Only We Can Fix This

I remember quite some time ago when there was an ad campaign which simply said “vote the crooks out of office”. Any money it raised went into running more ads. There were even T-shirts sold to fund the campaign. The campaign didn’t care what political party the candidate was in. Rather, it had a simply philosophy, every incumbent was obviously a career criminal which needed to be moved further away from the tax payer’s wallet.

Funny how things come back into style. I’m seeing a lot of the same campaign. Some say crook and others say criminal, but they have the same sentiment. We’ve all been royally screwed by both Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. No, I’m not talking about Clarence Thomas, who said “no job is worth this” during his confirmation hearings, then took the robe and voted in favor of his former client, Monsanto, during a genetics trial which screwed farmers world-wide, not just in America, and every American tax payer that eats. I’m talking about the recent decision by the Supreme Court which said the limits on corporate campaign dollars were unconstitutional. Any entity can now spend as much as they want promoting the candidate of their choice, so now, big corporations are simply going to put forth one of their own employees and spend shareholder’s money promoting the employee, who is expected to help enact legislation no ethical person would enact.

Today, we are all watching as the checkbooks are open and the sky is the limit when it comes to trampling down health care reform. I would believe the healthcare companies have actually spent more in lobbying efforts than they spent in executive bonuses and stock options over the past 4 years.

Let’s be real here. We have the Post Office. We also have UPS and FedEx. The Post Office couldn’t turn a profit on a bet given its charter, and I’m OK with that. Six days per week a mail carrier delivers mail to every address in the country. Anyone that currently is inside of our borders can write a letter, place it in an envelop, and mail said letter to any address in the continental U.S. for under a buck. Not only is the cost low, but the letter will arrive within 3-5 business days…even on Saturday…for no extra charge. We always joke about the Post Office delivering the Christmas mail in June, but for the most part, it’s a money losing business which does a good job. UPS and FedEx have found ways to both compete with and utilize the Post Office. Those who have money and don’t like the Post Office have other options. Those who don’t have much in the way of money, still have service. Even if you never mail a letter, the Post Office will continue to deliver mail to your address.

I’m a Republican, though it hurts to say that out loud after two terms of snot-nosed-George. I want a public option. We already have Gubmint Motors putting out shitty cars and other manufacturers putting out better ones. Yes, you “could” get by with a Gubmint Motors vehicle, but after the screwing they gave the tax payer, nobody who pays taxes would even consider adding insult to injury by purchasing a new Gubmint Motors vehicle. Admittedly, in the future, I’m sure Congress and/or the White House will authorize pissing even more tax dollars down that abyss and funding programs to get low income people new Gubmint Motors vehicles to help clean up the environment. Of course, since many states have a mandatory insurance law, that program will simply be there to help fill the prisons faster.

I didn’t want Gubmint Motors. I was vehemently against giving any faction of those lying-thieving-inept-bastards one red cent from the federal treasury. We ended up with Gubmint Motors. While they will cook the books in Aurthur Andersen accounting style to “show” a profit, they can never pay back enough to the treasury to cover the royal *(&)_(*&ing we got by them ducking out on their pension and healthcare liabilities. Until they cover all of that along with every cent we’ve had to pay every former GM employee in unemployment and health insurance benefits, they haven’t turned a profit. I want to see a law enacted which garnishes the wages of GM’s upper management and Board of Directors taking 70% of their wages and 100% of all bonus and stock options from them until they pay back every last red cent of that debt.

On the flip side, I want a public option. I want a government run health plan which provides all of the basic coverage needed by both individuals and families and I want every citizen to have the option of signing up without any exclusions. Rather than basing the premiums on the current industry trend, I want the premiums to be based upon a person’s ability to pay. At some point your income will be low enough your coverage is free. Those people making more than $180K/yr (based upon adjusted gross on their 1040) would find the premiums quite high compared to regular commercial plans. The Gubmint Insurance option would never make money, but it would force a nationwide ethical threshold for insurance.

Right now we have absolutely nothing establishing a bottom. Each state licenses the health insurance providers it allows to operate within its borders. Naturally, there have been an awful lot of bribes and some states only have one or two “licensed” providers. This really hit home recently.

A friend from NY asked me what I did for health insurance. I said I went to this eHealthInsurance.com Web site, answered some questions, and took a real 80/20 policy which costs less than $500 every two months. I told him there were dozens of providers selling insurance there. We are in the same age bracket and industry. In NY there were about three different companies providing insurance and the “cheap” policy was pricing out at $1700/month if you wanted anything other than a “surgery only” policy. Just for grins he changed his zipcode to mine and wa-la! There were about a dozen competing insurance companies and he found premiums of under $500.

Will Gibmint Insurance help me? Yes, but not as much as it will help him and everybody else in that boat. People in those markets will flock to Gubmint Insurance simply until the premiums in their area drop to an acceptable level. I expect there would be a shuffling of premium pricing in IL. Whenever book sales are high and I’m working a lot of overtime consulting, my current insurance would be best. When there is another slow down and the income stream drops to around $20K, Gubmint Insurance based on ability to pay would be best.

It’s up to us to fix this. The midterm elections are coming up. Not only must we vote the criminals out of office by making certain no incumbent returns, but we must replace said incumbent with any third party candidate vying for the seat. We went through this back in the days of Ross Perot. Before the dude went weird and dropped out of the election, America was set to elect its first third party candidate. No matter how awful of a president he turned out to be, he would have been better than what we ended up with. One thing happened though. During the debates and the interviews, the two main party candidates fell all over themselves to point out just how much like Ross they were.

I’m not normally very political, but this is pissing me off. It’s obvious the bill of sale has been completed by the healthcare industry for every public official in Washington at this time. It’s time we flood Washington with people from all of those “other” parties who’ve never held public office, never had a taste of lobbyist dollars, and never forced an earmark into a bill just to get some lobbyist project funded.

Vote the crooks out of office and send in the third party candidates. It is the only way to effect change at this point.