Who Killed Single Payer?

Senator Sanders (I-Vermont) secretly inserts ACTUAL single payer provision in the health reform bill

MeanMesa notices something "just under the horizon" which might present a true nightmare for the "we hate America" neo-con crowd in 2010.


Now, granted, the GOP has "modernized" its traditional (medieval) domestic policy ideology just a smidgeon in its ongoing efforts to break free from the on going train wreck. The old paradigm was an awkward extraction from the Book of Genesis which was used to "prove" that man kind was created in the first place to lower taxes. The new adjustment? That old single track fraud is now accompanied by a new, probably also Biblical, commitment to deny health care to poor people.


After all, how else could the neo-cons "keep" all of their "hard earned money?" Among the neo-con horde, there are those who have been "fooled" into thinking that they are rich. With wages utterly stagnant amid constantly rising costs of living for decades, -- since Ronnie Rayguns exploded middle class taxes in the '80's -- the grotesquely rich have depended on a barrage of talking points (issues of ideology simplified so much that hill billies and bigots are attracted to them) to convince even the most "credit challenged" that a.) they are actually rich, and b.) that their "riches" are being purloined relentlessly by sinister socialist schemes cooked up by Democrats.


Of course, such a menu of "day-old cat food" can only be sold to the seriously uninformed. Should any of the neo-con "cannon fodder" class actually investigate what has actually been going on, they would most likely be a little less manageable. In fact, probably a lot less manageable. Should they ever become informed -- as opposed to uninformed -- these stalwart, hypnotized "grass roots" neo-cons would probably redefine themselves as something more akin to starving Bolshevik riot mobs from Moscow's 1900's.


Well, if you are a billionaire, you would have not wasted much of your "cabana martini" time worrying about this unpleasant possibility. You've done the elitist version of due diligence. You've purchased the media. You've seen to it that folks such as Rush Limbaugh -- you know, folks who can speak good old American plain English to your carefully groomed base -- recklessly reframe the daily news to reinforce you oligarchic wet dreams day after monotonous day. So what could be a problem?


Between your comb-over troop of dirty shirt preachers, Southern Senators and drug addled talk show hosts, these dumbies remain amazingly eager to stand around in "grass roots" tea parties acting stupid. ("Okay Billy Bob, jest carry thu sign an' act mad. An y'all 'member -- NO INTERVIEWS! Them liberral's gonna trah t' trick you inta' lookin' lahk yew cain't 'splain nuthin. Beers on me when we git dun!")

The Fly in the (Billionaire) Ointment

Enter Senator Sanders. Unlike far too many of the "Democratic" Senators who have toughed out the entire health care "debate" hiding under their desks in hushed cell phone calls to their PCCC's (pharmaceutical corporation campaign contributors), Senator Sanders actually threw down the gauntlet. He inserted an amendment to the otherwise agonizingly "half-inflated balloon boy" Senate bill which would direct $10 billion dollars to the construction of regional health centers all around the nation.


Now, MeanMesa visitors, this is not to be confused with the brazen Senate "buy-off's" such as , for example, the $300 million slipped to Ben Nelson ("D?" - Nebraska) so his state would never have to pay its part of Medicaid bills or the dough -- this time $100 million -- Mary Landrieu ("D?" - Louisiana) got for casting her vote in favor of the bill. Those million dollar checks were what is called "state specific." That means that all those dollars would be spent only by the states which successfully, uh, extorted them out of the national treasury.


Anyone living anywhere else besides Nebraska or Louisiana gets nothing -- except the bill to pay for these bribes, of course.


Not so with the Sanders amendment. Not so at all! His regional health centers will be just that -- regional! That means that they will be built all over the country, providing subsidized health care -- especially preventative medicine -- to literally millions of Americans who need it. That means that there might probably be a new regional health center in your neighborhood!


Naturally, the old white men in the GOP immediately tried to torpedo his idea. "Wha' this here's nothin' else but SOCIALISM! Ef us rich whaht folk gotta' pay fer somethin' lahk this, why, our chillen' gonna' be slaves to the government! This here's so 'spensive thet there's gonna' be nuthin' but debt fo mah granchillen!"

Right.

Now let's look at the money for a minute.


Sanders plan calls for 10,000 regional centers. When we divide $10 billion dollars by 10,000 regional centers we get -- ah, subtract seven from four, carry the two -- $1 million dollars per health center. Remember, these aren't hospitals! These are nice, sensible, regional health centers providing nice, sensible local health care and preventative medicine. A million dollars per copy seems pretty reasonable. (The price tag on the whole health reform bill is around $900 billion.)


So far, so good. But what about the "debt slavery" Senator McChinless is worried about for his grandchildren?


Maybe this is a good place for some MeanMesa perspective. Senator McChinless and his penny pinching conservative crime friends had no problem whatsoever pumping literally trillions of dollars into the W's oil war in Iraq.

$10 billion is 1% of a single one of those Iraqi trillions. The United States is currently spending $3 billion per week to sustain our military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, after a little higher mathematics, the question becomes quite understandable -- even for the information challenged. Would you rather have a regional health care center or another three weeks of war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

MeanMesa's compliments to Senator Sanders.

About 2009 war costs ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/07/terror/main4704018.shtml

About Ben Nelson's "vote money" ...
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/21/who-s-really-to-blame-for-ben-nelson-s-medicaid-buy-off.aspx

About Mary Landrieu's "vote money" ...
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vote.html

A New Idea: Talk To Me!

MeanMesa knows that there is no shortage of defeated resignation among citizens when they watch the Senate, time after time after time, debate matters which don't matter and then make deals with people who have no business dictating our lives. This situation will not be limited to what they have now successfully done to what used to be health care insurance reform -- it extends gleefully to banking regulation, cap and trade carbon legislation, Afghanistan, you name it.

The Senators are dancing on our check books. They are not embarrassed by their psychotic avarice. They care very little about what we might think of it. They have no intention to stop the practice.

They just keep looking at each other and, when there are no red faces or voices of Constitutional patriotism staring back, the mayhem gets even worse. More outrageous. More egregious. They have long since ceased considering what they might see on our faces.

In fact, all those far roaming, allegorical complaints about the absence of statesmanship among the denizens of that house of thieves grows more and more believable the longer we watch them. Is there no way to bring the Senate back to its far more noble tradition?

There might be.

We can begin by considering the popular definition of statesmanship. One ability included in the definition is debate. Statesmen should be persuasive debaters. For younger MeanMesa visitors who have never actually seen a debate, it runs like this. There is a proposition which is in contention between the sides of the debate, that is, an argument which has at least two possible conclusions.

The Traditional Meaning of Debate

The debate itself is an organized (there are rules and a structure which are enforced by a moderator...) chance for speakers from either side of the contended argument to try to persuade debate judges that they are "right" and the other guy, well, isn't. Of course, the debaters prepare for the session by studying all the information which might help them make their case and "cooking up" special parts of their arguments which they hope will be impressive to the judges.

