The Utah Amicus and Systemic Health Care Roots or "Why Can't Republicans Even Pretend not to be Evil?"
Salt Lake City, Utah - ©2007 - The Deseret Spectacle
There was an interesting comment by Jesse Harris over on the Utah Amicus on a short post that Steve Olsen put up. I wound up rewriting my response about 4 times. I started with a flippant one-liner, turned it into a serious one paragraph, then went to a sarcastic two-paragrapher, graduated to a 3 paragraph argument and segued nicely into an obnoxious, barely lucid 4 1/2 paragrapher drenched in sarcasm and evidence of my insomnia. And my friends, when it gets to that point, it's ready to be published on the Deseret Spectacle. So with apologies to my friends at the Utah Amicus, I've moved my response here and quoted the person I was responding to:
Jesse said the following in response to the Utah Amicus post. As he usually does, he made a lucid, reasonable contention, completely undeserving of my bratty reply.
In all seriousness though, I'm very much a fan of making systemic changes and ferreting out systemic problems, but the inescapable reality of the situation is that we have a lot of people who are suffering now.
"No man is an island."
I used to hate that saying.
And truth be told, I still do.
But really, isn't it true? It seems as though when we are pooling together our money to help out the poor or the middle class, Republicans convulse into fits, sputtering accusations like "socialism," "class warfare," and "redistribution of wealth" out of their spittle-laden faces as they cook to a bright red color.
But yet again, we're all getting ready to put whatever our share of another 120 billion dollars to support yet another year of war. We're all throwing in to support a war that the vast majority of us don't approve of, want to end, and that frankly, a war we're all still a little pissed about being duped into. But that? The redistribution of wealth from all of us into the pockets of the military industrial complex? The Halliburton's? The Black water's? The
I stumbled across a post from some "PR Strategist" or something last night - it was from early in the year, right after the Democrats had taken office. This guy is from Utah, so when I dig up his name, I'm sure some of you will recognized him.
Anyway, he was talking about how they had fulfilled their promise to raise the minimum aThey fulfilled their promised to increase the minimum wage. And what was the headline? "Democrats raise minimum wage!"? "Democrats endanger small businesses by making them pay more for labor!"?
No. To this yahoo, the Democrats raising the minimum wage represented proof positive that the sole aim of the Democratic party is to turn America into a Socialist state.
*Sigh*
Stupidity. So. Much. Stupidity.
The Democrats haven't been immune either, but I'll get to them later. Let's get back to this allergic reaction that Republicans seem to have when faced with the opportunity to be decent human beings and have government do something actually "good."
I mean, don't get me wrong.. I don't think Republicans go out of their way to appear (be?) evil.. But Holy Mother, guys! You really do! Like this latest push for an increase in funding for low-income children.. It comes up again and even our own vapid, bone-headed Senator Hatch is behind it - but you President Bush?
You can't bring yourself to just say "Aw shucks. Why not. Sure, let's throw in an extra 20 or 30 extra million dollars for uninsured poor kids to get medical treatment they need"? You can spend 500 times that on a ludicrous, destined-to-fail military wet dream that your daddy's old, senile boss fantasized about, but ya can't just suck up enough compassion or goodwill to say "Okay, sure, let's help out the poor kids."?
I mean come on guys. You're wiling to pay friggin' FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS a **DAY** for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but when it comes to paying a fraction of that for years worth of various types of domestic aid you're frugal all the sudden?
*sigh*
Okay. I can see myself getting way off the track here. Let's go back to the original theme of this post..
Causes and conditions. I'm down with exploring, debating and illuminating the roots of the problems we have in our country when it comes to health care. But let's get our friggin' priorities in order and get our people covered while we're figuring it out. We don't have to wait or have a totally solid grasp on what's amiss.
And also, as we do get down to root causes, we can't flinch no matter what; I'm sure there will be things there that I don't like - things that are humbling to acknowledge - but that aside, I think we're going to be going up against roving bands of fire-breathing pharmaceutical lobbyists and grotesquely deformed insurance leviathans, any number of which would happily sacrifice every last one of us if it made them an extra half a percent profit "next" quarter.
Let's shorten the length and power of patents, especially business method patents, on drugs. Let's make the patenting of genes illegal, and make intellectual property protection on adjunct technologies and methods much, much weaker. And don't worry or let them fool you into thinking that they won't do the research if we weaken the intellectual property protection. There are mountains of money to be made in the field, and they're not going to sit on the sidelines pouting because they didn't get an extra government-insured %4000 return on their R&D investments.
If a company or educational institution gets grant money from the government for medical research - make that research public domain - available to every American company and citizen at no cost.
Let's retrieve our collective balls from the trophy shelves of the insurance companies and aggressively take them to task for their unconscionable, yet impressively creative and dramatic interpretations of just how little your insurance coverage actually covers.
There are a lot of things we can do.
