“The hotly-debated HR3200, the so-called “health care reform” bill, is nothing less than corporate welfare in the guise of social welfare and reform.” stated Dennis Kucinich yesterday in Health Care Wanted: Dead or Alive.

Writing the words “affordable” and “choices” into the title of a bill that offers neither is yet another wonderful example of our government’s desire to hoodwink its consumer/citizens into believing they have our best interests in mind.  HR 3200’s title is right up there with terms like “freedom fighters” and the “war on terror.”

What I would like to see regarding health care reform is the passage of HR 676, the  United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.  HR 676 would bring us up to speed with the rest of the industrialized nations regarding truly affordable health care.

We need health care, not health insurance.  Health insurance is a multi billion dollar industry which minds its bottom line by denying claims so they can pay their executives millions of dollars a year.

HR 3200 promises more of the same for-profit doublespeak while inflating the cost of medical care in this country to more than 18% of the GDP at more than $2 trillion per year.  HR 676 eliminates the doublespeak with a single-payer plan available to everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions or ability to pay exhorbitant premiums.

The United States military budget is a good case in point.  We keep on putting money into the machine so that the machine can keep on fighting.  Sadly, our efforts to police the world have had the unfortunate side effect of making us a hated target for terrorists.  According to the Council on Foreign Relations:

“Defense spending today comes to about 3.7 percent of GDP—and the combined total, even after including both war-spending supplements and “Global War on Terror” expenditures, comes to 6.2 percent of GDP.”

If you think that’s bad – we pay even more for health care.  And yet we have poor coverage compared to countries which pay half to a third as much as we do.

Connect the dots between the following news stories:

The questions our healthcare debate ignores – Salon.com
“Nations with comparable standards of living like France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Japan spend roughly between half and two-thirds per capita what we spend annually. They cover everyone and their results are measurably better.”

Medical Bills Cause Most Bankruptcies – American Journal of Medicine
“62.1% of all bankruptcies have a medical cause, according to the American Journal of Medicine’s study titled “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2008: Results of a National Study”

Comment to the above: “The amount of misinformation being spread to the American people on health-care is staggering and there is little political will to do the right thing, thanks to the enormous amount of money being spent to lobby Congress. The public is being bombarded with the usual scare tactics about losing their freedom to choose doctors and to choose from among many plans. The Federal Government is portrayed as “big brother’ taking away your rights again. The insurance companies are making billions under the current system and will do anything to keep their 30% of the enormous pile of money.”

Ex-CEO Agrees To Give Back $620 Million – Wall Street Journal
To top it all off, former UnitedHealth Group Inc. Chief Executive William McGuire, one of the highest paid executives in the U.S at $35 million per year for 15 years (that’s $525 million) felt he needed to make even more money.  He played dirty with his company’s stock options, got caught and has agreed to $620 in stock options gains.

The Truth About the Insurance Industry – Washington Post
The issue isn’t that insurance companies are evil. It’s that they need to be profitable. They have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit for shareholders.  >snip<  The best way to drive down “medical-loss,” explains Potter, is to stop insuring unhealthy people.

Analysts say number of uninsured Americans to grow – Real Clear Markets
“This year, health spending is expected to reach $2.6 trillion and will account for about 18 percent of the nation’s economy. That spending comes to about $8,300 a person.

Without changes in federal policy, the number of Americans without health insurance will grow from about 45 million this year to about 54 million in 2019, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.”

So, that’s the big picture.  Here’s the more personal side. Bob and I have not been able to afford health insurance since leaving Hawaii five years ago, where our employers picked up the tab.  Count us among the forty-five million Americans without health insurance.  Add to that figure the fifty million under-insured Americans and one out of every three Americans do not have access to adequate health care.

Many of the uninsured Americans are in that situation because they have pre-existing conditions like my friend Nancy.  Nancy has a pace maker which has never once fired since she had it installed six years ago after a freak experience with some massage chairs.  She can’t prove it, but she thinks the forty-five minutes she spent testing chairs for her editors job at Family Circle caused her heart to stop three times during the next twelve hours.