One great benefit of debates when they are done this way is that everything comes out. The last thing one of the debaters wants is to be confronted by either some compelling information or something "cooked up" by his opponent. Because of this, debates are not solely decided on the validity of the information presented, but also on passion, the ability to think on one's feet (a feature which usually helps keep either side from outright lying...), confidence and speaking ability.

When all these traits are manifest on the floor of a debate, watch out because something interesting is about to happen.

The Senate's Meaning of Debate

Unhappily, there are debates and then, there are debates. When we see the grizzled face of a Senator on the News Hour, he will speak of "debate in the Senate." What he refers to is not very similar to what is described above. In the Senate, clerks and consultants have thrashed through every word of what will be said, fortressing the whole speech so not a single thing can become a "fish hook" for the other party. The resulting oration is usually a well greased, watered down mishmash with a couple of harmless "talking points" inserted here and there to satisfy the evening news.

All the really important communication does not rely on the "debate." It will be handled in back rooms with assistants and lobbyists. Lobbyists with checkbooks. The "floor debate" is intended for our consumption, even though no living human can endure much of what is offered. The only exception to this is that lobbyists can endure it. They will listen to see if their masters "got their money's worth."

Further, the Senators don't even speak to each other. They will all speak to a CHAIR which represents the President of the Senate. There is no "give and take" between Senators conducted anywhere that we might hear it. The "give and take" must be undertaken secretly -- usually in back rooms -- where bribery and corruption are not so embarrassing and no one outside the backroom can be certain about who was actually there.

That dismal picture is usually what is called "debate" in our United States Senate.

Other Interesting Senatorial Habits

When a Senator thinks about what we would ordinarily call a "debate judge," he will claim that his "debate" will be judged by the American citizens in his constituency. Now granted, any of us stupid enough to watch this old worm stagger through his prepared speech might emerge from the suffocating calamity with an opinion (about either the proposition or the Senator...), but there will be no "judging." The "judging" will be conducted when the Senate has a floor vote and all the other Senators -- who have also probably NOT listened to Old Senator Gas Bag's carefully crafted speech without "fish hooks" either -- will cast their ayes and nays as they have been instructed by their respective lobbyists.

When Senators appear on public media, they are allowed to say that a vast majority of the American people want precisely what the Senator wants them to want which usually turns out to be what their lobbyists want the Senator to want them to want. If that is a bit ponderous, then the theme has been accurately set!

For example, Senator McChinless from down south somewhere keeps saying that the American people don't want a public option in the health care insurance reform bill. Senator McChinless (he wears perfectly round eyeglasses...) knows that poll after poll says exactly the opposite, but he can continue to say over and over whatever he wants or whatever his lobbyists have told him to say.

And, Senator McChinless in the perfectly round glasses is not alone in this brazen prevaricating. Senator Botox Rat Face, also from down South somewhere, and Senator Happy Farmer from out in the midwest somewhere, all compete with each other to see who can say the most lies about "what the vast majority of Americans want." There are many others. The GOP has run out of any convincing ideas a decade ago, so these new "ideas" of theirs are presented over and over, even in the face of overwhelming contradicting evidence -- evidence that they are as unpopular with the electorate as unionized bed lice.

Ah, Satan's Garden of Human Delights is crowded with under-informed voters. The circus's center ring is orchestrated by Ohio's Orange Tan (not orangutan...) who eagerly recaps the lies of the others on his masters' wholly owned "news" networks.

Normally, such a bad habit would "catch up" to these wormy ScrewTapes sooner or later, but their masters have taken the precaution of purchasing the media. Because of this, all these liars can just "roar on ahead" as long as they please. Public sentiments mean nothing. Lobbyist checks mean everything.

But, this MeanMesa post is not about campaign finance reform. It's about debating.

This discussion would be remiss indeed if it neglected to mention the most favored Senate habit of all -- cloture. Cloture is the bastion of the filibuster. Without cloture, there can be no "debate" on the floor of the Senate. Conveniently, 60 of the Senate's 100 votes must be cast in favor at cloture hearings for proposed bills to reach the floor of the Senate for their subsequent "debate."

For example, in the matter of the health care reform bill, it is precisely this "cloture" which has required everything including the "kitchen sink" to be quietly negotiated away in hopes of avoiding a filibuster. The sagging fragment of what is left is now being blocked by the imposition of yet more arcane "Senate rules." When "cloture" is blocked, there can be no "debate." But wait, there wasn't really ever going to be be any "debate" anyway!

Now, there are those among us who believe that simply forcing the obstructionists to physically filibuster -- in other words, actually perform their "threat" -- would embarrass the miscreants enough to somewhat rectify the situation. MeanMesa doubts this. Republicans have taken great efforts to have "extra thick skin" and uninformed constituencies.

But what's left?

MeanMesa's Solution: Real Debates Where We Are the Judges

How would something like this actually work?

In the Senate there are clearly two identifiable "sides" at play in every case of proposed legislation. If our basic ideas both about the Senate and about debate are reasonable, those Senators should be happy to have an opportunity to "debate" the matter. This means actually debate, not the toothless masquerade we're accustomed to seeing on the Senate floor.

The rules of the Senate would remain in the Senate. No Senate rules would prevail in our new public debates -- they would be controlled by debate rules. The "sides" would be forced to argue their positions in oratorical combat with their opponents. They would be forced to say what those positions were and defend them. Constituents could watch these Senators hash out their best plans and ideas in a transparency beyond anything we have seen in our lifetimes.

Once the "gauntlet had been cast down," refusing to debate would be political suicide.

The voters watching the debate would have a chance to set their own opinions about what had been debated. If the voters viewing the debates concluded that one proposition was persuasive and then watched as the Senate enacted the opposite into law, voting choices would become obvious. Extremely obvious. Hopefully, frighteningly obvious!

The "sides" could challenge each other with "I dare you to stand in a public debate with this position of yours." The "sides" could agree on the precise proposition to be debated. No more artsy, clever "Gotcha" questions from over paid pundits! Real debates aren't "prompted" by a string of cutesy, trick questions. They are the battlegrounds for settling the proposition both "sides" agreed to debate. The winner captures the support of the voters.

Senate campaign "war chests" are based on the idea that we will vote for someone -- anyone -- if he can just buy enough television commercials, hence the reprehensible effect of lobbyist money. We can replace that old technique with real debates! Senator versus Senator, no holds barred, right on our television sets debating proposed Senate legislation, not simply promoting ill defined, gaseous generalities about "Change," "Peace," "Family Values," "Prosperity" or some other nonsense.

Yup. We're talking blood soaked specifics here. Let the sides select their speakers and take on the public option or single payer! Let the chosen orators support or disclaim increasing troop strengths in Afghanistan, spending stimulus money, regulating banks, capping carbon emissions or changing education policy. The mind-numbing cordiality of the Senate would be left in the Senate. The debate would be for the hearts and minds of the voters!

Real time!

The debates would no longer be a confusing act perpetrated under the out-of-date protection of the Senate. They would be acts of transparent democracy. Voter opinion -- not back room deals -- would become the final authority on matters such as "cloture" and "floor debates."

