united NATIONAL independent Tea Party polite just to a point
Subtext of Health Care
This entry was posted on 9/30/2009 8:50 PM and is filed under Added Articles.
Serving Two Masters?
The debate over health care has taken a tiresomely predictable turn for
the worse between those in this country who have way too much and the
rest of the nation who have too little. Members of Congress, on
average numbering among the very wealthiest Americans, have their
insurance ensured and subsidized by the American people generally, with their generous pensions, for
life. They may receive treatment at military hospitals, same as the
President, and for a small fee have access to a physician at the
Capitol. Despite our generosity toward them they have no apparent
interest in offering the same benefits back to us.
Their health care is exceptional, among the very best in the world.
Ours is exceptionally bad, among the very worst in the developed world
with ten of millions afforded no reliable access to health care at
all. Their benefit package is carved in granite, ours is written on
sand. Their costs are cheap, ours are steep.
For the last ten years health care costs for the average family has
increased over wages for the average American family, 5% just last year
alone. Yet congress gives itself yearly cost of living wage increases,
sometimes in the middle of the night, to ensure that no health, or any
other, cost they may incur ever rises faster than their pay.
Yet the average net worth of Americans dropped 23% last year while the
average net worth of members of congress soared by 61% from 2004-2007.
The average median household in this country has wealth of about
$62,000. The median wealth of a member of congress is more than 25 times greater at about $1.7
million. Two of every three senators is a millionaire. And they are
paid $169,000 annually. Yet we give them wonderful health care and
they refuse to afford us comparable benefits - even with our own money
- because they say we can't afford it.
They pretend to be frugal and not want health care for Americans to
cost much but make no such "we are all in the same boat here" demands
on their own coverage. They seem far more willing to play medical
lottery with our lives than their own.
They loudly decry record deficit spending (which they are solely
responsible for) as a reason for denying spending on all manner of
necessary and needful things for the nation, while showing no
corresponding disdain or restraint for spiraling debt when it is to
support boondoggles in their own backyards - a bridge to nowhere, for
instance; an outdated weapons system that doesn't work, will never be
used and not even the military wants; or costly earmarks to fat cat
contributors to their campaign coffers.
According to the Center for Responsible Politics the top 5%of Americans
have more wealth than the remaining 95%. The top 20% own over 80% of
all our wealth. According to Edward Wolff of New York University,
income distribution in this country is much more unequal than any other
advanced industrial country. This trend has reversed direction since
the seventies when the fairness of our income distribution was among
the best and most admired in the world. Perhaps this fact alone is
the primary cause of the nation's underlying and growing discontent.
Congress is not only out of touch with our democracy they are foreign to it. They and their
supporters, just proven by the recent government bailouts, will
prosper even when we falter and the nation declines. There is simply
nothing which ties them to main street America any longer. They do not see our successful future as vital to their own. That is why
even those in positions of power who favor health care are dry, detached and academic - it
doesn't affect their own lives in the least. While those against it
are passionate about protecting their wealth from unwelcome incursions
by the poor.
The schism in today's society is greed and class based. Race is just an
emotional cover which moneyed interests and their political mouthpieces
are willing to foment only to misrepresent as populist outrage against any reform
detrimental to themselves. They will use every threat, any lie and tantrum
they can think to throw, from death panels to Socialism to Hitlerism,
to stop health care from going forward.
But it is not because they are opposed to health care per se. It is
simply because the goal of good, affordable universal health care
coverage is a symbol which speaks to a theory of government that
preaches social responsibility and equality as a necessity of
citizenship and maintaining our future prosperity. The sheer humanity of this theory is inimical to them. They would rather we stuck to the timeworn and disproven theories
of "greed is good" and "every man and woman for his or herself" as the
unifying, gathering principle upon which our nation is based and bound
to thrive. This has worked out quite well for them - and poorly for us
and the country - for the last thirty years.
This is what makes this issue so difficult for our political class to
deal with and the argument around it so cynical and surreal and unenlightening.
Congress has crawled gratefully into bed with the same fat cats they were elected to protect us
against. They have become lax and lazy under nearly thirty years of Republican rule and the
unworkable but highly self-serving theorem they operated under - no
government is good government. Now that congress must actually do something
they are lethargic and stuporous and must ultimately decide whether
they want to serve their few wealthy patrons or their millions of
constituents. Neither man nor congress can serve two masters. They can't have it both ways.
