When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, we all knew he was coming into office with the worst situation of any President except FDR. And possibly - no, probably - Lincoln. So, let's call it the third worst situation, overall.
The economy, at least to me, looked like it would swallow his administration whole. The economic Lehman Brothers' tsunami had traveled around the world faster than a real tsunami would have.
Everyone learned really quickly that preceding fall and that winter what mortgaged-based securities were, and at least a bit of how the investment bankers and mortgage companies had gamed the system and dumped bad securities on Europeans and Asians, and all based on OUR mortgages, which had been sent through shredders and then a random number generator so that no one knew who owned anything anymore.
If we could, a lot of us would have strung a lot of Wall Streeters up from the nearest oak tree - enough to break the limbs off all the available oaks.
Health care was not on the horizon.
No, health care certainly wasn't on anyone's practical horizon. Just keeping the world from collapsing - that would have been a great accomplishment.
None of us really knows, still, what the hell was discussed between the guy the idiots on the right call "Barry" and Tim Geithner and the bankers. Many of us still believe Obama made some wrong choices then, that he let down a lot of people, saving the ship's crew while all the passengers were drowning. And as they rowed off away from the sinking ship, the crew was all lighting up the most expensive Cuban cigars - as we gulped waters of insolvency and looked for some piece of flotsam and jetsam to hang on to.
And a lot of people DID lose their houses (and businesses) who might not have, had it been handled differently. Many hung on, but just barely. One company I know of had had its sales drop from $60M a year to $5M a year - from August to October, 2008 - and it has never come back since. Jobs lost? You bet. MANY.
Personally, I myself had to scramble like hell to keep myself from going down with the ship. I ended up offering my partners a fire sale for my shares. They took it, and both they and I have survived - so far. Thank the Universe (my name for God) for unemployment and one single solitary project.
Health care for me? Piffle! Not a chance! Not since leaving my company.
Health care for the country? How could that possibly have been on the horizon in early 2009, when the entire world seemed in the same situation I was in?
What kind of fire sale can you have, while the fire is still burning?
Somehow, Obama and Geithner managed to stomp a bit here and spit on something or other, here and there (like I said, we don't know what their plan was), and the U.S. of A. barely avoided - like I did - a national Chapter 11. They kept the fire from consuming everything, but not without cost to many, many millions of us. Many still are angry as hell at Obama for that. I don't blame them.
Like I didn't even consider the possibility then of health care for me, I can't see how anyone then could have begun to think of health care for the country. I can't now, and I cannot imagine how they did then - he or the Congress. But somehow, some of them did - Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, President Obama - and certainly Teddy Kennedy.
Of all the times that a national health care system could have been thought possible, could there have been one less likely? In anybody's wet dream?
This post is kind of in reaction to the Teddy letter to Obama, because at no time in Teddy's tenure in the Senate were things so grim, so unlikely to birth national health care for Americans.
But fuck a duck, here we are.
Pinch me, people.
I don't really believe it.
I want to.
I don't know what in the world I am going to do to pay for it, if they come and tell me, "Steve, you've got to have insurance and it is going to cost you X dollars." I don't know how I will pay for it.
But it is going to be there! Whoodathunk?
A few months before I sold out my company stocks, I had to switch insurance. My application was denied. I had not had $3,000 in medical bills in 20 years, but I was considered a bad risk. Go figure that one. Then, in order to get it, I had to get ONE blood test, as a second opinion to the insurance company's (now proven wrong) results. I was told the test - if I had a doctor - would cost about $36, and that I would have to pay it myself. But, having no doctor, I had to GET a doctor. In order to do that, I had to get a physical. Before it was all over, it cost me over $950 - for one blood test. Instead of $36. All because they were denying coverage to a man with a history of paying and paying and paying premiums and taking almost nothing back.
Now I understand they can't deny me anymore. And they can't deny any of you anymore.
Is the program going to be a good one? It doesn't seem like it. Not right now. It certainly won't be perfect.
But it will cover people who the insurance industry was excluding before. Not everybody, but many millions more. And that is a good thing.
January 2009: A national health care system on the horizon? Are you kidding? ANY kind of system? Not a chance! A good one? Snowballs in hell and pigs flying.
The day Scott Brown got Teddy's seat, it seemed like a thunderclap of doom. But then something happened: The Democrats showed balls they hadn't shown since. . . maybe since "Give 'Em Hell" Harry Truman.
Pigs are flapping their wings, folks.
Snowballs are in a holding pattern, down there in Hades.
Democrats have balls.
Republican hell is freezing over.
It's just too bad it couldn't have been back when Americans had real jobs. And Teddy was alive...
High fives to you, Teddy! You inspired it into reality! That's the FACT, Jack!
You're up there, smiling, aren't you?
R.I.P. Your work here is done.
Say Hi to Jack and Bobby for me.