Centuries ago, the earliest democracies in ancient Greece and Imperial Rome were directed by exactly this approach. It is a tradition to which we should return. The reason ancient Athens attacked Macedonia was because Demosthenes convinced the Assembly! His Phillipics were so famous that we now find them in the Harvard Classics.

This reintroduction of active statesmanship would force the chosen Senators to present their arguments with clear statements, formal information and passion. The "majority of Americans want" crap would be instantly challenged if it were to be uttered in an active debate instead of the safe, painless isolation of a talk show interview. The statesmen would unavoidably emerge from the process. The hill billies, bigots, crooks and looters would be "sitting ducks" for the onslaught of the opposition, and we would have a chance to see all of it for ourselves.

Should this practice "catch on," even local elections would improve. Local candidates certainly would.

Cast in comparison with such great debaters as William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, this Senate sucks. MeanMesa is "done" with the lot of them.

It's going to be up to us to fix it.

Articles about what's going on in our Senate:
From BeltWay Blips (quoting Huffington Post)
http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/story/read-it-gop-senator-pens-obstruction-manual-for-health/
and from Emory University, Stanton Abramson, The Emory Wheel:

http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=27774

Buses versus Blue Dogs

No, MeanMesa isn't going to tell any tear jerky "dog stories" about Blue Dogs getting run over by buses.

Well, maybe just one short one.

MeanMesa recalls clearly the rehabilitating words we heard when Whinin' Joe Lieberman whimpered back to the Democratic caucus after thoroughly soiling himself as the lap dog of the McCain Campaign. It was suggested then, by, of course, brilliant pundits and other objective observers, that his votes could be counted on for good, solid Democratic proposals in the Senate.

Wow! What a difference a few months makes!

Now, probably thanks to the BIG MONEY he has been sucking into his re-election war chest from his health insurance corporation sponsors in Connecticut, he's about as welcome as the smelly drunken uncle at the Chanukah party. That would be the smelly, drunken uncle even before he starts trying to drag the little girls into the cellar.

Now that his "possible assistance" in passing Democratic legislation through the Senate's quagmire of special interests has, well, lost its sheen, Old Joe's latest ambition has everything to do with his self-conversion and resurrection to become the stinkiest Blue Dog of them all.

Likewise, the flowing apologetics for the remainder of the Blue Dogs offer up flowery "softeners" about the fact that they were just barely elected in the first place. Oh my! Those deeply red states, staggering under the soul wrenching embarrassment of the Republican fostered autocracy, slipped just enough in 2008 to elect a few brave Democrats -- temporarily tolerated with the quiet promise that each of them would act like a Republican.

We could simply never expect these battered Blue Dogs to stand up for the country and act as if they were actually Democrats! Why, they'd lose those seats faster than Glen Back could start sniveling!

Oh sure, a bunch of the Blue Dogs really don't have as much concern about getting re-elected as they do about getting their checks from the insurance companies. After all, if you were a one term Democratic Senator -- a Blue Dog -- wouldn't it make sense to pile up as much "campaign war chest dollars" as possible before you returned to the old home state to run against the new, bright, shiny neo-con those folks picked as they returned to their right minds while you were gone?

You know, the pimply little neo-con lizard with darting, paranoid eyes and $10 million dollars in his, uh, campaign account.

It's possible that some of the "overly cautious" Blue Dogs are actually worried about getting re-elected, but most of them just seem to be shopping the boutiques in D.C. grabbing up new outfits for their next careers as health insurance lobbyists.

So, where do the "buses" come into the fray? What's the plan?

Well, New Mexico -- the home base of MeanMesa -- has two pretty good Democratic Senators, Jeff Bingaman and the newly elected Tom Udall. They're not Blue Dogs. They support the President, health care reform and vote conscientiously with their party. After the last "rough and tumble" election, they'd better.

That means that lots of New Mexican Democrats will be free to lease buses and travel off to those states where the Blue Dogs are doing whatever it is that they are doing. We can knock on doors and talk to people about all sorts of common interests, but especially about cleaning house in the Senate. And, it's not just going to be New Mexicans on those buses, either.

MeanMesa has to assume that most Americans are pretty well over the idea that we must agonizingly continue with the fruitless work of trying to persuade these "old style," "bought and paid for" Blue Dogs. No more persuading! They need to "move on" to their post term, lobbying jobs!

Don't worry about this herd of has-beens. They'll still have their health plans.

There are plenty of buses to lease -- everywhere! There are plenty of real Democrats ready to go to the Senate -- everywhere! Let's get busy and elect them -- everywhere!

That's how it works. After all, this is America!

MeanMesa Surrenders to the Rich

A heartfelt speech of sincere apology MeanMesa would like to make to Mr. Billy Joe Billionaire for all the bad stuff we done.

To set the stage, Billy Joe Billionaire's jest relaxin' with a mint julep on the veranda of his ranch house. MeanMesa approaches, barefoot and still dressed in coveralls from a hard day's work, head hung low and eyes fixed on the ground.

Billy Joe speaks, "Come on up he'ah onto the porch, boy. I heared yew got somethin' t' say t' me."

At first hesitating, the farm hand (MeanMesa) slowly climbs the steps to the veranda and breathlessly begins to speak, holding his worn straw hat in his hands respectfully.

"Gosh, Mr. Billionaire, I jest don't know where to start. Whatever you may be thinkin' right now, I wanted to come up here and tell you how sorry we all was about things and to promise ya that we'll try t' do better in the future. You know, try t'stay in our place a little better so's we don't upset you so much.

Geewhiz, after you let us elect Obama, I reckon we all jest started thinkin' crazy. We kind 'a got swept away with the moment, and thet crazy thinkin' jest seemed to keep on goin'. Now that I kin look back at it, we started acting pretty damned uppity right about then. I want you t' know that acting like thet ain't really what we wanted to do t 'all. We was just excited, and we kind 'a lost our grip on whut we was doin'.

But once we got started, all excited and everything, stuff like thet health care thing just got out'a control. We sort'a got too big fer our britches. Damn! If any of us done had our heads screwed on right, we would have knowed better than to try somethin' stupid lahk thet. I don't know what got into us.

We were running around like little kids, electing majorities in your Congress and Senate -- thinking, somehow, that we could jest plow right on ahead and do any democratic thing whut come to mind. It really was jest the excitement and everything thet made us act like thet, you know, foolish and stubborn -- disrespectful.

We wasn't thinkin' about you t'all. We was jest roarin' forward with whut we wanted, ev'ybody else be damned. Most of us never even thought about how hurt you and your insurance company friends might git 'cuz of whut we was doin'.

We know thet we deserve to be punished. We can only plead for you to be as kind as ya' can. We unnerstand now why you and yer friends took all thet money out the economy. Actually, it was fer our own good, even though we didn't think so at the time. It sort of shocked us into realizin' how unreasonable we was behavin'.

