During the past several months there has been an intense political discussion about Medicare. Mostly, the spat revolves around service cuts. One side wants a great number of reduction, the other just a few. Very few “representatives of the public” (senators, congressmen, and even the president) talk about no reduction at all.
But mostly they all want to slash services.
I’m not a public representative; I’m a working class slob, so I want not cuts at all. In fact, I favored universal healthcare long before we even had a name for it. And here is the thing (there’s always a thing isn’t there?) the results of most studies from the mid-eighty of the past century indicate that the majority of Americans want universal healthcare. One study actually reported that 80% of the Americans favor “universal healthcare.”
So why don’t we have it? Is America not a democracy? God! Isn’t the “majority rules” principle the most basic code of our nation? Isn’t this basic concept the very heart of our Declaration of Independence? Doesn’t our most sacred document begin with—“We the people….”?
Well then? If the essence of democracy is majority rules, could it be that we are really not a democracy?
What does this have to do with Medicare? You see folks; this is all related, but the why, and the how, and the when, and the where, and the what is too long of discussion to present here. I would like for you to just accept the premise that America is a democracy only on paper in reality it is ruled by an “interest” that is not always the voice of the majority. Especially, when, it comes to the wellbeing of the working people like us. Medicare, Universal Healthcare, Social Security, and yes, at times, even Medicaid exists to do good to the working class. But those whose interest is not that of the working class would tell you otherwise.
They want you to believe that Medicare and Social Security are entitlement programs; programs that are fundamentally used to redistribute wealth programs. They want you to believe that these two programs Medicare and Social Security are almost bankrupt. These are lies!
These are outright lies! Medicare and Social Security are not near bankruptcy, they are not wealth redistribution programs and they are absolutely not entitlement programs.
You pay for them! You pay for them all your working life. You don’t believe me; look at box number 6 of your W-2 form. Look at your self-employment tax computations.
We are paying for Medicare and are forced to do so. You don’t believe this, try refusing to pay into social security system, try refusing to pay Medicare.
You and I and every individual that works or worked for a living have had a portion of our income taken to fund these programs. And as for Medicare, all of our working life we have been forced to pay so that when we’re 65 year old we can apply for Medical coverage. Yes folks we have to apply for Medicare, it’s not automatic like the payments we make. Then after applying and being accepted we will have to further pay another $98 per month. Is this an entitlement program? And some will claim the government should not be forcing the people to buy Medical coverage. But the Government is forcing people to buy Medical coverage. What does anyone think Medicare is?
We are forced to pay all of our working lives something like 30 to 40 years, to get coverage for something like 20 years. (The life expectancy is 77.4) We contribute 30 to 40 years for nothing, and then when we enroll to get something, we have to continue to pay. And on to top of it all our representatives (the folks we elected to do our talking for us) want to slash coverage.
Where is the sanity in this?
For a more basic way of understanding Medicare, view it as a lay-away plan where you pay for an item for thirty to forty years. Then, when it is time to pick up the article you have been paying for, the store clerk tell you, “The item you have been paying for has been slashed.”
Is this not madness! Is this not an insanity forced on us by the very people we have elected to supposedly maintain “a more perfect union”? Furthermore reason tells that when one pay for something, it is not an entitlement program; it is not a wealth redistribution program. It is a business transaction where there is a seller (the government) a purchaser (you and I) and a service (medical coverage) changing hands at a price.
Now don’t misunderstand the message: I’m not against the government running Medicare. Government is the only entity that can run Medicare. The privatization of Medicare, of Social Security of Medicaid (even of Universal Healthcare) is millions of times worse. Remember Enron; remember the bank crisis, (so far in less than 30 years we’ve had two); the mortgage meltdown; the auto industry. If you (pardon the French) feel that government Fu-- us, private industry goes one step worse it rapes us, without Vaseline.
The problem is not government, the problem is the representatives who when it comes time to vote speak one message (they represent our interest), then after the election they represent the interest of others. And those others (as I pointed out in the previous Blog) are those who are really ripping off the system.
Medicare like Medicaid is fraught with thieves, many who have the ears of the elected official who care little about the voice of the people and a lot about their own pocketbooks. Should not in a democracy, the voice of the people be the voice of government?
[By the way, just to keep things in perspective, the concept of the people voice being the rule of nation is not an original concept. Democracy can be traced back to at least Ancient Greece, and the Roman’s actually had a motto: Vox populi, vox Dei, which loosely translates to: the voice of the people is the voice of God. Jesus, those damn Romans! If only they had had a good fire-department; we’d all probably be speaking Romanese. (Oops, sorry about that folks, there’s no such language as Romanese; it’s really called Italic, a derivative of Eyetalian.)]
But the point is not what language we’d be speaking; the point is that those whom we have elected to speak for us are speaking a whole different language. In their language Medicare is an entitlement program; Medicare is a wealth redistribution program and Medicare is near insolvency.
This, in case you missed it above, are lies … outright lies.
Medicare is a bought and paid for healthcare program without any valid reason to be slashed. If it lacks liquidity which is different than insolvency, then it should call in the IOUs. And no one can deny that Medicare and Social Security are abounding in IOUs, some of which date back to the Vietnam era.
The surpluses that existed in the programs {the revenue (Our contributions) in excess of the expense (the benefits paid)} has been used in part to fund the wars beginning with Vietnam all the way to the Iraq invasion. In addition, the surpluses have also been used, in part, to fund our representatives’ pet projects. Overall the surpluses have been used like a store system where one walks in hands over an IOU and walks out with our cold hard cash.
It’s not the benefits that need to be slashed; it’s our representatives that need to be reminded of whom they work for. (They work for us, not the American Medical Association, not Metropolitan Life, not Pfizer.) They work for you and me.
Enough already! It’s time to make our voices heard. Contact your representatives (every one of them, local, state, federal) and tell them Medicare and Social Security is no to be touched.
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