Written by an American Expat who holds an M.B.A. degree living in Germany!
My email address is: democratsramshield@yahoo.com
The German mainstream magazine the Spiegel in its English language edition yesterday published an article which this diary attempts to review, wherein we see a detailed discussion of the bewilderment and baffling confusion, which has engulfed the citizens of the largest economy in Europe, which has become the number 3 exporting nation in the world, as to how it is that thinking civilized people in the 2012 American election may oppose the sensible and indeed minimal health care reforms proposed by the Obama administration from being effectuated fully across America.
Spiegel quote:
Premature death rates are 68 percent higher in the US than in the best-performing countries. As many as 91,000 fewer people would die prematurely if the US could achieve the leading country rate, the report said. Instead, the study notes that "access to healthcare significantly eroded since 2006," with more than 81 million working-age adults -- some 44 percent of those aged 19 to 64 -- uninsured or underinsured in 2010. This was an increase of 35 percent from 2003 levels.
Let's be clear about just one thing please, it is believed that while 57,000 Americans lost their lives in the Vietnam War, that the nation has remembered their passing with memorials. Yet this writer notes that no such memorials have been built across America to note the passing of the 91,000 dead Americans, who've passed unnecessarily according to the OECD report cited above, simply because they didn't have access to medical type insurance or other types of coverage. To be clear every life lost is important and marks a personal tragedy to the nation which must, can and should be recognized. This must be prevented in the future by immediate universal medical coverage for all Americans as a human right from cradle to grave, just like in every other major industrialized country in the world today. Let's be clear that these 91,000 dead Americans are our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers. They are the guy or gal next door. They are human beings who have needlessly suffered and died in the richest country on earth! Because they couldn't get healthcare access. Please help us stop this needless tragedy this election year.
Spiegel quote:
In Germany, PEOPLE ARE BAFFLED by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance. Not even conservatives question the system, which business people say gives Europe's largest economy a competitive advantage.
Let's be clear from an American expat's perspective who is living in Germany, not only is it clear that this is baffled the people in Germany who find themselves in a complete state of bewilderment in attempts to understand how it is that the American people can allow this senseless medical tragedy to go on, even to 2012, but that profound bewilderment and confusion is shared by civilized people all across the European Union, who in this regard have come to see America as a de facto pariah state, which has been taken over by the Tea Party led politics that has through the plutocrat owned media so brainwashed the American people into adopting right wing politics, that this needless tragedy of medical indigency is allowed to continue as a recognizable badge of international shame!
Spiegel quote:
As the United States Supreme Court considers whether requiring people to have health insurance is unconstitutional, GERMANS ARE BEWILDERED
as to why so many Americans appear to be against universal coverage.
Spiegel quote:
They also question the continued portrayal of US President Barack Obama and his health reform backers as socialists and communists, noting that healthcare was introduced in Germany in the 19th century by Otto von Bismarck, who was definitely not a leftist, and is supported by conservative and pro-business politicians today.
HE IS THE POSTER BOY OF BRAINWASHED RIGHT WING AMERICA
He wears his economic exploitation and lack of health care as brain washed badge of pride.
Just because he with that steely eyed gaze says he doesn't blame Wall Street doesn't mean we can't. We aren't brainwashed he is. Here it is also important to note that the Germans and other people in the E.U. who have not been brain washed by the U.S. media find this type of behavior baffling as they don't fully understand to what extent the plutocrat owned media is brainwashing right wing America. His being brain washed is therefore his reaction to denigrating the weaker members of society? If so that doesn't have to be our reaction. In America though we are surrounded by economic intolerance yet we ourselves can be tolerant! We don't have to buy into brainwashed thinking telling us we are only good Americans if, we are economically exploited by Wall Street. Where in we are brought to the point of having to praise our very oppressors for overworking us without access to medical care.
Spiegel quote:
Marini and others say that mandated coverage is something that is simply not questioned in Germany. Furthermore, even the most pro-market politicians wouldn't dare to dismantle the country's health insurance system.