Hell, some of us done thought after we ponied up all that bail out money that y'all might just relax a little and let us have some of the stuff we was want'n, but now we realize that we were jest bein' selfish. Now we know thet the bailout money was already yours anyways -- even before we gave it to you.

We also knew that you guys had already paid a darned pretty penny to set yourselves up with the Senate. I cain't imagine, now that I'm back to my right mind, why we was thinkin' we could jest elect a majority and railroad right over you to get what we wanted like health care or a climate bill or some oth'a crazy thing.

Thank God thet y'all was set up to handle stuff like this. Y'all know, make it right! I guess that once the possibility that some of our tax money might be directed somewheres else b'sides on over to y'all come up, we sort'a done went crazy. It was like sipping corn whiskey or something. We got all liquored up faster than we expected, and off we went, trying to change all sorts of stuff that we didn't have no business bothering with at all.

Once you and your helpers started spewing out the lies and stuff, we started to realize how important it was for us to do the right thing and keep everything jest like it was. Them lies didn't really bother us all thet much, but once we thought about why you was doing thet, it dawned on us that you was really gettin' upset. Later on, I figured out that you and your rich buddies were really having hurt feelin's.

We are so, so sorry. We should'a been more grateful instead of jest bitchin' so much.

So far as trying to make things right, I don't think we can unelect the President now once we already voted him in, but that don't mean thet we cain't start over without pushin' back on our crazy plan to make all these changes. No sirree! We could for sure do thet alright!

We already have a plan to get on the phone'n call all yer Congressmen and Senators and tell 'em that we didn't mean it. We can tell 'em that it would be lots better if they just dumped the health care bill before any of you guys got hurt and we'd still be pleased -- no, honored -- to vote all of 'em in again. I think maybe thet might work.

Maybe we could talk them into passing a law thet made it illegal to change anythin' about the set up we have right now. If y'all gave 'em orders to do the same thing, I bet they would. Then, at least your money part would be set straight again. Then y'all could plan that the cash would start flowing in to you the way it is s'posed to.

That'd make yew feel better wouldn't it? Gettin' your money to start flowing just like it always done in the old days, right?

Yew could have yer Senators raise our taxes to pay back all the hard earned dollars we made yew spend to throw the vote. Even add in some extra! We could add a little extra taxes on top of thet to make up fer how bad we tried to treat you. Now that we're in our right minds again, none of us thinks it was fair fer yeu to have t' spend all thet money jest on account of our pig headedness. We cain't figure that you're goin' to believe how bad we feel if we leave without fixin' somethin' like that.

In fact, wh'ah don't y'all jest order up a nice big tax break to freshen up yer money bins? We kin go right along with ya' on somethin' like thet. Y'all deserve a nice present for taking'such good care of us and all. In fact, maybe we could get yer Senators to make a nice tax break for the hill billies and bigots yew had t' hire fer yer tea bag thangs. Thet might sweeten 'em up a little, too. I have to admit, we was purty hard on 'em while the fur was flyin'."

So, however yew decide t' punish us will be jest fine. We know we deserves more than just what ya' done to the economy. After all, if yew jest let this slip on by, we'll never learn.

Yup. Spare the rod, spoil the child."

The “Co-Op” Will Save the Day!

“It's like a condom with a hole. It looks like protection.” Stephannie Miller (Albuquerque, KABQ 1350AM, 18 August 2009) 110

The Republicans and the Democratic Senators of the “wholly owned” variety dismissed the possibility of a single payer approach to the health care reform matter at the first light of the first day of debate. The total resistance was presented in a chilling certainty: “We will never vote for a health reform package which includes the single payer option.” Period.

The obvious implication of such a well ordered affront to what the American people had indicated as their first choice was, well, negotiate.

Once those negotiations were in progress, the dramatics were introduced on all fronts. Senator Grassley's (R-Ohio) “unplug Grandma” was perhaps the first of many carefully tuned “word salads” to gain traction under media enhancement. “Federal take-over of health care” placing a bureaucrat “between you and your doctor” quickly followed.

The hill billies and bigots, that is, the base of the Rush Limbaugh Party, found “secret” diamonds in their salads. No thought was required for these reactionaries to literally explode with “free market” outrage, whatever that meant. Dick Armey, a very soiled Senator for the racist past, had been languishing in the rest fields of forgotten bigots for too long. In no time he found himself at the helm of an incredibly well funded “organizing committee” with the stated task of keeping the hill billies and bigots in a frenzy of manageable outrage. There would be the harsh doggerel of the hand made signs, the “Obama is Hitler” and the unchallenged appearance of gun toting “freedom thinkers” on the fringes of Presidential town hall meetings almost at once.

You see, the hill billies and bigots among us had taken quite an affront at the ease of the Obama camp during the Presidential campaign in 2008. It was a predictable response to being excluded from a sophisticated, sincere populous of Obama supporters. The “Yes We Can” crowd was having discussions about ideas which might map a possible emergence from the destruction of the Bush autocracy. The hill billies and bigots were left by themselves, stranded with their vacuous insistence that “there were two sides to the argument.”

You betch'a. Precisely as there are two sides to a plan to bail out a life boat after a ship wreck.

In fact, once the “bail out” plan was executed at a significant cost of Obama's political capital, the hill billies and bigots continued to fervently criticize it. Unable to comprehend the gravity of the situation of the “life boat” or the “bail out,” the hill billies and bigots insisted on pretending that the calamity was no more than politics, you know, a simple matter of which side will prevail. The matter of the sunken ship and the life boat tossing about on the stormy ocean of a very perturbed world meant nothing more than an opportunity to them. The “lesser people” could be inducted to the pedestrian tasks of laboring to save the country while the hill billies and bigots remained unburdened with any of such menial chores, free to savage new opportunities.

The outcome? More negotiating, only, this time, the “public option” was to be removed from the table as a condition of talks. Anything less would be tantamount to an imposition of appeasement. The billionaire insurance masters were emboldened. They issued this “combat order” to their servants in the Senate, and those toadies obeyed, promising to employ every Senatorial “trick” that they had learned after spending all those years in Washington.

Time for more moments with Grassley. His orders included proposing the “health care Co-Op” idea. He very dutifully trotted out his long, warm hearth tale of Co-Operative development in his heartland agricultural state. The trustworthiness of Co-Ops arising from the fact that they were non-profit entities managed by members – innocent consumers of the Co-Op's wares honest, hard working, dedicated to the good of the membership and elected rather than appointed in the thrall of glory oozing out of a Board of Directors who would sell Mother Mary's after birth if given a chance.

Grassley's exposition might have material, factual merit when applied to agricultural co-operatives. Those groups were forced to rise up in their own defense from market manipulators with very starkly “free market” ambitions of controlling agricultural markets to the detriment of farmers. When those farmers saw these economic parasites routinely bankrupting them, purchasing their farm lands for pennies on a dollar and then amalgamating their advances into gigantic agricultural conglomerates such as ADM and Monsanto, they formed co-operatives as a form of self-defense. The continuing threat continually posed by the Juggernauts of those “farm gobbling” monsters has sustained the enthusiasm for such co-operatives even today.