The Democrats aren't angels by any means - this last betrayal by them on President Bush's last-minute push for changes to surveillance laws which completely absolved himself and his agents of their blatantly illegal behavior while simultaneously granting them a new system by which even the paltry oversight which did exist has been dismantled - and all of this by a group of Democrats who have railed on against the President and his illegal, warrantless, surveillance? The hypocrisy.. The disappointment.. Well, frankly, it was incredibly demoralizing for me. However, just recently, I regained a tiny sliver of hope, as the Democrats seem to be responding to their constituents, who are pissed and screaming "What the hell are you doing?? Get in there and do the job we elected you to do!!" They have taken actions which suggest they may have realized their screw up, and are going back to review correct it, hopefully long before the current 6-month expiration date nears.
But with the Republicans? I mean.. Good Lord. Over the last six years.. The sheer volume of give-a-ways of public resources; the unprecedented deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries; the sculpting of laws to further provide unaccountable, ultra-wealthy corporations and individuals maximum market protection while simultaneously absolving them of civic responsibility or liability.. All of it is easily ten times worse than my worst fears. There betrayal of the American people has been simply astounding.
As an ideological movement, as a political party, even as a group of men who I can only assume was well-intentioned and honorable at some point.. But all of that is gone now. They have traded away their integrity and principles in their mad, arrogant, self-righteous grappling of power.
They are a party which has lost their soul, and I don't see it returning any time soon. They sold out the people they swore to represent, and I'm just not sure how you recover from that. I'm not sure if you do recover from that. It's really quite tragic, when you think about it.
Okay, I could literally rant for another 30 minutes, but I'm already a little concerned that this post is being driven more by my total lack of sleep last night, so I'm just going to let go. :-) But I'd like to hear any of your opinions on... whatever it was I was talking about.
Actually, if you could tell me what I was talking about, that would be great.
Thanks.
DS
Salt Lake City, Utah
The Deseret Spectacle is in no way related to the Deseret Morning News.
Letters to the Editor
There was an interesting comment by Jesse Harris over on the Utah Amicus on a short post that Steve Olsen put up. I wound up rewriting my response about 4 times. I started with a flippant one-liner, turned it into a serious one paragraph, then went to a sarcastic two-paragrapher, graduated to a 3 paragraph argument and segued nicely into an obnoxious, barely lucid 4 1/2 paragrapher drenched in sarcasm and evidence of my insomnia. And my friends, when it gets to that point, it's ready to be published on the Deseret Spectacle. So with apologies to my friends at the Utah Amicus, I've moved my response here and quoted the person I was responding to:
Jesse said the following in response to the Utah Amicus post. As he usually does, he made a lucid, reasonable contention, completely undeserving of my bratty reply.
You still failed to indicate how exactly you would bring down the cost of medical care for everyone instead of simply subsidizing its high cost. Failing to address the root cause of insufficient medical care is treating a symptom rather than a cause.And from that was born this rambling, tangential rant:
Yeah, the health care industry should stay away from treating... symptoms..... Wait. What?Right?
No, that's right. I mean, I can tell you that when *I* get a really bad headache or am experiencing some other kind of intense discomfort, I want a Doctor who leaves me to writhe in pain and pray for my own death. I don't want one of these nut job doctors who devotes time and energy to relieving the immediate, acute symptoms I'm experiencing. That's for short-sighted socialist commies!
What we really need are people who have the intellectual courage and honesty to spend days, weeks, months, years or even decades getting down to the root causes - tracking down those root causes by organizing conferences, creating committees, commissioning reports, reacting to media circuses and movies, wading through the ebb and flow of the different political parties as they come to power and fade away, as well as gripping tight to the economic ups and downs which help muddy the water even further.. And finally, and this is my favorite, getting "unfettered" advice from expert panels riddled beyond salvation by competing money interests, political agendas, and government organizations, defending their turf and the status quo.
After all, I think we can all agree that the primary concern of said interests is cheap, accessible, quality health care where the patients are healthy and happy, and profit margins relative and appropriate.
I'm positive that out of such noble, selfless groups of people will come a clarity of thought and a practical definition of the elusive "root causes" which eventually will help us provide affordable health coverage to each and every one of us. ... some day... maybe not in time to help little Timmy get his toe sewn back on from his lawnmower accident. (Which is really just a symptom of poor lawn-mower-handling skills anyway, so...)
... Right?
In all seriousness though, I'm very much a fan of making systemic changes and ferreting out systemic problems, but the inescapable reality of the situation is that we have a lot of people who are suffering now.
"No man is an island."
I used to hate that saying.
And truth be told, I still do.
But really, isn't it true? It seems as though when we are pooling together our money to help out the poor or the middle class, Republicans convulse into fits, sputtering accusations like "socialism," "class warfare," and "redistribution of wealth" out of their spittle-laden faces as they cook to a bright red color.
But yet again, we're all getting ready to put whatever our share of another 120 billion dollars to support yet another year of war. We're all throwing in to support a war that the vast majority of us don't approve of, want to end, and that frankly, a war we're all still a little pissed about being duped into. But that? The redistribution of wealth from all of us into the pockets of the military industrial complex? The Halliburton's? The Black water's? The
I stumbled across a post from some "PR Strategist" or something last night - it was from early in the year, right after the Democrats had taken office. This guy is from Utah, so when I dig up his name, I'm sure some of you will recognized him.
