We Aren’t Ready For National Health Care

Posted on 01/23/2009 at 1:16 pm by Bob Cesca

by Lee Stranahan

Health care is an issue n3ear and dear to my heart. Well, it’s near and dear to my diabetic eyes. My heart just checked out okay. But I want a comprehensive national health care system. And pronto.

But as a nation, we’re not quite ready for it. Yet. It’s baby steps time and not because Obama is timid. There’s a much bigger problem that he has to tackle first. Let me put it this way…

Would you have wanted the Bush Administration running a comprehensive national health care system?

Shudder to think. You can paint your own nightmare scenarios pretty easily. The first steps in getting a health care system we can count on is to get a government we can count on. Restore the rule of law, set up transparency, get rid of the lobbyists. In other words, Obama’s current agenda.

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  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Nice libertarian argument there, scooter. “We don’t want those CLOWNS in CONGRESS running our healthcare, by gum! Now where’s my copy of Atlas Shrugged?”This is exactly the argument idiots put forth back in the 90s when Hillary’s half-assed attempt at social medicine aka “Hillarycare”.I realize that change is scary for an older person, but at some point self-proclaimed liberals are going to have to be willing to rock the boat in order to get anything done.

  • J M Ashby

    We aren’t ready? Speak for yourself. We have needed national healthcare for a long, long long, long time.Would I have wanted Bush running it? Hell no, but we don’t have Bush anymore. I am confident that absolutely no decisions or plans are even being considered by the Obama whitehouse without the top-minds looking into it first. It is not their style to do otherwise.If you were being sarcastic, you can count this as over my head whoosh sounding.

  • http://bluenovember.blogspot.com/ Daniel

    Indeed the federal government has been weakened over the past eight years to where there isn’t much public confidence in its abilities.With that said, the public is more receptive to change and ambitious projects than it has been for a long time. New management is here, and I think that the American people are ready to be lead forward.

  • Lee Stranahan

    Well, nice to hear Travis would have wanted Bush and Cheney in charge of his healthcare. Didn’t know you were such a fan. Your faith in them in inspiring.Daniel – I think it’s close…like in the next two years close. But fixing the confidence in government AND shoring up some things so a future theoretical awful conservative government can’t ruin people’s lives by, for example, getting around Roe v Wade by just stopping the state doctors from discussing birth control or giving it.

  • Alan4s

    The Massachusetts health care reform law seems to work pretty well so far. It could easily be used as a model for a national policy.Read about it here.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Well, nice to hear Travis would have wanted Bush and Cheney in charge of his healthcare.

    Does diabetes also impact ones ability to comprehend things they read?

  • camel54

    I agree that this is like a renovation and there needs to be some demolition before we start the construction. Look at what happened with the VA during Bush’s tenure, and they are supposed to be the troop-lovinest of everyone in the Universe. Look at how badly crippled the grants for communities and states for serving the uninsured and under insured have been in the last eight years. It’s true that logistically we have some work to do before we can implement a competent plan. You’ll notice Lee did point out that we have started that work when he mentioned the agenda. However, I think we would all like to see that work happen at a much faster pace than we’re likely to see. Emotionally, financially, we are 1000 times more ready than we are pragmatically.

  • http://peggystone263@msn.com peggygeorge

    Fair enough, except that for every month millions don’t have health insurance, probably thousands are dying – certainly hundreds. This is not low priority if one of them is you or a loved one.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Fair enough, except that for every month millions don’t have health insurance, probably thousands are dying – certainly hundreds. This is not low priority if one of them is you or a loved one.

    But not making conservatives and old people uncomfortable is far more important than the common good.

  • http://peggystone263@msn.com peggygeorge

    Sorry, that came out sounding selfish. It’s too many people, even if I don’t know them personally. It’s as if we were in Gaza, with bombs raining down, except that instead of obvious explosions, it’s people being picked off in a silent and deadly rain of diseases not caught in time or not being treated. It’s just as real as a war – and just as urgent.

  • camel54

    I’m not sure I understand your point, Travis. No one is arguing this shouldn’t be done. The point is that if we had done it under Bush, it would have been done wrong anyway so the people are suffering now would still be suffering. Only now are we on the right track toward making universal care a well-functioning reality. That can’t be done in an instant.And certainly peggy is right–20 thousand people a year die from preventable causes as a result of having no health care. But would you have honestly trusted the Bush administration to fix that? That is, if they had been at all interested in fixing it as opposed to being the cause of that stat.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    The point is that if we had done it under Bush, it would have been done wrong anyway so the people are suffering now would still be suffering.

