Note: All opinions are those of Pat Schwind only, & not those of anyone else at Impact Mortgage Network.
Our guest was supposed to be Local Liberal Radio Talk Show Host, Dr. Mike Newcomb, to discuss Health Care Reform. But an emergency arose the night before, & the good doctor had to spend all night & well into the morning with a sick patient. However, being one of the luckiest & most proactive people on earth, I had already lined up a great ‘back up’ speaker, “just in case”! Dr. Weisbuch was already on the calendar to speak on the same subject, 2-25-10, & I asked him to show up 11-5.
Dr. Weisbuch was an officer in the US Navy, & a doctor on the USS John C. Calhoun submarine, for 2 years. He's also been an officer in the Maricopa County Health Dept., here in Arizona. He was the Medical Director of the Los Angeles Dept. of Health Services; the Director of Health & Social Services for the state of Wyoming; an officer in the North Dakota State Health Dept.; and the Massachusetts Director of Correctional Health Services. He's been a physician for 50 years.
Needless to say, the Dr. has been "in the trenches" & "on the front lines" of public health issues for most of his career. He's a firm believer in national, universal health coverage. It amazes him, (& any other rational, intelligent & concerned citizen, I believe), why we don't have such a system, when virtually every advanced nation on earth does, & we've been debating the issue, off & on, since the days of Harry Truman.
Cecil Ash said that the proposed Health Care Reform plan being debated in Congress right now, would add 150 new agencies to the Federal gov't. I guess Republicans only like new agencies when their aim is to kill brown people, stifle dissent, or trash the Constitution, as was the case for the 8 miserable years under the lying coward W.
Dr. Weisbuch countered that he's not in favor of new agencies, but that's what the result has been, at least in the negotiation stage, while the gutless Dems in Congress, try to placate the GOP, to get some votes, in order to get some kind of Reform enacted. Us Lefties don't really want new agencies at all, & wish the Dems had the spine to fight for a true Universal Plan. But our nation has been in the grips of the Slavers (the "Greater Confederacy") since the early 1800's, so that's what we have to deal with, at least until we abolish the US Senate, to get some real democracy, rather than constantly having to be bullied by racists & greedy cowards, from states that have more sheep or hogs than people, & where the idea of "change" is simply despised, especially by the average ignorant cracker in those states.
The people who claim that "we don't need no stinkin' Health Care Reform", are the same type of narrow minded idiots, who had no problem with the "Peculiar Institution" (slavery), & they long for the days when they could push around women & brown folks. These are the "T-baggers" & "Birthers", who repeatedly vote against their own self interests, rather than embrace ideas that actually might help society.
Why do these provincial rubes do so? Simply because a positive change might raise the standard of living of brown folks, immigrants & women. And they don't have the 'intellectual heft' to get past the "warm fuzzies" that stupid people get from hating some supposed enemy. Their heroes are Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Lou Dobbs, Sarah Palin & the 3 blond clones: Kelly Fitzpatrick, Ann Coulter & Laura Ingram. They want to "take their country back"!! To the 1940's; & some to the 1840's.
We had a very rousing discussion. My libertarian friends keep going back to their tired mantras, almost as lame as some ditty from Mao's "Little Red Book", such as "we don't need a gov't health care plan", if they're sort of smart, but more like, "socialized medicine just doesn't work", if they're not. I got a little flustered, & must apologize for responding just a bit to emphatically, that socialized medicine seems to work just fine for most of the top tier nations of the world. And that the poor stiffs in "Lower Zangaro" would prob'ly kill somebody to have socialized medicine.
(But they're usually too preoccupied simply trying to find food each day. Or if they're lucky enough to be part of that slim but powerful class of bureaucrats, connected officials & high level flunkies, who serve some horrible despot, often propped up by despicable corporate interests, & the U.S. gov't, they might be busy trying to loot their own country, or stay clear of the creeps who are.)
(The first person to call me at 480-250-8182, & correctly identify the "Lower Zangaro" reference, gets 10 $2 bills. Only you gotta drive over to my place to get 'em. I hate traffic. Or I can send them snail mail.)
I also pointed out that most so-called libertarians, had no problem voting for the GOP, not Libertarian candidates, for the last 20 or 30 years, when the GOP gave us "big government" on speed. They loved the idea of giving the Military every toy they wanted; damn the cost. Most of 'em loved the Wars, until they finally pulled their heads out long enough to realize what a losin' proposition they BOTH were; but they'll never have the intelligence or integrity to admit that we got flat 'snookered', & lied into BOTH fiascoes, by the Bush Crime Family.
That's life. Hopefully their kids will "go away to college", or meet some folks with a "different take on issues" while they're working, or preparing to die or help their buddies kill innocent brown people, in some war, declared or not, in some godforsaken place we never should've been, except perhaps as tourists, or aid workers of some kind. But I digress.
