What Do Republicans Mean?

I know of only one statement of the Republican Party that proclaims the right of the individual to have health care. It’s in Article XIV of a foreign nation’s constitution: “The individual has the right to security, education, health care, and social security.” It also states that a nation and its government “shall strive to provide prosperity and employment opportunities to the people.”

The problem is the Bushies wrote it into the Iraqi Constitution. Let’s see what this means. Pissant Americans have no need of universal coverage but the Iraqis do. Isn’t that curious? Perhaps some local Republican can explain why Iraqis are more deserving than the American concrete laborer living at the poverty line.

Now we have Republicans raising hell at town hall meetings across the land when congressional representatives try to explain what policies are being discussed in Washington. They scream “socialized medicine!” They scream “government-run health care!” They scream “We need to do this right!”

Representative Tim Walz, a 24-year veteran of the U.S. military, was called a Communist at a meeting in Redwood Falls when he attempted to have a civil exchange about health care. So while Congress takes a break for the month of August instead of working on health care, another 153,000 Americans lose their health insurance, 53,000 more are forced into bankruptcy because of medical costs, and 1,200 more die because of lack of proper care.

Are Republicans so stupid they don’t realize that 50 civilized and developed countries have had universal health care for decades for all their citizens at less than half the price of ours? It must be something in country club waters. In 2005, 62 percent of Republicans said they would vote for George Bush over George Washington! According to the World Health Organization the U.S. ranks 37th in quality care, just ahead of Cuba and Slovenia. We even rank behind Botswana in child immunizations!

I don’t get this reference to “American Exceptionalism” used by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Republican political figures. They say Americans are different, that we are “exceptional” in “thought, word, and deed.” These are people who say our courts should not study and use foreign court judgments in making decisions because they wouldn’t apply to our country.

You mean we can’t learn from people in other countries? Fifty countries have made a success of universal health care while we have 18 percent of our people without any insurance at twice the price? The only “exceptionalism” present is that we are pretty damn stupid if we can’t learn from successful countries whose citizens live longer, are healthier, have lower children mortality rates – at half the price we are paying.

Two Republican Health Plans – Prayer and the Free Market

While traveling through the South for the last 15 years we have watched the Southern TV evangelists splatter the networks with verses and vices on Sunday mornings while passing their personal collection plates. It’s the world of “big hair” and tight skirts, the waving Bible, the rapid stroll around the stage, and the thumping of “the literal word of God” with tears streaming Niagara-like down uplifted faces.

Well, to each his own. If the Republicans want to depend on religious intervention by God for their health care, so be it. Prayer makes the pray-er feel good but the research shows the pray-ee is not improved very much. It hardly works as a national universal health care system.

Pope Benedict is still looking for medical miracles performed by Pope John so he can make him a saint. He is discovering medical miracles are hard to come by. John Travolta, perhaps the leading celebrity of the Church of Scientology, is seriously considering leaving the church because he depended upon medical treatments for his son approved by Scientology.

His son Jeff died at age 16 from seizures that might have been relieved by conventional medical treatments. However, Travolta is concerned about leaving the church because it maintains extensive personal files on all members.

Dale and Leilani Neumann of rural Wisconsin have both been convicted of second-degree reckless homicide of their 11-year-old daughter who died on the floor of their home because of undiagnosed diabetes. At the last stage she couldn’t walk, talk, eat, or drink so the family and neighbors gathered around and prayed for her recovery. They didn’t call 911 until she stopped breathing.

In July an Oregon jury convicted a man of misdemeanor criminal mistreatment for relying on prayer instead of medical treatment for his 15-month-old daughter who died of pneumonia and a blood infection. Bible thumping does not always help. Neither will the statement “It was God’s will.”

Is The Free Market The Answer To Health Care?

Besides prayer, the other Republican plan for health care is the free market. The Republicans are very good at running for office but are absolutely terrible at governing. Look at the last eight years and examine the facts. If these so-called “conservatives” are so good at market development while paying the bills, why have the three largest national debt increases in American history come in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George W. Bush?

The last three presidents to present balanced budgets were Harry “Give ‘em Hell” Truman, Lyndon “Landslide” Johnson, and “Slick Willie” Jefferson Clinton. Oh, those are just all “tax-and-spend” liberals! In his eight years the great budget balancer Ronald Reagan never even submitted a balanced budget.

Before we leave the subject of the free market, let’s look at a longer period of time for “free” and “fair” markets. Since 1940 Republicans have lived in the White House for 36 years, Democrats for 33. Over the last 69 years Democrats have created 56,502,000 jobs, the Republicans only 31,458,000.

These numbers reflect only private-sector jobs. If we included public sector jobs the Democrat total would be increased. But here is a good lesson about the effectiveness of the free market in controlling costs while serving people. The much-maligned “socialized medicine” plan of Canada spends 10 percent of its Gross Domestic Product and everyone is covered.