A perfect, prepackaged ruse for the Grassley. What could be more attractive to a population of wounded, health care greed victims than such a story of “good old American know-how” and “stick-to-it-ism.” The plan would include very little government intervention and, yet, would still be a “free range” of health care insurance providers beyond the death grip of the insurance corporations.

The media was ordered to portray the plan as a literal, modern, economic “wet dream.”

It did. In no time, the “co-operative health care” solution was ascending with no less glory than the bright warm, dawn sun of a beautiful new day.

However, as usual with media portrayals, some rather pertinent details were carefully omitted from that gushing media presentation. Those details would be any mention of an example of the recently ennobled phenomena of “co-operative health care.” After all, weren't there contemporary examples of such a fabulous solution to the dilemma?

Uh, not exactly. You see, there is actually a contemporary example of the perpetual blessings of a “co-operative health care wet dream,” and it is close at hand. Blue Cross and Blue Shield began their corporate lives as a co-operative health plan. Along the way, this co-operative of health care consuming members “drank the Kool Aid,” turning into one of the current mega-corporations practicing every one of the profit extracting outrages typical to the industry giants. It now splays itself in a myriad forms, tax exempt, “non-profit,” legally monopolistic (thanks to the good work of its carefully purchased Senators and Congressmen), all deceptive, grotesque (and profitable) denizens of the “big take,” quite able to defend themselves by embarking on “lie campaigns” and freely furnished, misleading television propaganda.

An exaggeration? Media Matters produced an insightful “Fact Check” on a typical Blue Cross Blue Shield operation in North Carolina. ( http://mediamattersaction.org/factcheck/200905190001 ) There, in that hill billy paradise of illiteracy and corruption well populated with Republican Neo-Con miscreants and other bigots with ambitions of destroying the President because he is black, every nasty aspect of the stinking game emerges into daylight.

It turns out not to matter so much. The Republicans and their Blue Dog (lap dog) Democrats have already said they will never vote for a Co-Op health care plan either.

Health Care: Legislative “Firepower”

A call to action.

“There’s nothing better for morale than superior firepower.” Major Gerson Subotky, U.S.M.C. (1961) 105

Many of the Congressmen and Senators -- from both parties -- are presently reporting that constituent contacts, that is, letters, emails and phone calls, are running roughly even “pro and con” on the issue of health care insurance reform. This may seem unlikely given highly reputable public opinion polls which show Americans in favor of the reform at above 70%. How can this be?

Are these legislators lying about the message from the public arriving in their offices and switchboards everyday? Probably not. Much more likely our fellow citizens are presuming too much “democracy” in action. Get over it.

What we see is not “democracy” in action at all. The debate is between every corporate interest group currently benefiting from the existing health care scam and a bankrupt, unserviced populous suffering from their parasitic greed. The executives of those “health care” corporations are now screaming for the Congressmen and Senators they have carefully purchased to come to their aid.

The Congressmen and Senators representing us need a heavy duty infusion of "firepower!" And they need it now. Call them! Email them! Give them some "firepower" so they can represent your interests! Visitors to MeanMesa need to find the time to add their two cents to stopping this gang rape. The alternative is to submit peacefully to another fifty years of passive slavery.

Those executives, through their business groups (called “health care gangs”) are spending a reported $1.2 million per day to keep those “voter” phone calls coming. For the mathematically challenged, that is $1,200,000 per day, $84,000,000 per week, $366,000,000 per month. Don't ever underestimate what nasty, little, greedy monsters these guys are. Don't ever even think about believing the crap they are pumping out through the rancid mouths of their trained monkeys like Fox, Limbaugh and O'Riley.

Their $350 million a month effort has already moved "single payer" off the table, but those in the legislature with enough common sense, decency and self-preservation are still -- sort of -- trying to get the "public option" for us. Forty "bought and paid for" Republicans think that they can still decide the future of the country, even after they have soiled themselves "sucking teat " in the Bush autocracy, lost two elections and revealed what crooks they actually are every day since then.

Gosh! Where did they get all that money? The fact is that they have gotten LOTS MORE than the little dab they are spending to keep their PR schemes going, and they have gotten all that money from your health insurance premiums! They are wallowing in the cash they make by denying claims and screwing everyone with a pre-existing condition. Some health insurance chief executives are getting more than a billion dollars -- $1,000,000,000 -- a year to run those companies.

Uh, did you think that was a good deal?

They are buying radio and television time to ply their lies about the reform idea. Their commercials -- always an appetizing treat to the bigots, hillbillies and other crooks -- are a constant stream of inflammatory deceptions.

“Do YOU want a federal bureaucrat between you and your doctor?”
“The public option will mean health care rationing -- you know, like France!”
“The SO-CALLED reform measures will mean long waiting lines while you are dying of fatal illnesses!”
“If all the poor people get health care, it will BANKRUPT the country!”
"Public health care never worked in the socialist, European countries that have already tried it!"

Well, those bigots, hillbillies and crooks are flooding the phone lines, citizen. They have no idea what they are doing. They are simply responding to the expensive, half-witted poison of the health care corporations.

If you want them to decide about your health care, just relax and they will. On the other hand, if you think we can do better than what we’re doing now, get your ass on the phone, the emails, talk to your neighbor, write a letter to the editor. The choice is to either continue to pay $10,000 a year to these shysters or go without a chance of help if you get sick. Make your choice. You can sit there accepting the “bargain price” of whatever you’re paying now for the rest of your life -- by the way, health coverage costs are increasing steadily at the rate of 8% per year. But, even that is no problem if your wages are increasing at a higher rate. Uh, wait a minute, are they?

You can keep on “tempting fate” with the hope that you will never get sick. You can “man up” and “tough out” that heart attack or cancer or the little tumor which will take your house and bankrupt you. Does that sound like a good plan?

Then, DO NOTHING, and that’s what you’ll get.

Jump out of MeanMesa this instant! Call your Congressmen and Senators. Act in your own interest. You have the time to be a good citizen.

60 Votes, Senate Cloture & “The Theory of Everything”

The Fundamental Equation of the Senate.
No, not The Law of Thermodynamics, the "The Theory of Everything!" It explains, well, Everything. 103

Much has been said about the outrage of an elected Senate which seems so nonchalant, untroubled, unembarrassed and unabashed as it continues to savage health care, climate change, education resources, Supreme Court Nominations, darn, as it continues to savage everything! The deliberating body has turned into an unappetizing mix of a whore house and a nightmare circus.

Obama knows this from his first hand experience with these “bought and sold” crackers. He had a job there for a while. However, some MeanMesa visitors may not have a firm grip on exactly what is going on as we sit and watch unbelievable scandal after unbelievable scandal. Rather than dive into the abyss of any specific insult, MeanMesa will attempt an abbreviated explanation of “standard operating procedure” in the U. S. Senate as it is apparently being applied to every bill presented there.

