Socialized medicine is not a bad idea

This past weekend I went to the eye doctor. I had tried to order new contact lenses online. You can order all kinds of abominable things online without any hassle but for some reason buying contact lenses online requires that the seller contact your eye doctor. Well my eye doctor said that my prescription was expired and I had to have another eye exam.

My eye exam went well enough. The people there dilated my pupils to run some of the usual tests and did another special “contact lens test” that cost another $40 on top of a $50 deductible. After an hour and a half, I was released back into the world wearing a pair of oversized disposable sunglasses that made me look like a Florida retiree shuffling to an early bird special. And my eyeglass and contact lens prescription did not change one bit. I spent $90 just for the honor of getting permission to buy contact lenses online. I can’t apply that to the purchase of any new glasses or contact lenses. That’s an expensive two-year rubber stamp.

I’m lucky enough that I can afford to pay off the doctors to let me buy my contact lenses. I have good health insurance and I’m gainfully employed. Someone who is unemployed or under-employed or not paid as well at their job would be shit out of luck if they didn’t have the cash for this.

Even with the good health insurance we have, for-profit health insurance companies have earned their bad reputation for their treatment of consumers. When our youngest daughter was born, we sent in all the paperwork on time to have her added to our insurance policy, but for some reason the insurer didn’t process this in time and for several months we got letters from doctors and collection agencies looking for the money that the insurance company was supposed to pay. When my wife was in the hospital, she was being charged $1.50 per Tylenol pill. Why?

These experiences illustrate some of the inadequacies of our current healthcare system and they are MILD in comparison to some of what goes on. The Affordable Care Act (A.C.A. a.k.a. “Obamacare”) curtailed some of the most blatant insurance company abuses, but there are so many bad actors in the healthcare system that piecemeal reform hasn’t worked to fix things. For example, one of the first efforts of the Obama administration to pass its health plan was to make price guarantees to pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies.

The Trump administration’s effort to repeal Obamacare only accomplished in proving that the Republicans have had no real healthcare planfrom day one. For all the meaningless votes to repeal the A.C.A. that the Republicans held in the intervening years, the half-assed effort to pass “Trumpcare” showed that this was all silly games. They have no real plan. Democrats would prefer to have socialized medicine but few establishment Democrats will come out and say that.

Socialized medicine doesn’t sound good to Americans because socialism in general has a deservedly bad reputation. Venezuela’s ongoing collapse is a lesson in how “progressive” authoritarians are best at running their countries into the ground. But socialized medicine does pretty well in capitalist countries. The Japan, Ireland, Sweden, the U.K., France, Germany, the list goes on– these are all civilized democracies with healthy business communities. This doesn’t mean they are immune from recession or fiscal difficulties, but it means that healthcare is not a confusing patchwork of providers trying to grab what they can from every consumer.

But socialized medicine is not the imposition of socialism and not a stepping-stone to a Stalinist state. And the most recent political debacle of Congressional Republicans calling off a vote because they knew they would lose was pathetic. There was no real reason to bring this vote within the first 100 days of the Trump administration, but Congressional Republicans still think it’s 2009.

The latest political shifts have given us an opening to resolve this issue once and for all. There are calls for a single-payer system in the populist right as well as the populist left. The cultural wars that have been using the healthcare debate as a proxy are now out in the open. We can have those discussions instead of hiding behind the skirts of medical policy. 

Let’s have the healthcare debate we ought to have. Doctors in France get paid and people in Denmark don’t go bankrupt when a loved one gets cancer. Canadians don’t have to launch a GoFundMe campaign when they sprain their knee.

America is a great enough nation to establish and manage socialized medicine. Let’s go for it. 

The Wounded Warrior Project Should Not Exist

Memorial Day is a day when millions of Americans pay lip service to people who gave their life in service to our country. It’s happening at a time when the government’s treatment of our veterans has never been worse.

Laying a wreath for the dead is not a substitute for respecting the living. And our veterans have been mistreated in ways that ought to shame a nation that claims to be a serious military power. The current state of neglect of our veterans is about as respectful as taking a piss on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Why are there celebrities making commercials for private charities that care for veterans? Why should any private charity exist to support wounded veterans? Our government accepted full responsibility for the health of our veterans when the veteran signed on the dotted line to join. There should be no issue with veterans getting the things they need.

Yet our TV broadcasts are teeming with entertainers taking to the airwaves to beg couch potatoes for money on Memorial Day weekend to help wounded American veterans.

Ours is supposed to be the most powerful military in the world. Our armed forces operate drones that can send a missile up a camel’s ass two thousand miles away but can’t afford a few shekels to build a wheelchair ramp for a crippled soldier? Am I the only person in TV land who thinks this is horrifying horse shit?

Health care for your soldiers is a basic, like ammunition for rifles, boots and helmets. You wouldn’t send a soldier or Marine into battle without ammunition, you don’t bring them home without the ability to provide health care.

What better way to tell our enemies that the U.S.A. is a paper tiger than to let them see that private charities have to help care for wounded U.S. service members?

And it’s gotten worse. The Bureau of Veterans Affairs was shown to keep secret waiting lists at some of its hospitals to cover up the terrible waiting times for medical care. So upper management knew how bad things were and tried to cover it up rather than fix it.

So while the efforts of the Wounded Warrior Project are noble, such charities shouldn’t exist because they shouldn’t have to. Veterans with serious injuries should have all of their health needs tended to. They shouldn’t have to raise money for wheelchairs or artificial limbs. Those benefits should be a given and not subject to debate.

We have an all-volunteer military and haven’t had a draft since the Vietnam War (although the “stop-loss” programs and activation of inactive reservists during the George W. Bush administration served as a kind of draft, with the lottery restricted to veterans who had already served). So it behooves the government to make good on its promises to veterans. Among the outraged public are potential new recruits. If the military is willing to break its promises to the aged and the infirm, why should a patriotic American want to join. (N.B. – Years ago a family member who was then enlisted in the armed forces described recruiters as “hired liars.”).

So while I hope everyone at least takes a moment to reflect on the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our country, we should determine that there won’t have to be private charities tending to the needs of our veterans.