The Public Healthcare Option

[browngirl]

I haven't discussed politics here much lately. But I realized that I needed to write this down for my own sense of honor if for no other reason, as a reminder to spend some time working towards what I believe is right. From thnidu: No one should die because they cannot afford health care. No one should go broke because they get sick, and no one should be tied to a job because of a pre-existing condition. [If you agree, please post this to your journal.]

From tigerbright: Here is a link to a video by Robert Reich (Labor Secretary for Clinton, currently a professor at UC-Berkeley) that explains some of the current controversy.

In the interests of evenhandedness, here is madfilkentist's countermeme. If this post of mine has annoyed you so far, this link is the one you may agree with.

For myself, I did add brackets around the last line of the meme I posted because I dislike coercively worded memes. However, I agreed with the rest, so I have posted it. I'm leaving comments on, though I probably shouldn't, but I don't think I can be convinced that there is no problem with over 45 million Americans lacking health insurance, and my statement of that is intended as information, not a dare.

Comments

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with that meme, though I don't tend to participate in them (because I don't like being ordered to do so! Thanks for snipping that part.)

We have started making some strides about pre-existing conditions with HIPAA, but it's far from perfect since it won't deal with long stretches of unemployment or if you had no insurance as a kind; I think it's that you have to have been covered in the previous 6 months. I'm glad to see at least a *little* improvement there, though it definitely work.

I actually agree with Gary's point that I can believe something philosophically and still not have a clue how to implement it. I think that health care is desperately broken and I don't actually know how to fix it. We need a plan that will cover people as they need treatment; I have insurance and I was still out 2K for one of my medications when they decided to deny my coverage. I have great sympathy for health insurance issues.

But since we run health care as an industry, the entities involved in it have to make money (or they won't continue to do so.) It's hard to figure out how to deal with that and still protect the basic needs of people.

Bah. I need a magic wand.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

[edited for pronoun clarification] A magic wand would be *so* nice. Bopping around, fixing things...

I actually agree with Gary's point that I can believe something philosophically and still not have a clue how to implement it.

I was thinking about this (you bring out my philosophical side, which is entirely appropriate) and how to verbalize my frustration. I run into the idea a lot (there's a discussion going on in media fandom right now about it) that 'just talk' or 'just wishing' is useless. And yeah, talk by itself isn't change ... it is, I think, the inception of change. The ideas exist, and then the actions, right? So I found myself imagining where I'd be if feminists in the '70s or suffragettes in the nineteen-teens or abolitionists in the 1850's or the Civil Rights movement in the middle of the last century had listened to "just wishing won't change anything" and let themselves be daunted from working to put wishes into action. And then I shuddered.

So that's why I posted this, and why I'm going to spend part of my weekend doing research and perhaps writing letters. I can't say that fixing the US healthcare system is anywhere as simple as a soundbite, but it's also not as simple as letting the status quo stand.