Anyway, he was talking about how they had fulfilled their promise to raise the minimum aThey fulfilled their promised to increase the minimum wage. And what was the headline? "Democrats raise minimum wage!"? "Democrats endanger small businesses by making them pay more for labor!"?
No. To this yahoo, the Democrats raising the minimum wage represented proof positive that the sole aim of the Democratic party is to turn America into a Socialist state.
*Sigh*
Stupidity. So. Much. Stupidity.
The Democrats haven't been immune either, but I'll get to them later. Let's get back to this allergic reaction that Republicans seem to have when faced with the opportunity to be decent human beings and have government do something actually "good."
I mean, don't get me wrong.. I don't think Republicans go out of their way to appear (be?) evil.. But Holy Mother, guys! You really do! Like this latest push for an increase in funding for low-income children.. It comes up again and even our own vapid, bone-headed Senator Hatch is behind it - but you President Bush?
You can't bring yourself to just say "Aw shucks. Why not. Sure, let's throw in an extra 20 or 30 extra million dollars for uninsured poor kids to get medical treatment they need"? You can spend 500 times that on a ludicrous, destined-to-fail military wet dream that your daddy's old, senile boss fantasized about, but ya can't just suck up enough compassion or goodwill to say "Okay, sure, let's help out the poor kids."?
I mean come on guys. You're wiling to pay friggin' FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS a **DAY** for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but when it comes to paying a fraction of that for years worth of various types of domestic aid you're frugal all the sudden?
*sigh*
Okay. I can see myself getting way off the track here. Let's go back to the original theme of this post..
Causes and conditions. I'm down with exploring, debating and illuminating the roots of the problems we have in our country when it comes to health care. But let's get our friggin' priorities in order and get our people covered while we're figuring it out. We don't have to wait or have a totally solid grasp on what's amiss.
And also, as we do get down to root causes, we can't flinch no matter what; I'm sure there will be things there that I don't like - things that are humbling to acknowledge - but that aside, I think we're going to be going up against roving bands of fire-breathing pharmaceutical lobbyists and grotesquely deformed insurance leviathans, any number of which would happily sacrifice every last one of us if it made them an extra half a percent profit "next" quarter.
Let's shorten the length and power of patents, especially business method patents, on drugs. Let's make the patenting of genes illegal, and make intellectual property protection on adjunct technologies and methods much, much weaker. And don't worry or let them fool you into thinking that they won't do the research if we weaken the intellectual property protection. There are mountains of money to be made in the field, and they're not going to sit on the sidelines pouting because they didn't get an extra government-insured %4000 return on their R&D investments.
If a company or educational institution gets grant money from the government for medical research - make that research public domain - available to every American company and citizen at no cost.
Let's retrieve our collective balls from the trophy shelves of the insurance companies and aggressively take them to task for their unconscionable, yet impressively creative and dramatic interpretations of just how little your insurance coverage actually covers.
There are a lot of things we can do.
The Democrats aren't angels by any means - this last betrayal by them on President Bush's last-minute push for changes to surveillance laws which completely absolved himself and his agents of their blatantly illegal behavior while simultaneously granting them a new system by which even the paltry oversight which did exist has been dismantled - and all of this by a group of Democrats who have railed on against the President and his illegal, warrantless, surveillance? The hypocrisy.. The disappointment.. Well, frankly, it was incredibly demoralizing for me. However, just recently, I regained a tiny sliver of hope, as the Democrats seem to be responding to their constituents, who are pissed and screaming "What the hell are you doing?? Get in there and do the job we elected you to do!!" They have taken actions which suggest they may have realized their screw up, and are going back to review correct it, hopefully long before the current 6-month expiration date nears.
But with the Republicans? I mean.. Good Lord. Over the last six years.. The sheer volume of give-a-ways of public resources; the unprecedented deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries; the sculpting of laws to further provide unaccountable, ultra-wealthy corporations and individuals maximum market protection while simultaneously absolving them of civic responsibility or liability.. All of it is easily ten times worse than my worst fears. There betrayal of the American people has been simply astounding.
As an ideological movement, as a political party, even as a group of men who I can only assume was well-intentioned and honorable at some point.. But all of that is gone now. They have traded away their integrity and principles in their mad, arrogant, self-righteous grappling of power.
They are a party which has lost their soul, and I don't see it returning any time soon. They sold out the people they swore to represent, and I'm just not sure how you recover from that. I'm not sure if you do recover from that. It's really quite tragic, when you think about it.
Okay, I could literally rant for another 30 minutes, but I'm already a little concerned that this post is being driven more by my total lack of sleep last night, so I'm just going to let go. :-) But I'd like to hear any of your opinions on... whatever it was I was talking about.
Actually, if you could tell me what I was talking about, that would be great.
Thanks.
DS
Salt Lake City, Utah
The Deseret Spectacle is in no way related to the Deseret Morning News.
Letters to the Editor
Labels: Bring the Pain, corporate evil, Doctors, for Gods sake won't someone think about the children??, Health Care, Incompetence, Jesse Harris, Medicine, Public Health, The Utah Amicus