The provocateurs are world wide experts at their trade. Their profession is a balancing act between two extremely lucrative tensions. On one side, the prize is an uninformed, unaware electorate which, when assuaged by the idiocy of sufficiently extravagant campaign investments, will dependably send them back to the “hog trough” term after term, even when doing so is clearly counter to the best interests of almost every voter who will pull the lever. On the other side is the immense wealth which can be had by desanguinating just a trifle of every piece of legislation that will pass before them, that is, "sucking out a little blood, but, just not so much that anyone will notice!" When the price tag on such legislation is in the billions, that “trifle” can be generous enough to fund a new economic dynasty.

This is happening everyday. It is a bad habit these crooks picked up during the autocracy.

The other moment to observe them in action comes when one of their corporate cronies suddenly faces the “wrath of daylight,” that is, during those tense moments when such "Captains of Industry" such as the coal lobby or the health insurance corporations suddenly find their avarice exposed by “outrageous fortune,” in this case, a bankrupt electorate which is regaining consciousness and, frankly, infuriated to a blood frenzy. This latter case is roughly what is underway in the Great House on Capitol Hill as this posting is being written.

All the lecherous Senate monkeys the ultra-rich have previously purchased to protect their extraction games have been called to defend “free enterprise” or “capitalism” in these moments of peril. Now, that “free enterprise” and “capitalism” is not exactly defined by what one might encounter in a Webster’s Dictionary. No, indeed. These special forms of “free enterprise” and “capitalism,” rather than being what is characterized by hard working, innovative entrepreneurs, amount to decidedly less noble business endeavors which could never actually make a profit left to their own devices, but, when dutifully lubricated by every possible flavor of crooked legislation and de-regulation, turn out to be “roses, simply roses!”

The following diagram might be similar to something which might appear in a “Beginner’s How To Pamphlet” for a new Senator. It explains, in a very basic way, just what will be expected and required for a prosperous incumbency.


The diagram is self-explanatory to anyone who has been “confused” by the news accounts of what has been happening in the Senate. Further, it represents both a useful contextual reference which can be cited in future MeanMesa postings and a simplified sort of “flow chart” which might assist in understanding why public opinion means so little and ideology means so much.

Try it out! The next time -- which will probably be tomorrow, the way things are going -- the news from the Senate becomes incomprehensible compared to what you learned in that old civics text, just take a look at the diagram. You will probably be able to point a finger at exactly which stage of the looting the thieves are working on at the moment.

More later. Rest assured. There's plenty more for later.

What Health Care Reform Looks Like From the Ground

A Letter to President Obama from Precinct 384

This quick note is about a serious difficulty we are having with Organizing for America’s (OFA) health care talking points.101

I am an “Obama soldier” from the campaign -- precinct 384, NE Albuquerque, neighborhood team 39. Naturally, I went to the new OFA office this morning after receiving last night’s phone call. I met the all the friendly, bright eyed, eager folks hunched over their laptops and picked up a copy of the canvassing material.

After looking through it, I am concerned that this effort is making the same mistakes that were made in the campaign -- at least, the same mistakes with respect to the precinct 384 “voter universe.” For 30%-40% of the voters in this precinct, the talking points are a “clear miss.” In fact, I suspect that they even go so far “off target” as to be insulting. This is too similar to an unfortunate repeat of what happened in the endless 2007 - 2008 Presidential campaign “slug fest” where the most persuasive campaign issues seemed to simply be “over our heads and over our pay grade.”

I’ll note the exact conflicts the “Three Principles”President Obama’s promotion plan presents in the real life situations of this constituency.

1. Reduce Health Care Costs
This constituency: They usually don’t pay for treatment. They wait until things get really serious, then they go to the ER and apply for “No Pay” treatment. That process is frustrating, uncertain, demeaning and time consuming. They suffer from all the subtle indignities of this process -- especially when they know that other people have actual health plans. They are totally ready to pay more taxes to get dependable care.

The emphasis on “keeping” your doctor means very little to my neighbors. They don’t have a doctor. They have probably never seen the same doctor more than once or twice. They are completely accustomed to taking what they can get. “Go to the Doctor,” to them, means packing up the family and waiting in the ER for 5 or 6 hours, then not having enough money for medicine until payday.

2. Allow Choice of Coverage and Doctor
This constituency: They have never made any choices at all so far. Period. No choices! Coverage to them means the “safety net.” They, frankly, don’t understand what “choosing a coverage” means. They have never had an employer provided insurance plan, although they may know people who have. A 21st Century version of "keep away."

3. Better Quality Health Care
This constituency: They have no way to make an opinion about health care quality aside from their memory of outcomes. They haven’t experienced enough of a variety of health care, that is, the variety that is implied in the talking points, to make a judgment. As for reducing the paperwork, they have never had health care other than the “No Pay” kind which is always chest deep in agonizing, belittling paperwork.

I’m not interested in starting a class war here, but the OFA material seems basically intent on doing just that. Precinct 384 contains an awful lot of voters who are simply put off by choice issues presented to them at this level. The choice the voters in this neighborhood have made is simply one in favor of improved access to health care.

We registered a lot of these people who had never voted before to elect the President. When we talked to them and approached them in a suitable way, they were completely ready to learn about the election politics and VOTE! However, the Presidential campaign had the same “over their heads” direction as this health care thing, and we could have failed to deliver this state if all this population remained “left out” in favor of a campaign targeted at more prosperous urbanites.

Precinct 384 voters have the same worries as most other Americans. They know that, in a well designed response to the grave damage done to the country during the autocracy, major investments in not only health care reform, but also in climate change, energy policy and educational resource allotment, will mean huge spending bills moving through the legislative process. In the past, they have seen every such possibility of actual progress being ruthlessly looted as it is “negotiated” into oatmeal in the Congress. Traditional hillbillies, crooks and neo-con bigots join forces with "bought and sold" Democrats, emerging from their dens to savage any good idea, that is, to extract every possible illegitimate advantage for their friends and campaign contributors.

About 1/3 of New Mexico is watching these health care developments while “looking up” from the very bottom of the heap. We are a poor state with lots of immigration, education and public service issues. Our neighborhood team made our own campaign literature for 2008 for just this reason. And -- this seemed to work well. Both the President and OFA must make more of an effort to include this constituency by focusing on a description the new system and what it will be like for Americans in this very real situation.

I was never much of a John Edwards fan, but he talked about “Two Americas.” He was right. In New Mexico we need “Two Campaigns” and some way to keep them pointed at the right constituencies. The neo-cons are already targeting the new Democratic Congressional delegation from New Mexico. We can’t let this slide back to where we were when the state went for Bush in 2004.

To President Obama: “Remember us! Tell about a plan that relates to our ‘on the ground’ reality. We support you now, and we will continue to support you, but we would like to be included in the debate!”

U. S. Senators Forced into Frightening Health Risk!

The following news snippet appeared last week. MeanMesa's attention was brought to it by comments on the Ed Schultz radio show, May 7th (1350AM, Albuquerque, "The Ed Schultz Show," 10AM to 1PM weekdays)93

Protesters disrupt Senate health care hearing

May-5-09 8:51am
From: www.ap.org

Protesters pushing for a government-run health system have been thrown out of a Senate hearing room after disrupting the meeting.

