Recent experiences reporting in Washington leave me with the uneasy feeling that some pretty influential Dems have grand plans for their own careers, but don't really care about what happens to the rest of us after the 2008 election. Of course, the GOP has nothing to offer beyond 2008 but 1909, so it's not much of a choice.
Democrats have been exploring ambitious grand agendas in Congress and on the think tank circuit. Yet when it comes to pass legislation the results are iffy: witness five months to pass a no-brainer like the first minimum wage increase in a decade and still counting on the time it will take them to show some spine on Iraq.
If you're anywhere on the inside-the-Beltway policy scene, you get to see among the Dems a lot of slap-happy politicoes who are feeling that come 2008 they'll once again have august titles in the executive branch and work in Federal style buildings with huge rococo windows behind them. Yet asked pesky pertinent questions about real human needs, they don't seem to have given them much thought.
The hundreds of millions that will be wasted on the coming presidential campaign is shaping up to be about jump-starting the careers of Dems and sending the Repubs back to trading bonds in Gucciland.
The reporting on which these feelings are based hasn't yet seen the copyrighted light of day, thus I can't discuss specifics. Even then, I make my living as a journalist, not pundit. Yet speaking from deep in my heart of hearts, I am getting uneasy with the way things are going.
2008 threatens to become the rise of the Republicrats.
Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2007
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Reach for Zero
We have heard of the 40 million-plus uninsured Americans so many times that we're inured to the number's cruelty until something in our ordinary life drives the point home.
This was my experience yesterday, when the receptionist at the HMO asked me for my membership card as I arrived for treatment. Then she added "and a picture ID."
Being the sort of fellow who will one day get arrested for making forbidden jokes in this trivially overserious society, I wondered out loud who would want to pretend to be as sick as I felt.
"Someone without health insurance," she said, in a tone that unmistakably bespoke experience.
Suddenly I felt like the rats fleeing the Saigon U.S. Embassy in 1975, protected by gates and Marines from a crowd jostling to get out of town by sundown. Without further ado, the well-spoken, mild-mannered HMO gatekeeper had welcomed me in and made certain to keep others out.
Someone else would be denied a human right to which I acceded merely because I am me. In case you wonder at the term "human right," here it is in article 25, paragraph 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care ...
We are a society that violates human rights to the point that we ration medical care.
Incidentally, the latest figure at this writing for the number of Americans lacking health insurance is 46.6 million, or 15.9 percent of the U.S. population (2005) -- in absolute or percentage terms, this is a record high.
This is not something the richest country in the world need live with, like the common cold. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree. There are cures for the health insurance problem that fall well short of revolution.
In Australia, Britain, Canada, and most of Europe, the number and percentage of the population without access to regular health care for economic reasons is zero.
There is no good reason the United States can't match that -- except greed and selfishness.
This was my experience yesterday, when the receptionist at the HMO asked me for my membership card as I arrived for treatment. Then she added "and a picture ID."
Being the sort of fellow who will one day get arrested for making forbidden jokes in this trivially overserious society, I wondered out loud who would want to pretend to be as sick as I felt.
"Someone without health insurance," she said, in a tone that unmistakably bespoke experience.
Suddenly I felt like the rats fleeing the Saigon U.S. Embassy in 1975, protected by gates and Marines from a crowd jostling to get out of town by sundown. Without further ado, the well-spoken, mild-mannered HMO gatekeeper had welcomed me in and made certain to keep others out.
Someone else would be denied a human right to which I acceded merely because I am me. In case you wonder at the term "human right," here it is in article 25, paragraph 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care ...
We are a society that violates human rights to the point that we ration medical care.
Incidentally, the latest figure at this writing for the number of Americans lacking health insurance is 46.6 million, or 15.9 percent of the U.S. population (2005) -- in absolute or percentage terms, this is a record high.
This is not something the richest country in the world need live with, like the common cold. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree. There are cures for the health insurance problem that fall well short of revolution.
In Australia, Britain, Canada, and most of Europe, the number and percentage of the population without access to regular health care for economic reasons is zero.
There is no good reason the United States can't match that -- except greed and selfishness.
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