Anyway, Jay thinks that Health Care's so expensive, because the government's too involved in the first place. Dr. Weisbuch countered that medical care in the U.S. is terribly expensive for a # of reasons, a big one being that the entire system is based on the outdated notion that the care itself is a commodity, on which a profit should be made, & at many stages. This leads to built-in deficiencies, & terrible inefficiencies, which ultimately call for lots of unnecessary treatments, tests & procedures.
The libertarian argument falls flat when you examine the historical record. Socialized medicine of some sort, works in scores of nations. Sometimes it's virtually 100% socialism as applied to the Health Care industry. In other nations, it's more like a 50-50 split with a boatload of very high-tech capitalist firms, who compete like crazy for gov't contracts, sort of the way Walmart squeezes the daylights out of private suppliers. Why the libertarians fail to acknowledge the facts on the history here, is as astounding as someone saying today, that the Warren Commission provided an adequate explanation of the JFK assassination. It's that bizarre. Almost as bad as some of the GOP nuts they voted for, most of their lives, who still say the earth is 5 or 6K years old!
Chuck gave a personal testimonial about the great medical care plan that he utilized while visiting relatives, on the Cherokee (Choctaw, Chickasaw?) Reservation. It's a tribal, "government run" medical plan. He had some significant medical work done at virtually no cost. He was very happy & satisfied with the results, years later. It's not "free", nothing of consequence is. It's paid for by the tribe & administered by a tribal council, to serve the tribe & their descendants, in reservation hospitals, & through a vast network of home health care & outpatient services, much of which is done via contracts with private providers. It's financed by all the residents & businesses on the rez. And it works just fine.
Most of Europe provides their citizens with some version of universal medical care, & a decent education until age 18, if not much longer in some countries. It's viewed as a "right", not a privilege. They pay higher taxes, but their quality of life, on average is significantly higher than that of the bulk of Americans, who during the Bush Depression, are simply struggling to put food on the table & stay ahead of the bills.
Savings & vacations are a foreign concept to most of our citizens. And it didn't used to be this bad by a long shot. Statistically, it started "sliding", (the average level of "real", U.S., after tax, after inflation income & purchasing power), about 1970 if you were white, & 1973 if you were black. It's economic history; I didn't make it up. I studied it as it was happening, back in the mid 70's & early 80's.
Dr. Weisbuch feels, as do most committed lefties like myself, that we can do what most European & so many other nations can. But to do so, we have to first do a few simple things:
1. Stop wasting our national treasure on never-ending WAR. We can't continue to be the "world's policeman", when we're usually fighting for, or backing the worst creep in the area anyway. The Defense Budget is bloated beyond reason. It should be a fraction of what it is now. That's heresy to much of America, especially the 'cracker corps' & their "chicken hawk" leaders, but it's reality!
2. Accept the reality that socialized medicine of some sort, is the norm, & quite successful in every modern industrial nation today.
3. Accept the fact that in order to accomplish anything close to a successful medical care system, some aspects of the system will have to change drastically, especially regarding the notion that profit has to be made at every stage of the system.
4. We have to place much more emphasis on prevention & early detection of medical conditions, (both simple & serious ones), while at the same time promoting self responsibility to insure that we all do our part to keep ourselves healthy. This will take some doing in a nation addicted to Salt, Fat, Sweets, Alcohol & Drugs, while most of us disdain exercise of any kind.
We can do this. Dr. Weisbuch stated that any real meaningful Health Care Reform plan must accomplish 3 things:
1. Assure that 100% of Americans get decent medical care.
2. Assure that the providers, whether public or private, get fair reimbursement & adequate compensation for their services & supplies.
3. Have a number of provisions to gradually improve the care provided.
We can do this, if we can just get the "Party of NO", to think of the nation instead of the GOP for a change, while we convince the leaders of the Dems to grow a spine, & stand up to the folks who'd be comfortable watching our country go down the tubes, just as long as it's "on the watch" of a Black Man or some other Democrat. Partisan politics is ruining the nation, but it's not really a 50-50 problem, where each side is of equal fault.
Today, the GOP simply refuses to put nation before party. The Dems are guilty of having no stomach for a fight, & many in Congress are outright stooges for Big Pharma, the AMA, & the Health Insurance Industry. But if the GOP would bend a little, so that we didn't have to "water down" every decent proposal, just to "get the Republicans on board", perhaps we could get something done right for Americans, who aren't in the top 10 - 15% of the economic strata.
Dr. Weisbuch did a great job. Please mark your calendar for 2-25-10, (Thursday, 7:30am), when he'll be back at the Strategic Edge, to give a formal presentation on the topic, after our politicians have another few months to do nothing constructive, or perhaps make it worse, in the meantime.