Liberal Talk Radio

As I’ve mentioned, health care has been on my mind a lot lately, and not just because I saw Sicko.

My mom and I had a long conversation last night, and it’s got me pretty worried.

Here’s some full disclosure for you (with apologies to those of you who will think this is oversharing) — I’m going to be the sole care provider for up to four elderly folks, and that’s before I even consider a family of my own. My mom, dad, great aunt, and grandmother will all be relying on me and whatever the generosity of the federal government and state of Michigan can provide. What’s worse is that my parents are divorced, so they won’t even have each other to lean on in their dotage.

So, I’m terrified about health care. My great aunt, for example, already pays a few hundred dollars a month for her supplemental insurance. And this on a pension of only about $1500 a month. Meanwhile, my mom will not even have a pension, and she didn’t start her retirement savings until fairly late in life. Her only asset is her home — the house I grew up in — and while it was a very nice place to grow up, it’s really nothing special, besides which it’s in one of the most low-value real estate markets in the country. There’s no real difference in the “farm gate price” of, for example, a colonoscopy performed in rust-belt Michigan versus one performed in Seattle, so you’re paying a coastal price using money generated from a flyover country asset.

Of course, I want my family around as much as possible, and I want them all to live long and healthy lives. But that fact is that I’m sort of screwed here — the longer they live, the more care they’ll need, and the more likely it is that I’ll have to somehow supplement their income. I already pay for much of my grandmother’s and my mom’s cable television bills, which is really just a face-saving way for me to send them money. Such is the legacy of a blue-collar background (I had a girlfriend once who didn’t understand why it was so important to me to make enough money to support my family … needless to say, that was about the end of that).

Which brings me back to healthcare. It’s absolutely criminal that the United States is the only country — the only one! — in the Western world which does not provide free health care to its citizens. Instead, we insist on employer provision, and manage to spend about 1/7 of our disposable income on health care (”But at least we free, and na’ sum gd communiss, Bubba! yee-haw!”). Thus, our employers are strapped with a high-cost burden that impacts their global competitiveness. Thus our citizens — the lucky ones who have employer-funded insurance — are enslaved to their jobs, unable to change for fear of losing their coverage. Thus, some 40 million Americans have no insurance at all, and must resort to throwing themselves at the mercy of an industry that’s increasingly bottom-line driven.

And thus, in the 21st century, in this most modern and industrialized of countries, young men and women are forced to send remittances home to the heartland, like migrants everywhere, in order that our families might be comfortable in their age.

The situation with health care in this country is untenable. We must have reform, and we must have it now. There are precious few policy areas that more critical to the future of our nation than this. We must demand that our elected leadership make this a priority in the coming years, and not succumb to interest group and industry pressure, even if that means an out and out revolution against the whole rotten system.