Even right wing politicians across Germany endorse the German standard of medical care access and cost containment in a clear posture where the US spends about 16% of GNP and doesn't cover some 59 million Americans. While in Germany everyone is covered and they spend about 8 or 9% of GNP.
Spiegel quote:
But in the US, which spends more than any other developed nation on healthcare, an increasing number of businesses are "less competitive globally because of ballooning healthcare costs," according to an article published by the Council on Foreign Relations in March. Indeed, despite the ample spending on healthcare, the system remains inefficient, and the US ranks with Turkey and Mexico as the only members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) without universal heath coverage, it adds.
Let's be clear the free market for profit American medical insurance system is not able to exported to any country outside of the US, because every other major industrialized nation in the world recognizes the US health care system as a failed model.
Spiegel quote:
Don't Religious Americans Love Their Neighbors?
"For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn't matter which religion I look at -- love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion," health insurance spokesperson Marini says. For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn't jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community.
The truth is American religiosity does not jibe with what right wing religious people espouse, because they are quite frankly ridden with hypocrisy! Therefore their actions appear to be inconsistent and bewildering only to those who do not accept their actions as being frankly fraudulent. Whether religious or not decent moral people do not comport themselves this way. So it is that the GOP led class warfare is neither decent nor moral. They are happy to grab onto any sophistry, even if it bankrupts the nation just to enrich themselves and their friends, whom they depend on to grow ever richer.
Spiegel quote:
Politician Wolfgang Zöller, a member of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union party, argues that Christian principles support a national healthcare system and both are compatible with capitalism.
He wonders how a working class man with a family who doesn't have insurance pays for an operation when he becomes sick.
"The question of health insurance is a humane question," he says. "I want every person -- independent of age, independent of income or pre-existing conditions -- to have the possibility to be helped when he is sick."
American readers should note that the CDU Christian Democratic Union is Germany's most conservative party, as part of the CDU/CSU Conservative party coalition, and as such there are no major parties to the right in German politics. Clearly German conservatives agree with universal medical being an acceptable conservative principle. This is mirrored by conservative political parties all across the European Union, which has an economy and population that is larger than in the United States. As such we should recognize that the for profit American medical system has nothing to do with conservative political principles but rather has everything to do with the fact the GOP is a wholly owned subsidiary of the for profit American medical insurance industry to whom they are beholdened.
Spiegel quote:
But that is not happening in the United States, according to numerous statistics.
The US ranks last out of 16 industrialized countries on a measure of deaths that might have been prevented with timely and effective care, according to a study released last year by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent healthcare research. Germany was in ninth place, according to the "National Scorecard on US Health Performance."
"Otherwise you're left with the famous saying, 'the poor die young.' And I don't want that."
http://www.spiegel.de/...
--------------------------------------------
Right wing America and their Tea party minions are always happy to push and extol the virtues of individual responsibility purely to keep from practicing any reasonable collective responsibility in their zero sum game. While they can have their own opinion, they cannot have their own facts. The fact is the individual if made responsible for everything cannot ever fully leverage economies of scale. For this we must be able to exercise collective responsibility. Concurrently collective responsibility also allows us to provide for reasonable cost containment in medical inflation. That's why we need everyone in the pool to garner economies of scale and cost containment. We need universal medical access as a cradle to grave human right for every American today.
We should also note with a spirit of righteous indignation that given the so called free market approach in the American medical system that this has substantially reinforced worker insecurity. This keeps workers cowed and obedient, as job loss in America also comes with the loss of medical insurance for people with employer based medical care. By contrast in the European Union it's impossible to lose access to medical care due to job loss. As such it creates a more empowered socially stable working class, which creates a more stable affluent egalitarian society.
To win in America all we have to do is to care about each other and stick together!
If we are looking for change we must look to the Occupy movement to provide that peaceful nonviolent approach to change in helping to elect better progressive politicians to public office. The Occupy movement and the American unions are the last great hope of the American working class dream!!
(I'd like to invite you to follow me at the Daily Kos (or on Twitter.) Just click on the link below. Thank you. )
http://www.dailykos.com/...
-------------
Also I'd like to invite you to follow the Class Warfare newsletter group at the Daily Kos.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
