I Can Hear the Thunder Already

It is a fact that not all Americans have health care. It is a fact that when someone loses a job they lose their health care, also. It is a fact that poor working families prevent their children from taking part in school sports for fear that should their child be injured, then, they could be bankrupted.

It is a fact that many of our doctors are beholden to the interests of pharmaceutical companies--prescribe a high-cost medicine rather than do a low cost procedure or hands-on treatment. It is a fact that our health care system stresses (and excels at actually) dealing with the illness when it has occurrred and not in preventing the onset of the illness.

And, it is a fact that the entire health care debate, like global warming, has been so politicized that constructive dialogue is nearly impossible.

The Democratic controlled House of Representatives has found an amazingly painless way to finance at least half of the cost of the health care reform being demanded by our president. Painless, I should say however, for a mere 98% of all American households. The other vast 2%, those earning from upwards of $350,000, will have to pay anywhere from $500 to $9000 in a surtax. Those poor souls, what will they do without that extra night in a top hotel in Naples, Florida--which for a standard double they would have paid around $1500?

You know what? I don't care what they will do without that extra night. I don't care that a person making $1 million has to pay a bit extra to ensure that his fellow countrymen, so many who are of the working poor with several kids and no health care, might now have a chance to get health care. Make health-care-less Joe's health better and his productivity levels go up; he is a better consumer of the goods and services that might be responsible for that $1 million salary; he will certainly be a consumer longer, right? Maybe, that $1 million salary will actually go up as a result.

Besides, as many probably know, when you are making so much money, there are a lot of perks that go with the job. The amount of freebies a person making upwards of $350,000, in many cases, probably add up to be more than the average salary of the healt-care-less working poor.

Hidden Taxes--Opportunity Lost

This year the US goverment will pay close to $2.5 trillion on health care. $207 billion will be lost to the economy as a result of shortened life-spans because people don't have health care. And so, a surtax that would cost the nation's wealthiest 1.2% to 2% $544 billion over 10 years, simply does not upset me in the least bit. Actually, it is fair, it is right and it is the American way.

Why is it that the lack of universal heatlh care, which puts a debilitating drain on the whole economy and disproportainately effects the middle class down, is acceptable to a nation which has never paid homage to an elite, ruling class? No universal health care is a tax against all Americans in that opportunities are lost and the costs of these lost opportunities result in bankrupted local governments, states and even our federal coffers echo in their bareness.

The American Way

We are a capitalist nation. We are a nation of free-enterprise. We are a nation that has the God-given resources to effect positive and timely change in a world that often looks after its own small, regional or national interests first. We have caused no world wars. When there is tragedy in the world, Americans join together and send money, help and even prayers. We are a good nation. However, why do we have such anger, such disregard for our fellow countrymen when they are in need?

Granted, our system of giving, of charity, is the best in the world and it is to be commended. However, for instance, in a time of economic downturn like now, what happens to charity? It too dries up. And, despite some foundations like Bill Gates' trying to provide health care, when proposals are put forth by anyone to provide governmental, systemic help for our fellow countrymen in need, the issue immediately becomes hotly politicized. The whole argument lapses into the conservative modus operandi of "us versus them", "black and white" and "communism versus capitalism."

When did we become such a greedy and almost vengeful nation? It is as if the thinking at the country clubs goes, "they are poor, they deserve no health care." Why is a payment of $9000 for a family earning $1 million not a reasonable thing to ask? Why can this uninsured American not be guaranteed health care by his nation? We are not, after all, a third world dictatorship. Although, health care in Cuba is free and universal.

The Expected and Passionate Reaction of the Right

For many of the right, travel to Europe and many other nations in the world is limited to Mexico. Yes, a generalization but a fair one. World travel by Americans has never been a great past time. The overwhelming majority of us don't have passports and why should we? Yes, we have all of the beauty and greatness right in America, so why do we need to travel?

Personally, I love travel and that is my hobby. (I live in another country.) What travel does afford us with is the ability to compare. I have sought health care in other countries and truthfully, despite the scarey propaganda of the AMA as to the dangers of "socialized medicine", their systems work; they work efficiently, are free and to fill prescriptions costs around $3. And, as a result, the drain on GDP is anywhere between 7% and 10% in Europe and Canada (and everyone is covered including visiting foreigners!).

This means that their workers are healthier and their economies are losing less. This means that our wonderful system of free enterprise, void of that ever guiding "invisible hand", is sabotaging our ecnomic health as it holds the nation hostage through unimpeded rising health care costs for every aspect of health care all for the sake of ever larger profits.

The republicans/conservatives (I really wish the conservatives would come up with a new party because I am certain many of them don't wish to be aligned with the GOP anymore) will act in the same way they have since Obama took the reins: obstructionism, lies about socialized systems and the "long lines" for what really are health procedures that take up about .0001% of all health procedures; and, as usual, they will scream about increased taxes.

Increased taxes will somehow be linked to the 2nd Amendment and to abortion and then to liberal values and gay marriage and suddenly, Bucky Davis from Mississippi (who makes $1,745 a month) and hasn't seen a doctor since a doc cleared him from the womb, will punish democrats because they dared to raise "his" taxes. Also, lest we forget, the increased taxes, as the conservatives like to say, will lead to decreased investment by this 2% of Americans and so business development won't take place and the economy will sputter further.

$500? $9000? If a wealthy American is so petty as to punish his nation by not investing in his own business because his was "surtaxed" to help pay for health care, then I say, he is not an American. In my America, we give our neighbors a helping hand, we help the world, we are God-fearing Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. who strive for the better of all not just "me."

If the right to bear arms is so vehemently protected, why is not the right to live a heathly, productive American life somewhere on that radar of obstructionist, Goldwater-hatched conservatism?