions more who are underinsured. This Times article could help them see, if they would stop using the American flag as a blindfold.
For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday — starting after midnight and snaking into the witching hours — for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor.
Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Los Angeles Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients.
When Remote Area Medical, the Tennessee-based organization running the event, decided to try its hand at large urban medical services, its principals thought Los Angeles would be a good place to start. But they were far from prepared for the outpouring of need. Set up for eight days of care, the group was already overwhelmed on the first day after allowing 1,500 people through the door, nearly 500 of whom had still not been served by day’s end and had to return in the wee hours Wednesday morning.
We have good reasons to hurry.
on August 12th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Of course it’s easy to see why the Republicans are trying to delay: it gives them more time to come up with additional scare tactics like “death panels” and how the NHS in the UK is trying to kill off all the old people and such nonsense. Every lie they come up with peels away a little more support for health care reform, so they want more time to tell more lies and scare people. And of course delays also play into the hands of the insurance companies, who need time to marshal their millions into deceptive ad campaigns.
on August 12th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
We should not hurry because the purpose of Health Care from the beginning is to preserve Human Life.
http://www.lifesitenews.com
on August 12th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Another non-sequitur (from the beginning) by Nancy.
Anexcellent thread.
on August 12th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
One can not be preserving Human Life if one is destroying Human Life, which is why, from the beginning, abortion is not Health Care. Why would they refuse to put explicit language that prohibits abortion in the Health Care bill and why do you refuse to question the fact that explicit language that prohibits elective abortion is not in the Health Care bill?
on August 13th, 2009 at 9:01 am
A couple of friends of mine just spent huge amounts of money for dental work–is dental in fact covered by the health plan?
on August 13th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Matthew
What precisely is this vignette supposed to prove?
If I set up a free hot dog stand on a street corner and have a line of 500 people waiting does that mean that hot dogs are overpriced – that there’s a hot dog shortage – a crisis?
As for the “scare tactics” the point people are trying to make is not that there is a thing called “death panels” in the bill, but that it creates things like a Helath Choices Commissioner and a Health Choices Administration who will essentially have the power to say what can and cannot be covered in all insurance plans by virtue of their power to impose penalties on pretty much any health insurer. Additionally, there a panels and offices within HHS the CDC etc who are charged with finding comparative efficiencies in treatments etc. inform what should and should not be covered.
It is amazing to me that the same people who ranted about the dangers of the Patriot Act and creating a Homeland Security apparatus are merrily telling us “not to worry.” For those who were certain that enemy combatants must have the right of habeas – why aren’t they concerned about the exclusion of judicial review of reimbursement decisions in this bill?
on August 13th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Sean,
When thousands of people stood in breadlines during the Depresssion, it suggested, if it did not prove, that our economic system had temporarily failed. But let’s take your own trivializing example and your own number. I might stand behind four people to get a free hot dog, but would you stand behind 499 people — or camp out over night — to get a free hot dog unless you were desperately hungry and couldn’t afford to buy a hot dog, or any other food, at its market price? I doubt it.
on August 13th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Matthew – I was not trivializing, I was using a simple example.
First, you would be shocked at what people will do when something is free. I spent years doing free legal assistance services for military members. I was shocked at the kinds of things they would wait and make appointments for if they didn’t have to pay for them. Ask anyone who has worked in a free legal clinic and they will tell you that many, if not most of the things people come in for don’t need a lawyer to be handled. And as pointed out above – with dental, even insured coverage isn’t always free – someone might wait for hours to save a couple hundred bucks in co-payments even if they are insured. People wait in 30 degree weather outside Best Buy every November to save less on a lap top.
That aside, if there is a crisis in health care – not health care financing, I grant that’s a serious problem – how is it manifested? Most of the negative health outcomes that people point to are lifestyle based. Where are the thousands of people suffering from untreated dred disease, dropping in the streets?
Finally, yes we have a problem, but why is implementing another major bureacracy the answer? Why not health care insurance tax credits? Why not pay for the insurance of the poor by taxing gold-plated plans (the answer, of course, is that those plans are typically only held by Democratic interest groups like public employees). Will these people be necessarily better served by a public health plan? We aren’t having that discussion.
I recently bought a car, and this administration’s efforts are just like the salesman who tried to stop me from leaving without making a deal. Do it now, you won’t get another chance! There is a reason for the urgency, and its not because the problem will get that much worse by waiting a month or two – it’s to sell us before we’ve had a chance to read and understand the deal.
on August 13th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Nancy: please quote chapter and verse in ANY proposals currently on the floor of the House in which you find a provision for federal funding of abortions.
Stop repeating right-wingnut deather propoganda that is TOTALLY unsupportable in fact.
on August 13th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
” — you would be shocked at what people will do when something is free.”
The way to solve that is to make medical coverage prohibitively expensive so that only the worthy wealthy (who we know would NEVER take advantage of ANYTHING) have access to it.
on August 13th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
If speed is of the essence, a more prudent approach would be to move in much smaller, incremental steps that are easily digested by the public and on which bipartisan consensus can be forged, perhaps addressing those things that are truly urgent (like medical care for those who have none) rather than trying to address every problem, short term and long term, in one fell swoop. It doesn’t have to be win-everything-or-lose-everything on healthcare. Ostensibly, our current leaders have been obsessed with not repeating the Clintons’ mistakes, but on this it seems to be deja vu all over again.
on August 14th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Jimmy,
Have you not been listening to the debate? There is no provision on abortion because all – including Obama – abortion on demand proponents wanted it that way. The coverage of the public option will be determined by a panel chosen by the president and eveyone on both sides of the issue agree that the coverage will almost certainly cover abortions. Nancy is correct on this – a provision prohibiting abortion coverage is required. It’s not “right-wing” propaganda.
And as for my comment – you obviously misinterpret it. Part of my point was that many of those who use free services are those who don’t need them and can afford to pay for them. I venture to guess everyone who reads this blog understands what I mean. When you pull up to a Denny’s with a buy one get one free special going on – you are as likely or more likely to see Cadillacs in the parking lot as broken down Chevy’s.