Dan Agin asks a question about health care reform in his latest blog on theThe Huffington post: Sleepwalking in America: Our Health Care Circus. I know Dan from way back when I was a grad student in physiology at the University of Chicago during the period 1960 t0 1963. His role today as blogger and author fits him very well for he is among the brightest people I have ever met. Here's what he is about this time:
Since America is now deciding what to do about health care, the expected blow-hards, fat-heads, and shills for various industries come out of the woodwork to warn us about socialism, high costs, lack of choice, big government, and other supposed evils of any system that would take care of the health needs of our country by reducing the profits of private interests. It's the search for profits, of course, that drives the circus.
"But Dan, what is wrong with profit" I hear them asking again. And there is my motivation for questioning their intelligence. See more of Dan's below the break.
Dan goes on to reveal these little know facts about those who seek to profit from your illnesses:
Businesses strive to maximize revenues and minimize costs, which means in the health insurance business you strive to collect as much as possible in insurance premiums while paying out as little as possible in claims. Private health insurance companies operate for private profit and not for the public good, and any statement otherwise is a blatant lie.
But they are nice people Dan. They would never take profit they didn't deserve, would they? After all what is the alternative? One of those "govment" programs run by lazy good for nothing bureecats? Well let us see what Dan has uncovered to make his point. In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books there is a section of replies to an earlier article about health care reform:Health Care, Elsewhere: An Exchange Among the contributors is a letter writer from England who has some real propaganda to sell. Here are some of his points:
In his article "Capitalism Beyond the Crisis" [NYR, March 26] Amartya Sen rightly stresses the need to improve public understanding of how a national health service works. I live about twenty-four miles south of London in a small town with a population of around five thousand. We have a National Health Service medical center staffed with five doctors and the necessary support staff. Each registered patient can ask to see a doctor of his or her choice and the center is run on a predetermined appointments system.
When doctors prescribe drugs, the drugs can be purchased at a local drugstore for a fixed fee of about $12. Senior citizens are not charged.
Patients who are not satisfied with their treatment have the right to transfer to another medical center or surgery.
National Health Service physicians exercise complete medical control over their patients and deal with referrals to consultants for specialist advice and surgery.
Apart from the charge for prescribed drugs, the service is free to all patients. The UK National Health Service deals with the majority of all British citizens, but everyone has the right to opt out of the system to pay on their own for private medical advice and treatment.
John Dean
Westerham, Kent, England
Well we all know about people whose last name is "Dean" don't we? How could Dan believe someone like this? Sure we have all heard the real truth about the British system. Why listen to this? Dan asks:
Are the British crazy, or is it we Americans who are crazy? Although the United States has five times the population of the United Kingdom, it seems that Americans are about five times as gullible as their British cousins. In fact, nowhere in the industrialized world do you find people as prone to believe special interests yakking about the evils of universal health care and public health insurance. Why is that? Why do we exercise more common sense about the postal service than we do about health service? Why are we so gullible?
Dan, if you really think you can answer that question I wonder if we need to lump you among the gullible? I have tried to use science and philosophy and history and...to get some kind of rational handle on why we are the way we are. I still am in shock after the last eight years especially. Yet here we are having to work our butts off to convince people that it is time to stop all kinds of people from making their living pushing around papers because they got sick.
Dan ends on this note:
Meanwhile, if certain business interests will lose too much money if we have adequate health care in America, maybe it's time those interests found another enterprise to feed their bank accounts.
Wait a minute Dan! Those are dangerous words. What if they caught the people's imaginations and they said the same thing about the phone service and the Railroads and the Airlines and the Internet and...Why Dan, that is like , like ssss.... ssss... socialism! There I said it!
Now Dan Again as a charter member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) I can tell you all about why sss.... ssss... socialism is such a bad thing because I write blogs about it here on Daily Kos and many of these really intelligent liberals have it all figured out. Capitalism is just a bit in need of a tune up. Profit is how we get rich and we all want to be rich don't we? See Dan, you are just brainwashed. You can't let yourself believe these thing just because they make sense. You have to believe and be loyal like we are.
So, I guess you can all see that being intelligent isn't all that it is cracked up to be. Next thing you know some smart guy like Dan will be telling us that every American should have an opportunity to work reasonable hours at a job that pays a living wage. No, we can't let the dominoes fall like that. It might even spread to other parts of the world. Thanks for trying though Dan.