You Call This a System?

Health care reform is like the weather. Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it. Theodore Roosevelt made health care part of the Bull Moose Party platform. Yep, the idea has been around that long but it still takes some people by surprise. Seems like the issue was a real stunner for Arizona Republican Jon Kyl.
“But the President and some Democrats insist we must rush this plan through. Why? Because the more Americans know about it, the more they oppose it. Something this important needs to be done right, rather than done quickly.”
Jon Kyl, the Senate Minority Whip, said that with a straight face. I know, I just checked the video and he didn’t even crack a smile. That makes him either the best dead-pan comedian since Buster Keaton or one of the least informed, most disingenuous people on Capitol Hill. That would be quite an accomplishment right there.
Jon, you need to know that the health care “system” has been debated since Harry Truman. That’s 60 years. Jon, you were six years old when the discussion began. Unless you’re a rock formation, taking 60 years isn’t rushing anything.
You’re not a rock formation, are you Jon?
Ted Kennedy’s been working on this for 40 years, Jon. Do you read the bills that are proposed in the Senate? Does somebody on your staff read them? Do you pay attention when they brief you?
So before the thing gets completely out of hand we all need, “… to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them…” as Crash Davis said in Bull Durham. Although for us, unlike Nuke LaLoosh, the clichés are not our friends. So as your self appointed ombudsman without portfolio here are some of the words and phrases you’ll want to be on the lookout for.
Health Care System. We don’t have a health care system in America. We have a patchwork health insurance system. It works a lot like our car insurance system. With car insurance we bet the company several hundred dollars every few months that we’re going to have an accident. They bet that we won’t. Then we all…er…most of us…make that…some of us do our level best to make sure the insurance company wins the bet.
With health insurance we make essentially the same bet. Except we’re not really allowed to place the bet except through an employer. It’s possible to play the game without the boss being part of it but that’s usually prohibitively more expensive if you can find an insurer willing to take your money at all. Imagine if the only way you could insure your car was through your employer. Crazy, right? So we only do that with our health because, you know, a car is really worth something.
Insurance companies, both auto and health –they’re mostly the same outfits -, are out to make a profit. This is America, we’re all out to make a profit, nothing wrong with that. Like everyone else, they make a profit by taking in more money than they pay out. So if you start costing the insurance company money, winning the bet as it were, they drop you like a dirty diaper.
Auto or health it works the same way. And if you have a bad record as a driver they just won’t insure you at all. It’s the same with health insurance, they call it a pre-existing condition and they won’t insure you. You’re a bad bet. They’re here to make money NOT to keep you healthy.
You don’t want the government handling your health care. Maybe that’s true but anytime you hear that from a member of Congress, the House or the Senate, remember the government is handling their healthcare. That may not be true in all cases but I tried to find out who, if anyone, has opted out and my Congressperson told me they don’t reveal that information.
Still, if a government option for health care was such a terrible idea you would think that everyone in congress would opt out wouldn’t you? Maybe they’d insist that having the government provide health care for our service members be privatized. Maybe every right-wing nut in America who’s over the age of 65 would opt out of Medicare and Social Security. I don’t think any of that is happening. What would be the point of keeping it secret? It’s like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove, “…the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*!”
The American Healthcare System is the best in the world. I’m sure for those who have the best health insurance available this is the best of all possible worlds. For everybody else, not so much. And if you’re among the rising number of uninsured, well, as the fishermen say, “you’re scrod.”
According to the C.I.A.’s World Fact Book the United States ranks 42nd in the infant mortality rate. This is for the rate of deaths per live birth in the country. Forty second! 41 countries are better at taking care of their brand new, living, breathing infants than we are.
Who are those guys? Well that’s where it gets pretty embarrassing. Singapore, Sweden and Japan are the top three, in that order. But Cuba beats us too. Cuba. Come on, they’re still driving around in ’53 DeSotos and even with a two-barrel carburetor economy they take better care of the babies than we do?
Do you want a government bureaucrat determining your health care? The words “government bureaucrat” are meant to scare the living bejeezis out of you. Bureaucrat is the part that scares me. Ever tried to actually argue with your health insurer about whether you’re covered for that little procedure you had to have? Did you go to the right doctor? Did you get a referral? Did you bleed to death filling out the forms with the nice people in the hospital emergency room? We already have a bureaucracy, we’re just determining which one to use.
It will lead to rationing of health care. That’s always said like it’s something different than what’s going on now. If you’re uninsured your ration is zero health care. If you’re sick or injured enough they may treat you in the hospital emergency room, the most expensive place to receive care on the planet. Otherwise you’ll just have to wait until Congressman Foggybottom’s daughter’s husband loses his job and they’re without health insurance before you’ll see him getting board anything that changes the “system” we have now.
In his autobiography, “Growing Up” Russell Baker describes an uncle as a man whose approach to discourse was that, “No story worth telling can possibly be helped by a blind adherence to the truth.” Keep that in mind as the health care debate drags on, I hope for less than 60 more years.