It happened at the start of a Senate Finance Committee session on overhauling the health care system to cover some 50 million uninsured Americans.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has said that a so-called single-payer system — one that's run by the government — is not on the table. Many liberals favor that approach but Baucus and others say it's not practical or politically feasible.

Single-payer supporters repeatedly interrupted as Baucus tried to convene Tuesday's hearing.

When one protester shouted "we want a seat at the table," Baucus responded, "We want police."

Capitol Police removed eight people.

Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana. Senator Baucus's current term expires in 2009.

By now we have all watched the Senate long enough to understand the terrifying gambit our democratic system places on Senators. The health care question is a great example.

Of course, there is the voting population which is painfully aware that any approach to health care which excludes the single payer option will never amount to anything other than more of the same. Wallowing under a patiently and carefully crafted umbrella of Senatorial protection, the entire health care industry franchise has every intention of extending its incredibly profitable extraction scheme well into the future. That is, well into our future.

Down here on the “receiving end” of the current health care outrage, we know about the constantly increasing prices for coverage, the ever more rapacious denial of “preexisting conditions,” the total control over treatment in the hands of the corporate bureaucrats who make the decisions about what treatment will be available.

40 or 50 million of us know what it feels like to have no health care coverage at all.

Even those who are “covered” know that any kind of health emergency can plunge them into bankruptcy. Yet, that flow of “profits” to the health care providers, the HMO’s and the pharmaceutical giants must not be interrupted, must not be interfered with in any way. Our lot in this disaster is to simply keep paying and paying or simply suffer silently through illness and injuries. Too often, even for the “covered,” it amounts to both.

The industry has paid billions in campaign contributions to reinforce this strangle hold and the guarantee the “profits” it will inevitably provide to them. Now, the “rooster is home to roost.” The Senators who have received such extravagant largesse are now on the spot to perform their part, to provide the services they have been paid so well to render.

Here’s what these poor, belabored Senators now must face.

On one side, there is the immense money for campaign contributions from their “friends” (masters?) in the industry. The idea here is that enough money will keep getting them elected regardless of how unrepresentative their Senate votes might be on the matter. On the other side, there are all these voters who can’t count on access to the health care system because they have crappy coverage or no coverage at all. The problem is, although all these health care victims can’t provide campaign financing, they can provide votes.

If you are one of these Senators, the beautiful song from reelection heaven is a chorus of uninformed voters.

The gambit for the Senators? Can enough campaign contributions overcome not enough votes? Oh, dear.

Of course we expect greedy neo-con reactionaries to be against anything that might injure their corporate sponsors. There is no reason for us to whine with expectations of them actually representing the needs of their constituencies. The neo-con approach promises that enough campaign spending will bury any serious issues and replace them with tried and true hillbilly favorites such as god, gays and guns. That gamble is based on reaping the advantage of an under-informed or un-informed electorate which can be maintained in that state by constant inebriation with endless rounds of free reactionary KoolAid. This has been the quite successful strategy of both the stinky Senate bigots from the south and their proteges peddling the same gaseous lies in the north.

These crooks have managed to convince their constituencies with relentless, frenzied lies that:

health care is way too expensive
universal health care is a nightmare of lethally bad service
government bureaucrats will decide if they can get care or treatment
that poor people just want to go to the Doctor because it will be free.

Now, however, President Obama has “soiled the pot” for Democrats in the Senate. He has raised the unruly possibility of actually providing actual health care for the entire country. For the broke, nearly “over the edge” urbanites. For the presently uninsured. For the “wrong colored.” For those too poor to purchase Senators. For everyone.

Reactionaries and neo-cons claim that they don't actually ever get sick because they always seem to be able to "lift themselves up by their bootstraps" in time for more tax cuts. That is because, uh, they are so superior. No problem. Obama wants them to have health care, too.

Well, Senator Max Baucus, having no single payer voices at the table during your health care hearings was already an outrage. The arrest of any citizen in the audience who asked why you did that was even more of an outrage. Too bad your health insurance benefactors didn’t pony up a little extra cash to buy off Ed Schultz. The “fat redhead” is getting ready to feed you a delicious recap of all this on his radio and television shows.

Ahem, it’s already reached MeanMesa.

The Senate reactionaries can’t do anything else besides what they’ve been paid to do. Of course there’s going to be a scrap. As voters, our job is to keep a list of which Senators voted for what we want and which Senators voted for more profits from their campaign contributors. Will they pick “cash” or “votes?” Or, will they keep thrashing along on a wet dream that, if only they manage us a little better, they can have both?

In 2006 and 2008 we met the Republicans.

In 2010 and 2012 we will meet the incumbents.

Gosh. I wonder how that’s going to turn out?

For a recap with plenty of statistics, check out:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w5.63/DC1

and the article cited for the account of the hearing:

http://www.zimbio.com/Senator+Max+Baucus+of+Montana/articles/52/Protesters+disrupt+Senate+health+care+hearing

Health Care Without the Lipstick.

Another MeanMesa Lipstick Commentary! This time HealthCare!63

A little history.

As Americans, our intuitive, aggregate concept of “health care” has become, gradually, and perhaps, unavoidably, more and more complicated, more and more unexamined and more and more incomprehensible as it slowly transformed itself to present a new, modern phenomenal definition. Things have been “added” to it.

Entrepreneurial opportunities have been identified, encouraged, injected and groomed in ways which inevitably transformed it by indulgences easily betrayed by modest semantics. Masterful commercial psychology has successfully contaminated both our interest and our expectations in ways that have converted an older, more rational approach to a modern frenzy of insistence, liability and other barely manageable (again, codependent) demands.

Fifty years ago the United States was enjoying the tangible benefits of being a culture which was not burdened with resurrecting itself from recent military destruction. The proletariat economy was literally awash with good paying jobs and a highly visible population, consequently, endowed with remarkable -- at least by global comparisons -- discretionary wealth. Lingering atop this frothy “three tiered wedding cake” was the fairly widely accepted proposition that the system at play here was “the very best in the world” with respect to all sorts of things.

What kinds of things? To name only a few, our new hegemonic military; our ICBM’s, our industrial productivity, the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of our citizens, the proclaimed freedom of religion and the arguably hypnotic luxury of a vast, barbecue pit, martini drenched social extravagance. Naturally, human beings lived a bit longer in such a place. Overlooking clean water, fresh air, plenty of food and even “pretty good shoes,” we quite comfortably attributed that good fortune to our health care. Why not? It was, after all, “the best in the world.”

Doctors here had entered a developmental phase predicated on the idea that going to school longer meant earning more afterward. Hard classes, harder cash. What had previously been best described as a comfortable livelihood was reinventing itself into an economic opportunity able to compete with a new populist conception of the old robber barons.

