Trust the Ferret, the Ferret is Wise

One of the biggest problems with our ridiculous health care system in the US? Besides the fact we spend much more than any other country for the same results, besides the millions of uninsured, besides how much of that gets siphoned off as profits straight to CEO pockets.

The problem is health care is tied to your job. So people keep jobs they hate just because they can't afford to lose health care. Or they might not get it because of "pre-existing conditions". Or they'd have a three month gap before it kicks in at their new job. Or they can't go start their own business because the health insurance costs would kill them. And companies are spending lots of money insuring their employees, when companies in other countries don't have to spend as much, because they have better universal systems.

This video has to do with that. I saw that a couple weeks ago but hadn't posted it. What set me off today was this report from the Kaiser Foundation about health care. Let me steal the section hilzoy quoted over on Obsidian Wings. I heard one piece of this, the 7% marriage part on the radio this morning.

"The poll also found that in the past year, 23% of U.S. residents said they or a member of their household had either decided to stay with a current employer, instead of accepting a new job, or had switched jobs because of health insurance coverage. In addition, 7% of respondents said that they, or someone in their household, had decided to get married to obtain health insurance through their spouse. (...)

According to the poll, 37% of U.S. residents reported at least one of six financial troubles over the past five years as a result of medical bills:

20% had difficulties paying other bills;

20% were contacted by a collection agency;

17% had used all or most of their savings;

12% were unable to pay for basic necessities, such as food, heat or housing;

10% had to borrow money; and

3% declared bankruptcy (Kaiser Family Foundation release, 4/29)."

But, y'know, universal health care will eat your babies and kicks puppies.

Two sets of "they" I'm referring to.

First, the people the real blame belongs on. The Republicans in Congress, who don't even pretend to put the good of the country ahead of their bosses in big businesses. In this case, the giant oil companies, who've been raking in record profits for years.

But also, the Democrats in Congress, who aren't even bothering to pretend to put any effort into any of the things they were elected for, they're just letting the Republicans block everything with fillibuster threats, not even actual fillibusters. They just say they need more numbers to get anything done. Which is true enough, their majority rests on Joe Lieberman, who left the Democratic party and ran on the Lieberman for Lieberman ticket after he lost a primary challenge. But they don't even make the Republicans actually get up and fillibuster.

But on to the bill.

A few weeks ago, the House passed an ambitious energy bill, with renewable energy mandates, support for plug-in vehicles, increased fule effieiency standards, and other such goodness. It wasn't perfect, there was a lot of wiggle room and funkiness, but it was a definite step in the right direction.

So then it went to the Senate. And the Republicans there were having none of it. So, the renewable energy package was cut from the bill. It still wasn't enough for the Republicans, by one vote. 59-40 to cut off debate.

So what finally got the Republicans on board? A watered-down version which didn't close $13 billion in tax loopholes for the polluting oil companies. The same oil companies that have been raking in record profits from the high price of oil the last few years. Once that was dropped, the Republicans hopped on board, and the bill passed 86-6. The "free market" party put giant tax giveaways to huge companies who are too lazy to change ahead of tax breaks and incentives for small companies trying to innovate and help fix our problems. And President Bush, a failed oilman, said he'd veto any version with the oil tax llopholes closed, of course.

"The White House has said the taxes would lead to higher energy costs and unfairly single out the oil industry for punishment. A Democratic analysis showed that the $13.5 billion over 10 years amounted to 1.1 percent of the net profits that five largest oil companies would be expected to earn given today's oil prices."

The Democratic leadership couldn't even keep up a fight for more than a single day, to convince one Senator to vote a better way. Not even one of their own, the Senator from Louisiana who broke ranks.

And this is what the Republican party values. Tax breaks to giant profitable companies over the good of the country, over innovation in small and medium businesses, over the ability of our civilization to adapt to and weather the problems we've made.

Social Security is fine. It has plenty of money. republicans want to get rid of it because they hate it, and have hated it from the time it was introduced. And hate it because it's doing just fine.

The other day I read the prequel comic for the Transformers movie. It was not so impressive, on several levels, since it didn't cover or explain much of the stuff you'd expect from a prequel. Nothing in it added anything that I'm sure won't be covered by the movie.

But that wasn't what really irked me. No, the part that really irritated me was an almost throwaway line. There's an Obligatory Secret Government Agency, and said Obligatory Secret Government Agency is studying an alien piece of tech they've found. So one of the new guys looks at the pictures on the wall and wonders "Is that Robert Oppenheimer?" And then they go through a couple of other names, and one of the old hands says "How did you think we won the space race?" And in the end they give credit to almost all modern tech, from microwave ovens to digital watches to breakthroughs from studying the alien tech.

Yeah, I bet if we did find alien tech, even broken alien tech, it'd probably lead to a number of breakthroughs. Even if the aliens aren't super-duper advanced, their tech would probably have advanced along slightly different paths and so on. But the writer gave credit for pretty much all of modern society to this alien tech, and that just pisses me off. It's totally devaluing the cleverness and genius of the human race. It implies everything we've done is just from taking things apart and making monkey copies of somebody else's stuff, instead of developing and discovering things for ourselves. Some great respect for the abilities of humanity there, guys.

Come on, we can discover stuff on our own. We're clever monkeys.