2011
Both parties’ politicians do the bidding of the same lobbies!
I have spent considerable time arguing that both sides spend a lot of time and effort telling their followers what they want to hear, but then they both do whatever the powerful lobbies want…always for the enrichment of the lobbies clients, and too often to the detriment of our nation’s citizens.
I was thinking back when President Obama had total control of both houses when he was first elected. He was handed the grand opportunity that had been sought since Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency to provide universal health care for our country. What many were expecting was that his administration would propose a one-payer government administered health care delivery system that was very similar to what almost every other civilized country already had in place…and that the vast majority of these country’s citizens were very satisfied with. It was assumed by proponents that the new system would deliver better health care than our broken state-by-state regulated system can at lower overall costs…as was happening in every other country. It was also presumed by many that this would actually be as simple as just expanding the current Medicare health care delivery system…which as far as I can tell…most recipients are pretty satisfied with compared to their private supplemental health insurance.
Instead what this administration delivered was a new health care bill with so many new regulations and agencies created that most of us couldn’t even lift the weight of the paper required to describe the complicated requirements. Why is it so complicated? The answer is quite simple. The administration had to rely on the “guidance” of the lobbies for the pharmaceutical, insurance, and other health care industries to make sure that all of their needs were met. We indeed did end up with the promised “change” that was so often advertised during the President’s campaign…but this only further demonstrates that change is not always so good. We will end up with two primary changes; 1. Everyone, citizen and non-citizen alike, will have the opportunity to obtain insurance even if they have no income. 2. Pre-existing conditions will no longer be able to be used as a reason to deny coverage. Of course the fact that the higher costs for the uninsured and the uninsurables will have to be funded by the taxpayers is simply a side-effect. The true winners are the powerful health care lobbies. Election support had to be repaid in the creation of this change. It will not result in better health care…simply a wider distribution of extremely complicated, state-by-state, health insurance. We will end up with rationing of health care or all tax payers will have to pay for those additions to the system.
Then along come the Republicans to the fight promising to change health care delivery as part of a broader plan to reduce our obscene national debt. Ryan and Boehner to the rescue with massive changes including a new health care proposal. Do they really offer a more reasonable approach? Does it make any sense that their recommendation to gradually cancel Medicare and Medicaid and instead offer “vouchers” that would allow everyone to buy private health insurance is a more positive change? In effect what they are really doing is offering the health care lobbies an even bigger bonus. The new offering will not be less complex than the Democrat sponsored health care bill. How many new pages of regulations will this new proposal take to document? What happens to the tens of thousands of federal employees who currently work to administer Medicare and Medicaid? Maybe they will just get lucky and transition to one of the new government agencies that will have to be created to monitor the new regulations? If there are actually any savings for our taxpayers, they will likely be more than offset with higher out-of-pocket health care expenses for each of us.
It is so sad to watch the continuing proof that our elected leaders from both parties are primarily serving the powerful lobbies that finance their election campaigns and keep them in power. Who is to blame? I think it is all of us. We see clear evidence of what is really happening, but then choose to waste our anger by watching as our elected leaders and the media (all orchestrated by the lobbies) in calling each others names because we happen to belong to that other evil party, or we simply drop out by assuming that we cannot make any difference anyway. I think it is time for real change. That change could start with all concerned citizens re-registering as unaffiliated as soon as possible and then begin to organize and meet to begin the process of creating the much needed amendments to our Constitution that would install term limits and massively reduce the election funding by powerful interests. Nothing could serve to confuse the real enemies as much as their inability to figure out who they had to influence. It would also send a strong signal to our currently elected leaders from both parties that they better either shape up and truly represent all of our citizens or prepare to ship out! These are scary times for our country and it will take extremely bold actions by we the people to turn the tide in favor of our future generations.
These are my opinions. What do you think?
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