Bill 'em Hillary

This is an open letter to the Islamist Republic of Iran. Hey Mahmoud, you know those three hikers you took into custody on the border with Iraq? Keep ‘em. I mean it. They’re all yours. If they’re dumb enough to go as “tourists” to Iraq and then go “hiking” along the border with Iran these people are either so incredibly stupid or so totally lacking in common sense that I don’t want them back.

I know those of you who are nicer people than I am are shocked, but really how much time do we want the State Department to spend on these Three Stooges? Yes, I’d feel very differently if they were my family and at least a little differently (maybe) if I actually knew them, but think about it. There’s still a war that we’re disentangling ourselves from in Iraq. We’ve already got out hands full with Iran trying to get them not to build a nuclear weapon, while they’ve got their hands full handling a popular uprising over the kind of election shenanigans that would have Newburyport’s Andrew J. “Bossy” Gillis or Boston’s James Michael Curley or Providence’s Buddy Cianci blush.

Then there’s the little matter of the shooting war in Afghanistan, the Arabs and the Israelis are still at each others throats, there’s those two little whack jobs in North Korea and Venezuela, and if that’s not enough a number of “first world” nations are still P-O’d at us over allowing our economy to go in the crapper and drag theirs along with it. I could go on because, as Sheldon Harnick put it in The Merry Minuet, “the whole world is festering with unhappy souls…” I think the State Department has more than enough to do than to have to deal with getting these three out of Iranian custody.

I’m an extreme case. I stay pretty close to the East Manchester Home for the Socially Inept most of the time. I make it a point to leave New England only once a year and then I only go as far as Upstate New York…for the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction. In the car on the way we refer to the drivers of other automobiles as “Bloody Pirates” until we are safely back in New England. We’ve managed to do this for several years without having to call New Hampshire’s Governor John Lynch to negotiate our release from the Empire State.

I’m aware that other people leave their neighborhood. I’m not sure why they do it but I know they do. But hiking on the Iraq – Iran border? What were you thinking? You couldn’t get a reservation at the Ritz Carlton in Gaza? Your back-up plan to have dinner in Darfur fell through at the last minute?

You want to go hiking? We’ve got some pretty good places right here in New England. I would suggest that these three people avoid hiking in New Hampshire though.

About nine years ago New Hampshire got tired of having to find hikers who were ill prepared for their excursions. So state law allows New Hampshire to charge hikers who are negligent, which a Massachusetts teenager recently found out when he got a bill for $25,000 after twisting his ankle and getting lost on Mount Washington last April. That’s an unusually high figure, the number is usually just a few hundred dollars, but it’s the concept we’re looking at here, not the figures. I suggest that the State Department take a page from New Hampshire’s law book.

Secretary Hillary Clinton’s minions should be keeping track of every hour they spend working to get the three sprung from Iran. I can’t imagine this would be a real hardship since many of them are probably lawyers, the rest are related to attorneys and we all know that practitioners of the law come with a meter hard-wired into their infrastructure – you know, like a taxi cab. Keep track of the “billable hours” and when Iran finally decides that it’s in Iran’s interest to let them return to the good old U.S.A. send them a bill for the time spent rescuing them from their own mountainous hubris.

By the way we, the United States, don’t actually talk directly to Iran, we have to use a middle man. In this case it’s the Swiss. I don’t know how much pro bono work the Swiss do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their meter is already running.