Skip to main content

General Welfare is General-Well-Being, not a Handout


It does not take a genius to know that if you exclude, or reduce the number, of young, healthy people from a health care system, it will cost the members more.

Is does not take a genius to know if someone is making a profit from a health care system, the cost of the insurance will be higher than if it is a non-profit system.

Is does not take a genius to know that young, healthy people, who do not want to be a part of a universal health care system, are going to go bankrupt if they have to pay the costs for themselves when something happens to them.

Good health, and good health care, for everyone is to the benefit of the whole nation.

Good health care only for the people who can afford to pay for it themselves is a damned fool system.

We the People say that we, together will 
establish justice, 
insure domestic tranquility, 
provide for the common defence, 
promote the general welfare, and 
secure liberty for ourselves and those who follow us.  

We will be a country of just law and order, live at peace with each other, make sure we are safe from outside threats, provide education, parks, schools, fire departments, roads, railroads, air travel, safe food, water, products, working conditions, fair livable wages, health care, retirement (and so on), and secure liberty for us all.  That is what we fought for, and what we promise to each other.

At this moment, the Republican Party proposes to change our health care system so that anyone can buy into it if they can afford it, solidify it as a profit-making enterprise, invest less public money in it, lower costs (How is that going to happen when it is not universal?), and make everything great again.   "Again" is when lots of people were shit out of luck, not having sensible health care, going to the emergency room.  

This isn't about partisan politics.  
It isn't about a handout.
It is about the kind of nation we promised to be.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more