    Then this is the stupidest goddamn blog post I’ve read all week. It’s like saying “I sure am glad George Bush wasn’t the one to develop a cure for AIDS!” It’s a completely false premise, on its face ridiculous.

    But would you have honestly trusted the Bush administration to fix that?

    Who the hell is arguing this point of view that somehow Bush needs to hop into a time machine and get the ball rolling on socialized medicine?

    That is, if they had been at all interested in fixing it as opposed to being the cause of that stat.

    Exactly. I think.

  • camel54

    Well, I think administering a massive project such as universal care or socialized medicine is very different than discovering a cure for a disease. Seriously.Not sure where you’re going with the time machine bit, but the good news is we will never have to worry about Bush mismanaging anything we care about again anyway. We are ready to start establishing a sound foundation for universal care now, and I believe that is what is happening. I just don’t see it being completed for a while

  • Alan4s

    Who the hell is arguing this point of view that somehow Bush needs to hop into a time machine and get the ball rolling on socialized medicine?

    That wouldn’t have worked either. The Bush admin would have fucked up the time machine. Or the ball.

  • frictionsoul

    You are what you eat. Health care starts right there. And then you need to exercise to put that good food to use in building your immunity.Oh right, Lee doesn’t know what immunity is, just pathology, which shares the same root as pathetic. Coincidence?No. I hope my snark is major league because I have no compassion -as you all know – and no tolerance for those who refuse to wake up to the fact that they are choosing to eat crap. Garbage in, garbage out – nothing’s changed!We’re not ready for health care because we’re swimming in pathology. Shit adds up at the bottom.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Thread delivers where the original post could not.

  • Alan4s

    I must be a pumpkin pie.

  • http://www.windonwater.net QueenTiye

    Travis, ‘twould be nice if you’d even try to consider what Lee is saying versus the words you’re putting in his mouth. For someone who doesn’t like that done to you – you do it a lot to others.That said – Lee, I disagree. If HillaryCare had gone through, and Bush had created a train wreck of it during his eight years, this year Obama would be having to fix health care, the same way he now has to fix the financial systems and the intelligence system and the state department and the EPA, etc… The point being – we’d have something to fix – something that people have clear expectations about – and in fact, incompetence in health care might have triggered an earlier Bush exit.QT

  • camel54

    We’re not all swimming in pathology. Some of us produce software that enables communities to case-manage the uninsured and improve community health through preventive, holistic approaches. We are implementing EMR and trending patients through massive data research to save millions of dollars and improve the quality of thousands of lives. The software, by the way, was started with a grant Bill Clinton provided. It was eliminated in the Bush years causing a significant slow-down in our ability to get this into the number of communities we would have liked. However, we are picking up steam but it takes a lot of money and a lot of time to properly setup a system like this on county or state regional areas. It will be a massive undertaking to do what we do nation wide. Beyond massive even.

  • SillyGit

    Does diabetes also impact ones ability to comprehend things they read?

    I also have diabetes and no, it does not.

    But not making conservatives and old people uncomfortable is far more important than the common good.

    I don’t care how many conservatives and old people are made uncomfortable. I have a chronic disease for which I can no longer afford the medication. I have no Health Insurance. My insulin costs $150 per month and the price keeps going up. Make them uncomfortable, I am going to die from a treatable condition.Do you have any idea how many old people are not getting proper health care? Medicare is not working well when more than half of all health care providers refuse to accept Medicare patients.A good first step would be to rein in the obscene profit margins that the pharmaceutical industry is allowed to operate at. They use their obscene profits to pervert our government into allowing them to deeply gouge the U.S. public. This is a major portion of the unaffordable health insurance problem.

  • http://www.broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    QT: …The point being – we’d have something to fix -…

    You’re assuming that if Hillarycare had passed ,and then Bush and Co. screwed it up, they would have left it in place instead of saying, “See, ah tolds ya so-shee-lyzed healthcare dun’t work” and then proceed to dismantle it or privatize it.Travis – Dude, I know you’re righteous (I mean that as a compliment), but where in Lee’s post does he suggest that the reason we’re not ready for it yet is because we’re afraid of “making conservatives and old people uncomfortable”? And his “Bush running healthcare” comparison was to stress the fact that we need to fix some shit up before he pile more on. Congress is already disagreeing on bailout money – do you think anything would get done if Obama had said, “Oh, by the way, add universal healthcare on top of that” on Day Three?Time machine? C’mon.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    SG, I was being facetious, I definitely think social medicine is more important than this bullship “bipartisanism” meme that the Stranahan/Booman crowd are lining up for.Carlos, Stranahan’s indicated in the past that change has to be as incremental as possible so as to not upset anyone’s delicate worldview. See his 1,000 dumb posts about Rick Warren. This dropping is an extension of such. Besides, as usual, Stranahan just put an idea out half-baked and left it to the readers to figure out what his theory is based on (if anything).Also, please show me who was demanding that Obama go ahead and declare a nationalized health care program immediately. Links please.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D
  • http://www.broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    Also, please show me who was demanding that Obama go ahead and declare a nationalized health care program immediately. Links please.

