As the health care debate drags on over the congressional recess, and the organized antis use their massive propaganda machine to attempt to stifle free speech of the majority of Americans who recognize that our existing health care system is, sub optimal inefficient pathetic well it sucks.
After the failure of the Clinton plan in 1993, 1994, the insurance industry used that failure as a means to take control of the medical business and the 1/5 of the economy. This industry, big insurance, big pharma, used their enormous funds to buy the congress and presidency and ensure that their profit potential was enhanced to the detriment of all who stood in their way.
Nearly everyone quotes 47 million Americans is the number without access to health care in the form of medical insurance for doctor, hospital and other medical facility visits, plus the cost of medications, hehabilitation services, nursing home care and the like. This is greater than one out of every seven Americans lack this access to basic care through the private and public plans that are in place. This leads to a severe misallocation of resources because it forces those without insurance into the emergency rooms, which is by far the most expensive place to go for treatment of non emergency illnesses.
The Medicare Drug benefit plan enacted during the Bush administration, and passed by the big pharma bought congress contributes to the American subsidization of big pharma. Since nearly all other nations on Earth negotiate the price of drugs, and we don't (except mass retailers such as Wal-Mart, CVS and insurance company captive drug dispensers), it can safely be said that since everyone else in the world pay less for their drugs than we do, then nearly the entire profit margin for the pharmaceutical industry comes out of the pockets of Americans, and this is particularly egregious in the case of the Medicare benefit program because the bought congress prohibits Medicare from negotiating pricing on drugs dispensed under its aegis. I advocated requiring Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs dispensed under this program to be purchased at the world minimum price, recognizing that the drug companies have a right to what the economists call a "normal profit". Their normal profit just should not come completely from the United States of America. Remember that many of the drug companies are not domestic companies, thus we are exporting US dollars, including billions of US tax dollars to provide nearly the entire operating margin for foreign drug companies.
Meanwhile . . . we are not providing adequate basic health care to our soldiers and their families. We demand so much from them and offer them so little in exchange for their blood and the sacrifices they and their families must endure.
Thus, as Rachel Maddow so brilliantly showed a couple of days ago, the corporate and institutional right wing who benefit so greatly by the maintainence of the status quo, or the quid pro quo, has managed to whip up about 1 per cent of the country who are willing to be activists to work against their own interests into a frenzy of crazy and fear.
One question I want to ask is, why do the insurance companies fear the introduction of competetion into their marketplace? The insurance industry is an oligarchy who to a great degree have sectioned the country into clusters of non competition, which increases their ability to set prices not necessarily directly correlated to the cost of delivering health care to its customers. A case in point, I read recently that in Iowa, one company holds over 70 per cent of the health insurance market in that state. This gives that company power over the price and delivery of health care in that state, and also makes it possible for other private insurers in that state to go along with the inflated price set by the biggie. The public option, which will vigorously negotiate drug prices, seek to find the efficacy of treatment options, and work on administrative cost cutting, while extending care to more people will force the private insurers to compete, which is anathema to a monopolist or oligarch.
Since this diary is about random thoughts, here is another one. Gasoline costs $1.50 less per gallon than it did at this time last year. At this time last year, America saw war, or the threat of more war as the only diplomatic option, and as a result of that belligerence, the price of oil was affected upward by what I call the fear premium. At the same time last year, the bottom was falling from the speculative and over leveraged Bush/Republican economy, and we were beginning to implement emergency bailouts for favored Wall Street companies and to begin to understand that the policy to pay for wars on credit, when the resources available to put the war efforts on pay-go were not exhausted. As many have pointed out, the Iraq and Afhghanistan wars were the only wars in American history where the federal government instituted a policy of dumping financial responsibility for the war on our children and grandchildren, in effect, exporting the inflation to our kids. Swell policy, George and Dick. The absence of that extra buck fifty from each gallon of gas represents a more real benefit to consumers than a tax cut because it keeps money in our pockets that has already been taxed, and at a lower rate for 95 per cent of Americans than under Bush/Cheney.
What else? Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The radical right and the haters hate her because she breaks all of the stereotypes they have about Hispanic people. She was born a United States Citizen, as were her parents. She is by no means an Illegal Alien. She worked hard her entire life, is extremely intelligent, has a great judicial temperment, and writes both good decisions, and follows the law as it exists. The Bush Supreme Court overturned stare decis in the Ricci case, not Judge Sotomayor. Who was the activist here?
The Dow is over 9000 now, up from about 6500 just a few months ago. This represents a major gain in the value of millions of American's IRA, 401k and other retirement investments, where before the stimulus massive uncertainty and losses stretching out to the end of time were facing our aging population.
The Cash for Clunkers program has worked to provide immediate stimulus to the auto industry, and who was trying to stand in the way of expanding the program? The Republicans, of course. The same Republicans who continually yell that the stimulus is not happening fast enough, when confronted with an element of stimulus that is showing immediate positive results, attempted to stand in the way of re-funding the wildly successful program. Can't have both ways, fellas. Do you want immediate stimulus, or do you want to just say no? Well, what is it, punk? Make my day.