In Oregon, the state government is literally tossing a coin to decide whether you live or die. They're holding a lottery to decide who gets state-funded insurance for the poor. Win the lottery, you live. Lose the lottery, you die. And there's 90,000 applicants to the lottery, but only 10,000 chances to live.
Oregon whines that they don't have the money to provide health care to all Oregonians who need it. That's bullshit. Let me repeat that: That's *BULLSHIT*. Bull fuckin' shit. What it is, is that Oregonians don't want to pay to provide health care to all Oregonians who need it. It's a case of "I got mine, and fuck you." It's a case of selfishness and stupidity. It's not a case of lack of money -- all Oregon would need to do would be to enact a sales tax on durable goods, and there'd be money for health care for all Oregonians. It's a case of Oregonians thinking they can have something for nothing -- that they can have health care without paying for it. Which of course is nonsense, but Americans seem rather prone to believe in "something for nothing" scams...
The fact of the matter is that health care costs money. Right now 15% of my paycheck is going to pay for health care. It doesn't matter to me whether that money is going to a Medicare for All payroll tax, or being taken out on a pre-tax basis by my company. Either way, it's not in my pocket. The only difference is that Medicare for All would take out only about 7.5% of my paycheck, not 15% of my paycheck, since 50% of American health care costs are soaked up as profits by private businesses rather than being provided as services to actual Americans. Medicare is approximately 40 times more efficient than private business at providing medical insurance services to Americans -- yeppers, their administrative costs are less than 5% those of private insurers! So much for that "government inefficiency" bullshit, the numbers just don't support it. So why the hell do we continue to kill 20,000 Americans per year -- more than Osama bin Laden has ever killed in his wettest of wet dreams -- just to protect insurance company profits? Are profits for insurance industry fat cats worth the lives of 20,000 Americans per year that are killed due to lack of health care? Oh wait, this is America. Of *COURSE* profits for millionaires are more important than the lives of Americans. Sheesh, how naive of me...
-- Badtux the Health Care Penguin
Good one Badtux :)
ReplyDelete...and so what is your state doing to provide basic health care for at least some of its uninsured residents who don't qualify for Medicaid?
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to be snarky, but the various articles that invite all sorts of hateful, blistering comments about all of us brutally heartless Beaver Staters for not stepping up to the plate to do the right thing seem, somehow, to miss the point that there are pretty much damned few places in this great country of ours where anything approaching Orygun's efforts to cover at least some of the otherwise uninsured and federally unqualified citizens has even been attempted...
The Oregon Health Plan, which this obscene little lottery is a part of trying to get back to, was a landmark bit of healthcare policy that didn't cover everybody in the best of days, and it was flown into the ground by the early years of that robust Bush economy that basically bankrupted the state. There are damned few states in the country that have been trying to address the fundamental issue of 'universal health care' to the degree that this state has been trying, but the bottom line is that it is not the responsibility of Oregonians to pay the taxes necessary to create a universal health plan for residents. It's the responsibility of all citizens all across the nation to come together to support some sort of national single-payer program outside of the predatory practices of health insurance companies in order to provide at least minimum health care to everybody...
The bottom line is that NO single state should be required to force upon its own citizens the requirement of paying for the health care of all the citizens unless ALL the states are going to be doing the same thing. The only solution that works and that prevents something as brutally heartless as the lottery system that Oregon is trying to employ right now is to have a national plan that addresses the problems of the underinsured who don't qualify for Medicaid...
The state of Louisiana provides medical care on a sliding-scale basis via state clinics and hospitals to all citizens of Louisiana. It's funded via Medicaid funds, federal "impact" funds for hospitals that serve uninsured, and state funds, all of which go into the common pot to run the system (which is run by LSU Medical School).
ReplyDeleteAs for Oregon being bankrupt, bull fuckin' shit. Oregon is one of the richer states of the union, much richer than Louisiana. But Oregonians don't want to tax themselves. Oh wah!
And you whine that the citizens of a state shouldn't have to pay for medical care for the citizens of a state? Oh yeah, that's right, "don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that guy behind the tree!" I keep forgetting!
- Badtux the Tax Penguin