    I didn’t say anyone was demanding it immediately, Travis, but your comment gave me the feeling of immediate urgency. Yes, I think we’d all like it to happen ASAP but pragmatically and realiastically, it can’t. And I don’t know what is an acceptable waiting time after we wade out of the current mess we’re in before this subject is approached. A year? 18 months?

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Then what the hell point is being argued in the original post?

  • SillyGit

    I knew you were being facetious Travis. My outrage at the current state of things masks that in my post, in retrospect.I’m tired of Democrats/liberals/progressives bending over backwards trying to make *everyone* happy. That’s not an achievable goal. Fixed Noise will call us names regardless of what we do.I think our goal should be to make conservatives as uncomfortable as possible. Their uncomfortableness (New Word) can be used as a metric of whether or not we are doing the right thing.I announce the SillyGit “Conservative’s Uncomfortableness Meter”™ which can be used to gauge our progress.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    Between that and the Texas Laser, I’m enjoying Invention Week here at BobCesca.com

  • SillyGit

    I put one of those Lasers on my Xmas wishlist as well. Sounds kinda useful. A megaLaser&trade”, a couple dozen rolls of duct tape, and a gallon of cyanoacrylate and a fellow could have a pretty nice time in Dallas.I think Lee’s post was a troll. The thread certainly covers the topic pretty well.Dr. Strangelove is on TCM tonight at 20:00 (8pm).

  • LKL

    Between that and the Texas Laser, I’m enjoying Invention Week here at BobCesca.comPosted by: Travis D at January 23, 2009 4:39 PMSuck it contrarian!

  • theo

    frictionsoul (because no one else seems willing to call you on this): you need to shut the fuck up. My mother was a three-time marathon runner who ate natural, organic food obsessively. Until six years ago, when two discs in her back blew; she’s had two surgeries since, still can hardly walk, and is on, literally, enough narcotics to kill a horse. She spent most of 2008 out of work because her insurance company wouldn’t give her a fucking x-ray.Yeah, the food people eat causes a lot of problems for their health, and lack of exercise is also a bad problem. But to suggest that poor dietary choices are the only reason anyone could ever get sick or injured is just fucked up, immature and incorrect.

  • http://www.leestranahan.com Lee Stranahan

    Carl summed up my point well. QT raises a disagreement that could be valid.It’s not at all a troll post. If you try to push through things people aren’t ready for, it doesn’t work. Obama very good instincts about what people are ready for.I think Clinton failed on health care because people weren’t ready for it. (Clinton had a number of bad instincts about timing) Bush was able to go to war with Iraq because post-9/11 people were ready for it. He lost support because people were NOT ready to stay there forever. People are ready for civil unions, right now – not quite ready for gay marriage. This is called picking your battles. I like winnable ones. Silly me.Travis – you’re tone deaf. You just want to jam an agenda through. The GOP tried this and it backfired massively. I know, I know – it’ll work better for you because you’re RIGHT. Doesn’t work that way.

  • SillyGit

    Good points Lee.I don’t think we have a choice about whether people are ready for health care changes or not.Jobs are being shipped overseas primarily for one reason – all other developed nations have nationalized health care. Employers do not have to pay for foreign employees health care because foreign worker’s government takes care of it.We don’t have a level employment playing field in a global economy and until we address this *huge* imbalance, we never will.My job got shipped overseas because of this. Shall we wait until *everyone* is unemployed to address this? Will *everyone* be ready then?

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    My job got shipped overseas because of this. Shall we wait until *everyone* is unemployed to address this? Will *everyone* be ready then?

    You’re just trying to push through an agenda because conditions require it.Now that I think of it, this is a great approach. Let’s make sure everyone’s good ‘n ready before we handle national emergencies. Perhaps Bush was onto something on 9/11. Someone I bet Lee voted for twice once said “It’s still trust but verify.”

