Funny how you never hear the right-wing gasbags (or Congress Critters) complain about certain "single payer" services we've long considered necessities. Follow below Fo' Mo'.
Think about it: Your house catches on fire. You wanted to buy that Fire Department Insurance, but since you lost your job, you just couldn't afford the premiums any more.
Too bad.
Well the fire truck pulls up anyway, thank God... Maybe you can talk some sense into them!
"Please help me! My children are upstairs, trapped!"
"May I see your Fire Department Insurance Card, please sir?"
"But... Well... My insurance expired when I lost my job and I..."
"So you don't HAVE any Fire Department Insurance? Is that what you're telling me?"
"Well... yes, I suppose so. But PLEASE! Look at my house!! It's BURNING and my children are trapped upstairs!"
"Settle down. Good thing for you we're a Not-For-Profit Fire Department!! But I do need to get some information here about your ability to pay."
The fireman slowly looks up and down your house - it's two stories, and pretty big. Flames are shooting out of the windows on the first floor now. He reaches in his truck and pulls out a clip-board with forms on it.
"You say you lost your job? How long ago?"
"For the LOVE of GOD man!! Can't you SEE MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE?!?"
"Yeah, yeah... If you don't settle down we'll drive away and let you put it out. Now tell me how you intend to pay your bill 'cause we're looking at... oh, I dunno... Probably forty or fifty grand to put this baby out!"
*****
Would we, as a civilized society accept this scenario?
How about for-profit water treatment? How about for-profit sewage treatment? How would you feel if the company who took away your trash once a week had a CEO making $30 million a year? That's nothing. The guy who owns those fire trucks makes twice that.
How is health care different than having a fire department? Why is it we've come to expect to pay taxes to make sure our water is safe to drink, our pee and poo is flushed away and treated, our kids are literate and the local fire - and police - departments show up when we need them...
All of these things are pretty essential to maintaining a healthy society.
But when you get sick... Somebody in the private sector's GOT to make a buck. And not JUST a buck; a LOT of bucks!! In order to do so, they literally play god, sometimes granting, sometimes denying, life and death.
And if they don't make lots of money, well that obviously means we're no better than the Soviet Union or Red China, right, Comrade?
It seems to me that's pretty close to the "logic" we're hearing from single-payer health care opponents - Republican and Democrat - who are so out of touch and/or motivated by greed that they sit before us, affirming their life-or-death hold on on us, justifying it; telling us it is right.
It's not right. Denying health care to people is, very simply, not the right thing to do. Especially when it's done for profit.
What's supporting this bloated, money-hoovering bureaucracy is largely the backs of the middle class and poor, and small business owners who are often stuck paying insanely high insurance and medical bills and fighting these companies tooth and nail for what little they can get.
Some physicians run for-profit medical extablishments that order up un-necessary tests, like, say, ultra-sounds... after purchasing their own, ultra-sound machine. How convenient.
This is insane. It's inhumane and we wouldn't treat dogs this way... but I guess we're willing to put them down, at least.
We should be winning this argument. We should have all of the Dems on our side - even the ones from the southern, red states where poverty and poor health care can be so severe. But we're not winning. Not yet. I think that's in part due to the debate being framed wrong.
Our side is playing defense.
The debate needs to be framed so that they (The Republicans, Blue-Dogs, insurance companies, drug companies and yes, even some physicians), are left defending their belief that anyone should reap huge financial profits off the backs of the poor and middle-class - and businesses big and small that have to compete globally with companies that don't have to offer health insurance to their employees... because they have some form of single payer health care in those countries... and they utilize their health care dollars much more wisely.
I'm not optimistic that either the Congress - or the MSM for that matter - will make these scum defend the indefensible. But these insurance and drug company execs, I believe, need to be hauled before the American people - just like those auto execs were - and tell us why they are killing us.
Look us in the eye and tell us why.