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Sicko
In this political season, Michael Moore's new film will open in theaters at the end of June. Everyone needs to read between the lines and think clearly. We cannot depend on our elected officials to do this. How many candidates have confessed that they voted on major legislation, including the Patriot Act, without first reading the bill? Even if you believe Hillary Clinton was briefed, we have to ask exactly what a briefing is.
Briefings
So, at the risk of boring you to tears with my Vietnam tales, I will tell you about the year in which over three hundred Congressional delegates were "officially briefed" in Saigon.
Typically,
a cable would come to our office at the State Department in Vietnam
asking us to "RESERVE ROOM AT THE MANDARIN IN HONG KONG FACING
WATER STOP." This was followed by measurements for tailor
made fatigues and "ARRANGE FLOATING MARKET TOUR IN BANGKOK
STOP."
I am not making this up. We had a trench by the airport with a
real water buffalo and a gorgeous Vietnamese girl in a silk ao
dai. The fatigues would be delivered, the congressman would change
clothes, jump into the trench, get his picture taken, and hop back
on the plane so as not to miss his floating market tour. Rarely
was anyone on the ground more than ten minutes. There were two
exceptions: Ribicoff and Kennedy. I was one of those who briefed
these and other visitors, not to mention the press corps. Keep
in mind, I was 24 years old when I went to Vietnam and hardly what
you would call a political whiz kid.
Basically, we were told what to tell the congressmen, meaning everyone
was told what my boss wanted them to hear, and what he wanted them
to hear was no doubt what his boss wanted them to hear and so on
and so forth. They hardly had to leave Washington for these "facts." Stubborn
that I am, I was not complicit but often as not, there was neither
the time nor occasion to get any facts across in a meaningful way.
As if this were not bad enough, there are "safe" and "unsafe" issues:
war is not a safe issue, but orphans and diversion of supplies
to the alleged enemy are safe issues. These are the only subjects
that were raised in the question and answer periods.
There were a few exceptions, bitter rivals of incumbents, dark
horse candidates for high office, and officials functioning at
the state rather than federal level. For instance, there was a
delegation from Hawaii that asked some tough questions, but one
never knows if the facts make it to D.C. I
frankly doubted it because the information route is hierarchical
not circuitous.
Photo Op
Against this backdrop,
take everything you see and hear as nothing more than an orchestrated
photo op. No one in high positions is spontaneous. No one just
happened to visit Iraq much less Walter Reed. What you see is
meticulously arranged in advance, and if the antics were absurd
in 1967, imagine how much less relevant news in 2007 is, a time
when the illusion of a free and honest press corps no longer
exists except in some antiquated textbooks.
If you doubt it, replay Wolf Blitzer calling time or phasing out
one of the dark horses in this election. I would reckon that Kucinich
is the #1 dark horse on the Democratic stump and Ron Paul is
the odd one out on the Republican side. Okay, so our view is canned,
but despite this, we have to read something into the sound bytes
that were no doubt rehearsed and rehearsed.
Between the Lines
Two issues arise that
I hope will get attention in the "net
press". These are that one of the reasons for keeping our
doors open to immigration and for attempting to change some of
the immigration flow is that "we may have need of someone" from
another country, like doctors, engineers, high tech people in all
industries, etc. Loosely translated, this reads, "We will
continue to invest in wars and aggression rather than education,
and we will fill vacancies with foreigners" since American
schools will fail to produce qualified people. Industry must have
decided this is the cheapest way to expand without an investment
in fundamentals and infrastructure.
We can see the handwriting on the walls. If you have a problem,
and I don't care if it is with your bank or credit card company,
your computer, or a lost shipment for something purchased on the
internet, you are likely as not to follow up with inarticulate
people with low morale and no interest in the outcome of your query
or your call will be rolled over to someone working strange hours
in Bangalore. I cannot believe that I am the only one witnessing
a steady decline in job skills on the part of "real" Americans.
Sicko and Campaign 2008
Against this grim backdrop and the theater props of two parties and 18 announced candidates, we have health care on every platform. Let's take this from the least imaginative to the most. The least imaginative would be some lame promise to lower costs of prescription medications for senior citizens. Let's see, with Big Pharma being the richest industry in the world and every single member of both houses being beholden to Big Pharma in some way or other, we are going to ask the patrons of the semblance of a system of government to surrender windfalls by voluntarily lowering costs? If anyone believes this would happen without something replacing the reorganization of profits, he or she is delusional.