  • frictionsoul

    “But to suggest that poor dietary choices are the only reason anyone could ever get sick or injured is just fucked up, immature and incorrect.”No theo, you suggested it. Transferring your anger onto me is fucked up, immature and incorrect. Don’t blame you for it though because this so-called health care is fucked up. Very sorry about your mom’s situation.How about mine? Wanna hear it? I’m post-lingually deaf. Happened at age 21 (28 years ago this April). Surgery gone wrong, big time. Almost killed me. Took me two years to recover. My mom never did. She never got over it. Both parents worked. They didn’t get a lawyer to find out what happened and at least get me a nest egg, and buy me some peace of mind.I since learned that I’m extremely sensitive to certain anesthesia. I almost died 5 years ago during arthroscopic surgery. Health care is fucked. Well, wait. It’s not health, and it’s not care. My knee still doesn’t work and one of these days I’m going to simply cut the fucker up myself. Doctors don’t listen. What’s a deaf guy know anyway?So, all I can do is eat well, exercise and stay the fuck away from Lee’s small minded ways.Best to your mom. Tell her somebody is just as scared shitless as she must be.

  • SillyGit

    Running health care as a ‘for profit’ operation is another major cause of our health care system’s problems. If doctors spend too much time listening to their patients, profits are reduced. Treat the whole thing like an assembly line and then you can use time and motion studies to maximize profits.<variation_on_the_bard>First thing we do is kill all the MBAs.</variation_on_the_bard>

  • Myhero

    What I get out of your orig post Lee is we’re not ready because we wouldn’t have wanted someone like Bush running it?So..I guess we have to wait until there’s no chance someone might get elected in the future who might mess it up a bit?Let me tell you something Lee, this might scare you a bit and I hope to hell it does. My wife was Diabetic also and for quite a number of years her heart was ok. She took her medicine even though we couldn’t really afford it. Then in 2007, her eyes started to go bad, Diabetic Retinopathy. Its a warning sign, the blood vessels are being torn up by the diabetes. Then she started getting mild heart attacks in early 2007. They said she should be seeing a cardiologist but we couldn’t afford that. In mid December she had a major heart attack

  • Myhero

    Oh forgot, She was in renal failure too(Kidneys)So she would have had to do Dialysis every other day too.You should have your kidney function checked too Lee.

  • http://www.leestranahan.com Lee Stranahan

    I didn’t say we CAN wait or that we SHOULD wait.I said that the country isn’t ready yet for the kind of health care that I think we should have…but they ALMOST are. And that Obama is taking care of the biggest objection…government that is ineffective.Meantime, the American people ARE ready for babysteps. Children’s health insurance, for instance.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    How “ready” was everyone for desegregation? I demand poll numbers indicating that it had no less than 80% approval.

  • SillyGit

    Everyone *would* be ready if the corporatists would stop propagandizing about how bad nationalized health care would be. Anyone that has been to Europe knows what utter bollocks that propaganda is.The only people that national health care would be bad for are the very few who make obscene profits from the current very broken system. Insurance companies have no business being in the business of making profits off of others pain and suffering. Fuck them all.

  • Lyle

    Why the f*ck would a CHRISTIAN country, founded in the 1776th year of its Lord, and UNDER GOD, have any healthcare worries? Is it that there are no faithful?You shall receive your divine healing from the Lord. What’s the problem?I am afraid that I just don’t get it. Everyone claims to be a Christian, and everytime Obama turns around he’s asking his god to bless each and everyone, so why is there any debate about secular healthcare? It should not cost much to provide healthcare for the secular, should it?

  • http://www.leestranahan.com Lee Stranahan

    I think the country as a whole was pretty clearly ready for desegregation when it happened. The country wasn’t ready for it in 1920s, for example. That doesn’t mean segregation was right in 1920s…it was wrong then, too. But there wasn’t the political will to make it happen.

  • http://unrelatedcontent.com Travis D

    >>I think the country as a whole was pretty clearly ready for desegregation when it happened.George Wallace, figment of our collective imagination.

  • emsique

    The insurance companies have us by the balls. If you have health insurance, you are either paying for it directly, or your employer is paying for it instead of giving you a few more hundred dollars a month in pay. You also pay for medical insurance in your car policy, homeowner’s policy, if you are an employer, you are paying for it in workman’s comp insurance. Any liability policy is helping to cover a medical situation. We are paying out the ass for shitty coverage. Outlaw private insurance that covers medical situations. Copy the French system. Pay for it with the billions we will save in private insurance. Piece of cake (or pie, mmmmm). Let’s quit fucking around and get it done!

  • ceu

    The premise that national health insurance or a national healthcare system would make “old people” uncomfortable is FALSE. “Old people” are getting medicare and most of the ones I know aren’t taking the attitude of “I got mine so fuck you”.It makes no sense for us, as a country, to wait to provide coverage for people who have the ailments and diseases associated with old age and NOT provide it to them when they are younger in order to prevent those same ailments & diseases from occurring.