The religionists had done very well promoting their famous “death fear,” that is, the proposition that one, by willingly servicing religion’s economic avarice in life, might have an edge at the Gates of Judgment. The militarists franchised a bit for themselves as they maximized the contemporary (and well remembered) advantages of war’s horror to extract resources dedicated to Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex.”

Interestingly, the doctors were able to also promote their own, small franchise enabled by the same happy neurosis.

“Death fear.” Our interest in controlling as much of this inevitable calamity as possible began to direct our entire economy and our cultural psychology. The religionists promised intercessionary comfort from the hands of the blindly retributive divinity. The militarists promised protection from premature death resulting from violent military aggression here before more acceptable forms of demise. The doctors promised defense from the risk of premature death resulting from preventable or remedial assault by bacteria, viruses and traditional homo sapien system failures.

Health care was slowly redefined from its original purpose. What had once been the hope of “curing what ailed me” became a promise to “live longer.” Although this change was an undetectable subtlety in any specific visit to the family’s physician, the big picture of medicine was becoming enthralled with the prospect of being able to make much greater promises and, as a result, engorge ever larger amounts of the cultural resources. This was the first new addition.

Likewise, our penchant for controlled results subcontracted a growing part of the promises of the doctors’ new found franchise to the compensatory notion of paying for failed promises. Malpractice, although hardly a medical treatment, injected itself into the already heady brew of unrealistic expectations and codependent demands for controlled outcomes. Previously, the successful treatment of some malady was accepted as a happy serendipity. Aside from outright malfeasance, with this next, new addition, medical success could finally embrace the psychotic notion that recovery was the only “fair” outcome of treatment, moving anything less to a status not dissimilar from “breach of contract.”

A third addition was the new idea of directing research toward the most marketable styles of medical problems. There is no way to speculate if the development of Viagra retarded discovering the cure for skin cancer as it diverted research cash, but Viagra is by no means the only distracted target and skin cancer is, equally, by no means the only possibly neglected, alternate break through.

The social culture had delivered all sorts of drugs and treatment regimes to the doctors as it slowly moved away from the heroin and cocaine saturated elixirs of the early 20th century. Once it became clear that a certain treatment advantage might be gained from a more educated dispensing of, say, antibiotics the die was cast. Another addition. Immediately attached to that treatment advantage came a franchised, statutory and dependable addition to direct income. Big. Direct.

In Tijuana or Juarez anyone with enough pesos can simply purchase antibiotics from a pharmacist. The right pharmacists might even offer a suggestion as to selecting the right one. The statutory self-preservation aspects of the doctor franchise will probably prevent you from legally bringing them back to the United States. Antibiotic outcomes are better here with the statutory insistence that they be dispensed by a medical doctor and blanketed by the liability promises made possible by our appetite for compensated malpractice. Those outcomes falter a bit when they include the outcomes of those who must simply suffer without any unaffordable care.

Perhaps the next addition is the idea that, although prescribing medicine is still left under a doctor’s discretion, commercial advertisements can openly seek to direct a potential patient’s interest toward certain pharmaceuticals. The proposition is that this possible, future patient may not know what to tell his doctor so as to initiate this line of necessary, successful and profitable treatment. The infomercials solve that.

Also added are certain psychological presumptions. Departing briefly from the death fear, the capitalists have managed to successfully suggest to doctors (and insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies) that any diversion from the current system would inevitably curtail what are presently claimed as reasonable, capitalistic profits. The countering view is that these reasonable, capitalistic profits are actually another one of our famous capitalistic “bubbles,” that is, reasonable, capitalistic profits probably not that reasonable after all. This addition survives on innuendo, but it survives.

Another almost subconscious addition has found its way into the mix. It seems that these highly ethical doctors have a habit of “milking” treatment costs in certain situations. In many cases, this has successfully been blamed on the patients. It turns out that extremely low income and minority patients simply don’t know how to consume health care as cost effectively as more well-to-do sick folks. The concept is not too hard to swallow. If these ne’er do wells were smarter, they would find themselves in the more prosperous category.

The obvious conclusion is that health care for these “lower class” patients is far more likely to be unreasonably expensive. The unreasonably expensive idea arises from several origins. The first is, simply, that the more prosperous are paying for it. From that point of view, any treatment at all may as well be unreasonably expensive. We see that brutally manifested in modern political dogma. It has never been easier to “jerk the knee” of an illiterate neocon with even the most innocent mention of an alternate medical economy.

Another important side effect which must be avoided in that argument is the possibility that less than ethical doctors are encouraged to haul their medical franchises to these, well, less desirable neighborhoods where special opportunities for excessively profitable treatment seem to abound. The down side possibility of this neo-conservative, self-fulfilling prophecy is lubricated by maximum resource extraction until the happy day when that dire prediction becomes fact. Poor people love to consume unnecessary medical care when rich people are forced to pay for it. Unethical, lower class doctors love to bill this into existence so long as they are held harmless from criticism, prosecution or Medicare review. This concept has definitely been added to the mix.

Finally, we arrive at the elephant in the living room. Again. Except in this case, the elephant is better cast as a six hundred pound hog. A hungry one. Not directly attaching Sara Palin to the argument, the lipstick issue rises up front and center. This, of course, is the matter of medical outcomes. The question of medical outcomes, inevitably joined at the hip to the question of medical costs, immediately casts its shadow on the question of medical profits and the comparative value of alternative medical economies, not neglecting the strange taint of medical economic ideology. All the feathers swirling around this headless chicken fly right in the face of the “best in the world” axiom describing our health care.

U.S. health care outcomes suck compared to those of comparably prosperous other countries. U.S. health care costs also suck when compared to the same alternative programs. Pay more. Get less.

It isn’t glorious, expensive new inventions that justify our health care costs. Nor waste. Nor welfare fraud. Nor chiropractors. Nor herbalists, accupuncturists or midwives.

It’s profit. You know, profit like the profit buried in the pharmaceutical bill that was authored by the pharmaceutical lobbyists and passed by the, well, pharmaceutical congress at 3 o’clock in the morning.

"Lawzee! Peddlin' these pills turns a better profit than sellin' whores in a lumbercamp!"

At this juncture, our cultural rip current of Marxist paranoia instantly enters the fray at full power. Who, exactly, is getting all this money? Who, exactly, is convincing us that our meager medical outcomes are actually the “best in the world?” What voice keeps telling us that, if we think a social medicine system is so great, to simply visit Canada? Canada, where everyone hates the national health care? Canada, where hordes of sick people flood into the U.S. every day, trying desperately to save their lives? Canada, where pharmaceuticals exploit the huge, honest investments we make here making their socialized price there attractive enough for elderly Americans to ride buses across the United States for a chance to buy them? With uninsured cash? Please.

If not Canada, then Europe. England. South Korea. Japan.

If the elephant in the living room is hard to ignore, discover the pig. Aside from being huge, it also stinks. Hogs also have a famous insistence on eating everything that isn’t bolted down, and this one is no exception.

Quick! Apply the lipstick! The good old “best in the world” lipstick.

Had enough? Remember this medical-pharmaceutical-insurance monopoly franchise on November 4th. Vote.