Fuck It!

Published on MySpace, March 21, 2010


Continuing in the spirit of my previous post a few minutes ago, I am going to further my rant.

However, I'm done ranting about health care and the possible abortion plug.  Why is it Americans are so against change?  Why do we rally around sticks in the mud or the ostrich who buries his head in the sand? 

Let me be clear: I am but a lowly citizen who can see our system is not working.  Yes, I can see both sides of the coin.  I do not want a government official who has never met me telling me WHAT policy I need.  Yet, there are so many Americans (many of whom are young) who are sticken with illness they did not ask for nor did nothing to cause they just happened to be genetically unlucky.  What of them?  Is it fair they spend the rest of their lives paying medical bills just to live ... err.. I mean exist?

It's not perfect.  Nothing will ever be perfect.  I have to wonder, does our democracy even lend itself to public health care?  In a society where capitalism abounds and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, can a public-run health care option even work?

Okay so I lied; I was not done bitching about health care.  It's funny to me when I look at a country like Japan.  They have public health care. 

Japan has the longest healthy life expectancy on Earth and spends half (in percent of GDP) as much on health care as the United States. Japan has universal health care system. Everyone in Japan is required to get a health insurance policy, either at work or through a community-based insurer. The government picks up the tab for those who are too poor. It's a model of social insurance that is used in many wealthy countries. But it's definitely not "socialized medicine."

Eighty percent of Japan's hospitals are privately owned — more than in the United States — and almost every doctor's office is a private business. The Japanese go to the doctor about three times as often as Americans. Because there are no gatekeepers, they can see any specialist they want. Japanese patients also stay in the hospital much longer than Americans, on average. They love technology such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); they have nearly twice as many scans per capita as Americans do. The Japanese Health Ministry tightly controls the price of health care down to the smallest detail. Every two years, the health care industry and the health ministry negotiate a fixed price for every procedure and every drug. That helps keep premiums to around $280 a month for the average Japanese family, and Japan's employers pick up at least half of that.

If you lose your job, you keep your health insurance.

Japanese insurers are a lot more accommodating than their American counterparts. For one thing, they can't deny a claim. And they have to cover everybody. Even an applicant with heart disease can't be turned down, that is forbidden. Nor do health care plans covering basic health care for workers and their families make a profit. Anything left over is carried over to the next year. If the carryover was big, then the premium rate would go down.  No one in Japan goes broke because of medical expenses. Personal bankruptcy due to medical expenses is unheard of in Japan.

I am so sick of people who are unfraid of change crying socialism in this country.  Look up the fucking definition of socialism, and I guarantee 85% of you who accuse Obama and the Dems of socialism will recant your rants. 

It's disgusting to me that we, as Americans, fight each other tooth and nail over something as universal as health care.  Why aren't we fighting corrupt politics?  Why aren't we working together to clean up our environment and our energy policies?  Why aren't we working together to end the two wars we're fighting or to end hunger and disease in our country?

Clearly I am not someone who has any place to bitch at anyone else.  I'm not out there protesting.  I'm not working with environmental groups or feeding soup to the homeless.  I am an American with an open mind.  And that mind is open enough to recognize the flaws not only in my own political party but the the system as a whole ... to recognize that as fabulous as our democracy may be, it is so far from perfect.