Amidst all the tiresome, mindless soundbites (“Socialized Medicine!” “Single-Payer Neo-Communist Healthcare State!” “The End of America As We Know it”) spewing from GOP “leaders” and their media foghorns on the subject of the public option in healthcare reform, let us not for a second forget that those same attack dogs are the beneficiaries of one of the most generous, taxpayer-funded healthcare plans in the country – the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan: no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, immediate coverage, 75% US Government (i.e., taxpayer) funded, a rich menu of choices with much lower premiums than John Q. Public (and yours truly) has to shell out for coverage, etc. etc., a.k.a. “SOCIALIZED MEDICINE”. And hearing the predictable screeching from private health insurers, drug companies, doctors and private hospitals that are, collectively, vacuuming the life savings out of the wallets of hundreds of millions of American citizens, I search in vain for a leader who has the guts to tell all of these leeches to stick it where the sun don’t shine, and craft a healthcare solution that really is about better, more affordable healthcare for we, the people, who pay for it. But wait! There is such a leader: President Obama! And I only hope he has the steel to stand up to the vested interests who want only to protect the unbelievably lucrative monopoly they have concocted over the decades.
One final point: the sneering remarks from the likes of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell et al about the “slippery slope of European-style socialized medicine” reveals the abysmal ignorance embedded in those comments. What value can one place on the freedom from the daily terror of financial ruin/bankruptcy from healthcare costs that is enjoyed by the citizens of developed nations all over the planet- everywhere but the good ol’ USA?
Polls show overwhelming voter support for some sort of public option to reduce, if not totally eliminate, that terror. Once again, the GOP, and its industry cronies, are on the wrong side of one of the most important social/economic issues of our time.
It’s also good enough for our service men and women.
If I’m not mistaken, a wounded soldier doesn’t choose his/her field medic or his hospital — s/he goes to the one that applies.
I was once firmly against socialized medicine, but I’ve taken a good long look at the whole thing, and I think that it really is corporate greed masking itself as virtue.
Let the poor die and decrease the surplus population and all that …
Here, here!