It will not happen in our
lifetime. Rather, something much worse would probably happen, like
mandated use of more useless (and/of dangerous) vaccines. Believe
me, this is already happening so whether you think teenage girls
should be forcibly vaccinated for HPV or smaller children should
be vaccinated for everything under the sun, this is a fait
accompli,
not a negotiable point. So, I say again, the least imaginative
campaign promise would be to lower the costs of drugs. Even if
this were something more than hot air, Big Pharma would get something
more in return, like fast tracking of dangerous drugs that have
not been tested, more suppression of competition from natural
medicine, or some other bonus for appearing to cooperate with
the need for affordable health care.
Somewhere a bit higher up the scale of intellectual imagination
is mandatory or universal health care. The ostensible objective
would be to take the monkey off the back of industry. Read between
the lines. American industry will become more competitive if employers
do not have to pay for health insurance for employees. Basically,
I believe that health insurance should not be tied to employment
but if the burden is transferred to individuals without a substantial
increase in wages, this would be another gift to industry. Might
as well put a ribbon on it and a thank you note for millions and
millions in campaign contributions. Moreover, we have to look really
hard at the politics of those advocating this because if they are
Bush Republicans, the words are a euphemism for making the rich
richer and breaking the backs of the middle class. Ergo, this is
not a "plan" but rather a "scheme."
Michael Moore evidently favors federal health care. God help us.
I cannot believe anyone in his right mind wants Big Brother involved
in yet one more gigantic project. If you have ever been to a federal
health care facility or seen a doctor employed by the federal government,
you would know the right response to this proposal.
The Dilemma
The dilemma is how to
provide necessary and compassionate care affordably, universally,
and competently without taking away freedom of choice in health
care and freedom of choice in spending. Personally, I would refuse
to buy health insurance that only covered treatments I would
never use. This said, I have less objection to paying for treatments
required by people in unfortunate circumstances, but I do not
think government can do the job right.
Government is in the business of managing colossal sums of money,
trillions of which seem to have gone missing at the Department
of Defense, but I would imagine that funds go missing in every
department because that is the nature of unwieldy budgets. At the
moment, the U.S. is 45th in life expectancy (CIA data); in infant
mortality, we are 37th; but we have the highest per capita health
care costs. Given that 45 million are uninsured, this is a staggering
figure.
Alternative Health Care
At the moment, at least a third of adults, probably more, use some
form of complementary and alternative medicine. Depending on the
definition used, the figure could be higher. In most cases, the
services of alternative practitioners are regulated in such a way
that they do not compete with the highly lucrative monopolies of
conventional medicine, like cancer. More regulation would therefore
tend to imply less competition and hence less choice. This is already
a serious problem in our country and is much worse in many other
countries.
Americans would have a very hard time understanding needing a prescription
plus $48 for a bottle of vitamin C. I think many would learn to
eat oranges, but this is exactly what has already happened in countries
that have socialized medicine, mandatory health insurance, and
Codex Alimentarius. If politicians have their way, they will say, "get
used to it" in exactly the way that they are talking about
gasoline prices now. I think that this election is more about finding
out where the threshold is for political abuse than leadership
much less reform.
Going deeper and deeper into the issues facing us today, we not
only need a president who is on board with the need for renewal
energy—and not biofuels made with GMO crops—but a president
who is actually a fiscally responsible leader with a vision of
world without war, poverty, illiteracy, or epidemics. Therefore,
we need to examine the ethics as well as the details of the plans
of each candidate and keep in mind that any promise for universal
health care is most likely jargon for a big ding in your pocket
book for less and less coverage. If any changes occur without total
reform of the FDA, Big Pharma, and travesties in the reprehensible insurance
industry, the changes will be for worse, not for better.
Ingrid
Sources:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
http://mchb.hrsa.gov/mchirc/chusa_04/pages/0405iimr.htm
More on Healthcare Reform || More on the Insurance Industry
Becoming an Economist || My Job in Vietnam
Poulsbo, Washington
Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2002, 2006, 2009, 2014
