Health care reform has passed the House, barely, and now resides in the hallowed halls of the Senate, where Harry Reid will try to water down any remaining reform in the actual reform bill in order to get sixty senators to agree not to filibuster. So much has gone wrong with the Democratic party's handling of the health care debate this year -- particularly in the Senate, and I really don't have the energy to rehash any of that here, but odds still look good for some watered down crap to squeak through the Senate and get signed into law at some point soon, although maybe not by the end of this year. The key improvement in the sorry condition of health care in our country that will actually be in the bill in the end is that Americans who aren't currently covered by health care insurance will finally receive coverage of their own. And the sooner the better for me, because starting in January, there's a very high likelihood that I will be out of work and on COBRA, paying out of my pocket whatever my employer is currently paying in order to continue having the shaky health care coverage I currently have, the one that denied me post-op physical therapy after my recent knee surgery, because I'd already used up my "limit" of therapy for the calendar year, receiving treatment for my initial knee surgery, one that unfortunately left my new ACL with a slight tear that need repair two weeks ago, and from which I am recovering from now, on my own, without therapy, because, as I mentioned, I'm going to be out of a job soon since my corporate headquarters decided to close my office as part of an effort to continue making themselves hefty profits, and I can't really afford to pay for physical therapy sessions right now. Especially when I'll have to pay for COBRA out of my pocket in order to receive health care coverage that denies me the basic therapy needed to ensure my knee heals properly, so that I don't have to have another surgery, and the resultant cost for that operation. It's just a stupid, stupid, simply flat-out horribly stupid system, and one that everyone and their brother has fought to save -- actually SAVE this year -- from stupid conservatives to obstructionist Republicans to corporations and corporate Democrats to easily confused senior citizens to flat-out anyone who doesn't take 3 seconds to look at our current system, compare it to any system anywhere in the rest of the free world, and say, hey maybe we should fix some of this shit that screws people without insurance and screws people with insurance just as badly. And as our economy and our government and our livelihoods collapse around us, we just let it happen, and we actually -- some of us, too many of us -- side with the side that keeps trying to bleed us until we die. I really do not understand. I may never.
So the reform bill that hopefully gets passed will be a far cry from what it should be, but it will at least cover those who aren't covered at their jobs, which might include me, and so I'm hoping it gets passed sooner rather than later, for selfish reasons, like my own sanity, and the ridiculous notion that while out of work I have to pay more to cover my basic health than I ever had to pay in my past 15 years of productive employment and excessive tax-paying to a government that can't give two shits about my health. I came upon the following chart again, recently, and I probably posted this before here, sometime during the summer of this health care "debate" debacle, but I think it's definitely worth repeating. This is a chart of all U.S. senators, in order of the percentage of campaign contributions they received from individuals vs. corporate PACs (political action committees ie. lobbyists). The ones at the top of the list got the most money from corporations, as a percentage of their total receipts. The ones at the bottom -- and there are some brave progressive souls down there fighting for the individual voters out there (Franken, Feingold, Bernie Sanders) -- received the least money from corporations and the most from the lowly citizen voters who make up the vast majority of this country, and I'd assume the readers of this blog. So it's sort of no surprise that everyone at the top of the list, including all the Democratic senators there (Baucus, Nelson, Carper, Conrad), have been most vocally against any kind of public option -- the kind of public option that might rein in the profits of those insurance, healthcare, and pharmaceutical corporations who are filling the coffers of their campaigns and keeping them in power. It's no surprise, really at all. But when you see it in a form like this, how can you not get angry. At them. And their corporate overlords. Fuck them all. All I want is for my knee to be healed. And I'm sure for many less fortunate Americans, all they want is to live, something our health care system doesn't do for them. At all.
- In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up,
when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough."
He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted),
and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted
To hear that there was nothing that I could do to save you,
the choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you.
Something in my throat made my next words shake,
and something in the wires made the light bulbs break.
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling,
it opened up the scars that had just finished healing.
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur,
(I thought that it was beautiful, it made me a believer.)
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room,
but I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew.
When I reappeared and tried to give you something for the pain,
you came to hating me again and just sang your refrain:
You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare.
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair,
then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying.
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying.
Your daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears in your head,
now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. "Eighty-seven pounds" and this all bears repeating...
Bitch away-Good 4 U! More people should bitch about this BS! Typical Politricks!
Posted by: john dough | November 17, 2009 at 07:07 AM
Great introduction for this article. I have found it really interesting to read. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: accommodation for London 2012 | October 10, 2011 at 03:20 AM