Polls say Obama is losing ground with - wait for it, not Independents - with Democrats. Ultimately, this means the Public Option will fail. It cannot, will not pass without all boots on the ground.
I mean, think about it. Eight years of Bush/Cheney, an illegal war, torture, civil rights in the trash, financial collapse - and we still didn't win 08 with a landslide. I and many thousands hustled for over two years in my own state, with forages to other states. On Election Day we worked from dawn until California was declared for Obama, getting out the vote from coast-to-coast. Yet we still didn't get a landslide.
Activists for single-payer are saying “No compromise! We must agitate more for single-payer only!” But - sigh - the poorest and most exploited are usually the least able/willing to organize. It’s sheer exhaustion trying to survive day-to-day. That's why you aren’t seeing the most-impacted rise up, and why everything's screwed up. So do we agitate for what is utterly impossible to get now because of all the forces mustered to defeat single-payer - or will you fight even for a barely-sufficient Public Option, or even push for reform that covers all people without the Public Option (shudder)- or take your marbles and go home?
It's the more secure/comfortable/able-bodied among us who have to do the heavy lifting. And we're not doing it – the single-payer and Public Option advocates who are tearing our hair out trying to get more activists engaged are right about that. I think it’s because so many in our ranks are just plain mad that we're not getting Medicare For All. We’re letting The Perfect Reform that cannot possibly pass defeat The Just-Barely-Good Reform, with little or no thought of those who benefit most from even Just-Barely-Good reform.
I'm mad as hell too. I physically gag at the thought of all government subsidies going to private insurers without even a Public Option, but so long as we have the media conglomerates making billions from pro/con ads, massive financial lobbying of our sellout reps, as long as we have no meaningful campaign reform/public-funded elections, I fully expected we'd get little or nothing. I fully expected this assault on the public option. Maybe Obama didn't, I don't know. Definitely our progressives are shocked, shocked I tell you, and it's kinda irrational.
I'm poor, just like most disabled and elderly folks living on Social Security only. I live on $25-50/wk after housing and utilities. I don't own a car (and I'm in a rural area with almost no buses), or a TV, can't pay cable or internet. If I didn't have free WiFi, you wouldn't be reading this (I hope you're reading it!).
I only have Medicare. I hate filling out forms to ask MediCal to pay my $92/month Part B premium (I've had past traumas w/this dehumanizing "welfare" system when I was a young single mom domestic-violence survivor).
Obviously when I can’t afford even housing anymore, I’ll have to bite the bullet and scrounge around for all the proof they demand so I can get MediCal to pay for Part B. I’ll have to prove it again and again, every three months.
I had to leave California, my kids and grandkids, because of the cost-of-living. I'm grateful Social Security pays me the same after 30 years of work, no matter where I live. I'd live in Mississippi just for the cost of living, if it weren't certain disaster - I am not white, I am not straight, I am not a Christian.
Ever since I moved to Washington state after the election, it's been talk of the town that MediCal recipients will be tossed into a lottery to lose MediCal coverage, to close the budget gap. So, I figure, with my luck, and my phobia about dealing with overworked welfare workers and offices that look like jails, why bother?
I support the Public Option because it automatically enrolls Medicare recipients like me in MediCal (many who have emotional/mental health issues w/institutions). The Public Option would automatically give me back almost two weeks' of living expenses, for my service dog's food, my toiletries, never mind natural supplements, that now go to Part B.
I don't even use my Part B now, because it still leaves me w/co-pays, which obviously I can't afford. Neither Medicare nor MediCal cover dental/vision/hearing - well, exams, dental extractions, but that's it. No hearing aids, glasses, fillings, and of course no bridges or dentures. But, without the $92/month Part B, we only have access to catastrophic care. Did you know that?
When everyone says "F*-it we won't fight for anything if we can't get everything", it just means folks like me will continue to live at subsistence levels, toothless, hard-of-hearing and relying on finding donated prescription glasses to see. My friend could only afford to get her very hard-of-hearing disabled elderly dad a Radio Shack amplifier. A hearing aid would cost $500, and Medicare and MediCal don’t cover it. That's the option we face now.
Radically-poor people can't find the means to be radical politically. But too many people who can find the means to be politically activist want all-or-nothing. If you wonder how poor people can support Republicans and other hate/anger-filled groups, ponder what it feels like - to those who live under bridges, in subway tunnels, in condemned buildings, in cars, in shelters, in crowded apartments that cost all they have - when liberals who can, won't fight for every and any little thing to make room for more change. "Where is the love/appreciation for our hard work?" you may ask yourself. Ask the bed bugs, ticks, roaches and rats and slum lords gnawing on those people every night.
If we don't succeed in the Public Option, our failure - not Obama's failure, not the rich and content reps' failures - will send those who can still afford it to comfort themselves, with ice cream, fatty foods, shopping for clothes or electronic toys, dope or booze, and to hell with politics.
If we try and succeed, if we can help those who only have emergency rooms for care today, if we can give Medicare recipients living in poverty just $92 more a month, we can feel we've accomplished something. If we can give the unemployed, the working poor, the elderly and disabled, more access to care they don't get now, it will change lives. Guaranteed.
We can/must muster up the drive to work for more change, educate and register more voters. That’s how we got Social Security. Social Security was not perfect from Day One. It didn’t cover the disabled at first. We won it for the elderly, gathered steam and motivation, then got coverage for the disabled – thanks to all who did that, from the bottom of my heart! Medicare’s still far from perfect. We need to fix it. So let’s.
We evolved incrementally. Change that lasts happens incrementally. So, on my cane, in constant pain, I keep organizing. I’ll be coordinating a canvas in Bremerton – a Navy town – this Saturday, August 22nd. Obviously, I can’t hobble up/down stairs fast enough to make actual canvassing worthwhile. But I can help the dozen-plus who signed up get it done. I can help those who never did it before feel prepared and supported. I can keep begging people like you to not sit on the sidelines.
Truly, I can’t afford to say “F-it”. My stomach clenches when I think of all those so much worse off than me. I can’t let my great education, my facility with English, go to waste when it can help. Can you?