  • Myhero

    yeah, American aren’t ready for healthcare eh?http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/opinion/polls/main2528357.shtmlNo offense Lee, but blow it out ur You know what.We are ready, in larger numbers than you realize.

  • http://jennydemilo.blogspot.com jenny demilo

    I don’t believe you Lee that people aren’t ready for health care for everyone. While i believe YOU believe that, there’s no basis in fact for that argument. At least none that you have brought up here. You do have a tendency to never support your arguments with facts and that gets really annoying.If you don’t buy that premise of as a nation were “not ready” (which i don’t) there’s no point to argue.To your point of would we have wanted a bush health care plan… umm yeah i would have, i would have wanted access to affordable health care no matter who’s in charge at the white house. Cuz like you Lee i have a pre-existing condition. Insurance is not available to me. so having some kinda health care available to me over the last 8 years would have been peachy keen.

  • Dan in DE

    Emisque is right, “insurance companies have us by the balls”, and above all, they have the politicians by the balls. Their influence in our government is the only thing standing between us and a single-payer system.Yeah, a lot of people depend on the health insurance industry for their jobs, but these are jobs that most of us would be deeply ashamed to do. It may sound a little heartless, but not as heartless as strategically denying sick people decent health care- I say we do as the Canadians did and toss ‘em out.

  • Dan in DE

    Wait just a minute, Jenny!! I know a hell of a lot of conservative people who are up in arms about the idea of “letting the government tell our doctors what to do”. And I know damn well that this is really all about not wanting to pay for other peoples’ health care through their tax dollars. You know, these are the same people who are still bitching about welfare queens- imagine if their tax money actually did go to taking care of the less fortunate in a reasonable way. The conservative Americans that I know would be shitting a brick!!

  • SillyGit

    The reason Lee thinks that there are *lots* of Americans that are not ready for a single payer health care system is because our corporatist controlled mass media keeps telling us that. They also tell us that such a health care system would be bad for us. You would have to wait in long queues to get any kind of care. You would have to wait 10 years to get a face lift or a rhinoplasty or breat enlargments (as if these are life threatening).The pharmaceutical and insurance industry makes obscene profits keeping things the way they are and so they dictate what misinformation we get fed. Our main stream news sources are corporatist/fascist controlled propaganda vendors. You are foolish to believe anything that they tell you. Their stories about cats and dogs are usually accurate.Why do I a hate the Corporatist controlled news media? Here is a partial list:

    • Has anyone noticed that the corporatist media has never mentioned the CA SoS Top to Bottom Review of Election Machines? (CA SoS TTBR) The only coverage of the Ohio SoS’s Evaluation and Validatoin of Election Related Equipment, Standards and Testing results (OH SoS EVEREST) was the story Brad Friedman did for Popular Mechanics (IIRC) in which Jennifer Brunner, the OH SoS, said the EVEREST results made her want to throw up. Both of these scientific evaluations indicate that none of our voting machines can be trusted to do anything correctly. I would have expected these to be major news stories, but nary a peep from the MSM.
    • Protesters at the RNC were in much larger numbers than one would think from media coverage. The protests were almost completely ignored by the MSM.
    • Highly misleading coverage of the Seattle Economic Summit protests where peaceful protests were converted into riots by sending jack-booted thugs out to beat peaceful protesters. The MSM skipped the part about the thugs beating peaceful protesters to turn it into a riot and only covered the riot part. Peaceful protesters running away from thugs looks remarkably like a riot.

    Conclusion: The Main Stream Media are propaganda vendors.

  • SillyGit

    Good points Dan. I’d like to address some of the topics you raise.

    I know a hell of a lot of conservative people who are up in arms about the idea of “letting the government tell our doctors what to do”.

    How is this different from having insurance companies telling your doctor what to do? Lets explore. Insurance companies are ‘for profit’ businesses that would prefer that your doctor do as little as possible so they don’t have to pay out much. Insurance companies only care about their profit and don’t give a flying fuck about your or my health. I see having the government, operating in a ‘not for profit’ fashion as a huge improvement over the current system. Your conservative friends have been brainwashed by corporatist propaganda.

    I know damn well that this is really all about not wanting to pay for other peoples’ health care through their tax dollars.

    And yet they don’t mind sending money to an insurance company to pay for other peoples health care with their insurance premiums with the insurance company skimming off the top (profits). Again, they have been propagandized into voting against their best interests.All studies have shown that a single payer system would require lower annual premiums (taxes) than the current system requires since the current lossage to profits is greater than the amount needed to cover the people that will not pay anything into the system.The Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries will emit huge amounts of propaganda when any motion towards changing the current health system happens. Just like the lies they told during the HillaryCare fiasco.