[Homestead] When the well runs dry it tends to sort out priorities
tvoivozhd
tvoivozd at infionline.net
Fri Feb 4 18:09:25 EST 2005
tvoivozhd---yeah, water may not rank high on your priority list if you
have misplaced confidence in the reliability of your electric supply,
the water pump or piping. Go without water for a week and your
priorities change.
Most people do not think clearly enough to know what is their HIGHEST
priority, upon which all other priorities depend. It is of course your
health. If you become totally incapacitated and welded to easy chair or
bed you will never see your garden again except through someone else's
eyes. You can think about a new business, and may be able to plan if
you retain any mental acuity, but you cannot execute. The most you can
do is communicate the plan to someone else who you hope can see it
through your eyes.
The cost of universal healthcare is high, but the cost of our insanely
fragmented, inefficient, patch-on-patch-on patch wildly expensive
healthcare system that leaves almost fifty million people on the outside
looking in, is insupportable with all its social and economic
repercussions---such niceties as job loss, divorce, foreclosures,
bankruptcies.
I really liked the expensive military toys that kept me alive in WWII,
but for all practical purposes they did not exist when I had Dengue
Fever or Fighter Pilot's Occupational Disease (hemorrhoids).
I get upset about the number and depth of Bush skewed and poorly planned
priorities, but foremost among these is his habit of elevating a lot of
relatively trivial ones over healthcare---the triumph of platitudes over
substance.
Boston.com THIS patch-onBEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
The Boston Globe <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/>
DERRICK Z. JACKSON
ofMr. President, don't forget healthcare
By Derrick Z. Jackson | February 4, 2005patch
PRESIDENT BUSH proudly said in his State of the Union address, ''The
whole world now knows that a small group of extremists will not overturn
the will of the Iraqi people."
Nice line. It would be really cool if you could say that about the
United States.
You could say this about any number of issues, ranging from our own
presidential elections to taxpayer-funded sports stadiums rammed down
the people's throats even after -- in several cities -- the people were
against them. Perhaps the worst of all among these is healthcare.
At the beginning of Bush's first term, 75 percent of Americans told a
Harris poll that they do not get the health and medical care they need.
By 2003, 79 percent of Americans said in a Washington Post/ABC News poll
they support healthcare coverage for everyone even if meant /raising taxes/.
The poll asked, ''Which would you prefer: The current insurance system
in the United States, in which most people get their health insurance
from private employers, but some people have no insurance, OR, a
universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a
program like Medicare that's run by the government and financed by
taxpayers?"
Universal healthcare won, 62 percent to 33 percent.
Getting even more specific, a 2003 Pew poll asked people if they favored
the government ''guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if
it means repealing most of the recent tax cuts."
Universal healthcare won, 67 percent to 26 percent.
You would not have known that from Bush's speech. He spent vast portions
of his hourlong address on Social Security or Iraq. He spent two
sentences on healthcare. In those two sentences, he wheeled in a gurney
loaded with generic prescriptions and cures, but many of his so-called
prescriptions are already impossible to fill because of Iraq and tax cuts.
''To make our economy stronger and more competitive, we must make
healthcare more affordable and give families greater access to good
coverage and more control over their health decisions," Bush said.
''I ask Congress to move forward on a comprehensive healthcare agenda,
with tax credits to help low-income workers buy insurance, a community
health center in every poor county, improved information technology to
prevent medical error and needless costs, association health plans for
small businesses and their employees, expanded health savings accounts
and medical liability reform that will reduce healthcare costs and make
sure patients have the doctors and care they need."
This is the same president who wanted to cut nearly $600 million in
federal low-income healthcare assistance to Massachusetts alone, a
crisis that took a bipartisan effort by Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy
and Republican Governor Mitt Romney to recently avert. As Bush prepared
to address the nation Wednesday, financially strapped county
commissioners for the Tampa area voted to slash eye and dental care for
the poor. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that up
to 200,000 low-income children may lose health insurance in the new Bush
budget.
The same day Bush gave his State of the Union address, the medical
journal Health Affairs published a study that said Americans, more than
ever, are one icy fall or one malignancy closer to bankruptcy. The
study, done by researchers at Harvard University, found that 28 percent
of people who file for bankruptcy cite illness or injury as the primary
cause. That is 11 times more people than those who blame bankruptcy on
alcohol or drug addiction and 23 times more than those who blame gambling.
The study said the results indicate that about 2 million Americans and
their children now experience medical bankruptcy. Most debtors own homes
and are working or middle class. Most had health insurance. But it was
not enough after they either lost jobs or were swamped by payments their
insurance did not cover.
The problem only promises to worsen as 5.2 million more Americans joined
the ranks of the uninsured under Bush, raising the number of uninsured
to 45 million. Nothing has happened as the profit-grubbing medical lobby
of pharmaceuticals, insurance companies and the American Medical
Association threw their financial support solidly behind Bush in the
last election.
Anything Bush proposed on healthcare in his State of the Union address
is offset or more than offset by cuts he did not announce. As Bush brags
about Iraq, a small group of lobbyists continues to thwart the will of
the American people. Given what the people want, the lobbyists are
extremists.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson at globe.com.
© Copyright <http://www.boston.com/help/bostoncom_info/copyright> 2005
The New York Times Company
More information about the Homestead
mailing list