We spend 16 percent of GDP and we still have 47 million people without insurance. The difference in cost is due to administrative costs by doctors trying to cope with 1500 different insurance companies, all with different forms and policies, and the hiring of insurance company bureaucrats to deny policyholders coverage.

We spent $6,567 per capita in 2006, while Canada spent $3,505, France $3,353, Germany $3,247 and Japan $2,529. Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan’s free market and free enterprise guru, always wore a huge dollar sign around her neck as a symbol of her economic philosophy. I might add it is also a symbol for Boobus Americanus Republicanus when it comes to health care and the free market.

Why Not Adopt The French Plan? It’s Rated The Number One System In The World

In 2007 Business Week suggested that the U.S. adopt the French health system because it was the closest to our own. For half of what U.S. suckers pay, the French can choose their doctors and specialists and their doctors are free to prescribe any care they deem medically necessary.

France’s infant death rate is 3.9 per 1000 live births, almost half of the 7 per 1000 in this country. The French live two years longer than Americans. Their rates of death from diabetes and heart disease are far lower than ours. The difference in deaths from respiratory disease is remarkable – 31.5 per 100,000 compared to 61.5 per 100,000 in the U.S. While 65 percent of the French are satisfied with their care, only 40 percent of Americans are.

The French system is much more generous to its entire population than Medicare is to our seniors. The French have no deductibles, just small co-payments. The co-payments are dropped if you are chronically ill. Almost all French buy supplemental insurance which reduces out-of-pocket costs and covers private rooms, eyeglasses and dental care.

In France cancer patients are treated without charge. Critical surgeries such as coronary by-passes are fully paid. Patients suffering from colon cancer receive the drug Avastin without charge. U.S. patients pay as much as $48,000 a year for that drug alone. France also has the best pre- and post-natal care in the world. Every mother and child receives basic preventive care. All children are evaluated by teams of doctors, nurses, psychologists and social workers. Mothers even receive a small financial incentive for attending all appointments.

To make all this work France reimburses doctors at a lower rate than U.S. doctors would accept. But the state pays for all medical school tuition and expenses. The state also pays for malpractice insurance, but because of the excellent quality of care, French doctors are rarely sued. In the U.S. the average malpractice policy costs about $55,000, about the average income of French doctors. But the French government also pays two-thirds of the social security tax for all doctors, a tax that is usually about 40 percent of income.

We could do a lot worse–and we are.

And It’s Time To Really Soak The Rich

The rich have been eating all the caviar and lobster at the Washington Buffet for the last decade. It’s time to pony up, folks. You might have to cut staff a little at your sixth home or postpone buying your seventh. The George Wills of the world say that the top 1.4 percent of taxpayers pay 45.2 percent of all income taxes. True. Why shouldn’t they?

They own 50 percent of all the financial wealth in the U.S.! They also own 65 percent of all financial securities. Their wealth is 190 times greater than the median household. And many of them have $40,000 annual health insurance policies – which U.S. taxpayers subsidize at 40 percent of that cost!

Lurch gave all the wealthy a tax cut to 35 percent in 2003. Two wars, a new expensive Medicare prescription program designed to enrich drug companies, and new goodies for the military-industrial complex were all put on credit cards by Republicans – while they were raiding the U.S. Treasury. It’s time for payback. The tax rate in 1980 was 70 percent. How many Vanderbilts, Kennedys, Rockefellers, Morgans, and Wall Street tycoons are now in soup lines? And how many are hiding their fortunes in Switzerland or the Bahamas?

Author James Michener summed up what it means to be a knee-jerk liberal in a paragraph. It should be inscribed on the ceilings of both House and Senate chambers.

“When I find a widow has been left alone with three children, my knee jerks. When I learn that funds for a library have been diminished almost to the vanishing point, my knee jerks. When the free flow of ideas is restricted, when health services are denied whole segments of the population, when universities double their fees, my knee jerks. It jerks to remind me that one of the noblest purposes for which human beings are put on earth is to strive to make their societies better, to see that gross inequities are not perpetuated.”

I would like to remind Republicans that the “Iron Chancellor” Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck of Germany decided in 1883 that universal health care was a necessary policy for a nation which wanted to build a good and caring society. Another arch-conservative by the name of Winston Churchill brought universal health care to Great Britain after World War II for the same reason.

It’s quite evident that liberals and conservatives may disagree on the roads taken to get to certain goals, but we generally have the same goals. Today’s Republicans are not conservatives. They are economic predators.

Lawyer Jerry Spence of Wyoming once wrote a chapter in a book about a rich man who garnered all the canned beans in the world. The man set up elaborate security to protect his beans from starving people. Republicans seem to have only one goal in mind – to corner the “free” market for all the beans.

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