There was only one company willing to insure Nancy after she retired and they set her premium at $1600 a month.  For those who aren’t good at head math, that’s nearly $20,000 a year.  So Nancy decided to cross her fingers and wait five years until she qualifies for Medicare.  But for the grace of God, there go all of us.

The truth is, health insurance once came with every job and the co-pays were ridiculously low.  I was quoted an $8 co-pay for a $4,000 tubal ligation on Oahu just 9 years ago.  That would probably fall under ‘elective surgery’ or a ‘pre-existing condition’ today.

Here’s what I’d like to to see happen.  Our policy makers put an end to endless war to feed the war industry and re-tool for peace.  We adopt a single-payer universal health care plan, ending astronomical health care costs to feed the bloated incomes of health care executives.  We use our savings to pay off our debts and invest in sustainable agriculture and energy.

Ask your representatives in congress to support HR676 which calls for a universal single-payer health care system.  Ask them not to support HR 3200 “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” which promises more of the same, bloated overhead and profits under the current ‘for profit’ health care system.

Under the current system, one out of every three dollars goes to corporate profits, stock options, and executive salaries, advertising, etc – ten times the administrative costs of the single payer plan called for in HR676.

No one should make $35 million a year.  Everyone should have access to health care.  It’s a no brainer!

And, in fact, we just found out that AIG, a company that got a bailout, just a week after they got help went on a $400,000 junket.

So I went and found the story about the AIG Junket, but what I can’t find is the story about the working class rioting in the streets. Because there is no story. I guess they’re all too busy, wiping tables, cutting hair, dumping garbage and detailing cars in a futile effort to make their next mortgage payment.

As per usual, Kunstler was right when he noted the following Monday:

The Big Bailout of last week may be partially rescinded as it becomes obvious that it has had no effect — I believe about half the $700 billion has already been allocated, which is to say: lost.

“How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?” – Teresa Finch to both candidates during the Second McCain-Obama Presidential Debate

“The many refineries along the coast of Texas were also bracing for a harsh lashing by strong winds, rain and flooding.”

So, we’ve spent billions of dollars wrecking havoc on Iraq in the name of cheap oil only to have mother nature turn around and wipe out our oil rigs. Nice.

While I don’t wish for more suffering at the hands of another hurricane, it’s nice to see indirect consequences for bad behavior. I’m hoping that the storm takes out some oil rigs, punishing the oil companies and forcing reduced consumption without costing lives. It comforts me to know that greed cannot go unchecked.

The United States is the heaviest contributor to Global Warming. Our appetite for cheap oil is both epic and epidemic. Increased hurricane activity may be a direct result of over-consumption of oil. Therefore, to see the giant storms turn towards our oil wells, shows me that the greedy will be punished.

Contrary to what you must be thinking at this point, I do not hate Americans. What I hate is unchecked corporate greed. I hate seeing the systematic eradication of forests, rivers, unspoiled air and other cultures in pursuit of wealth for the few stockholders of a few huge corporations.

And I really do believe that a return to a simpler life, that is, sans cheap oil, would make the majority of common folks a lot happier. Without cheap oil, we would do more walking and buy more locally produced food for starters. Can you imagine a family that didn’t all jump in their cars each day and drive off in different directions? I can.

I have not read a news story since last year and generally manage to avoid contact with the media even though we have computer access and an impressive collection of magazines in the lodge. But today I had time to kill. Breakfast was over and I was waiting at the lodge for a guest to return and settle their bill.

I dished up a bowl of beans and rice and settled down on the couch. Feeling like a voyeur, I began to shuffle through the pile of magazines. A recent copy of Newsweek caught my eye and I picked it up.

The first three pages were full-page ads. Only 54 of the 118 pages in the February 14th issue actually held news stories. The other 64 pages were dedicated to advertising, including 8 pages each for prescription drugs and money management and 5 for designer food.

What, exactly is the point, I wondered, of a Light’n Fit CARB CONTROL Smoothie? As far as I could tell, the purpose of this product was to separate insecure people from their money by taking advantage of their phood phobias. Worse, the plastic packaging was designed to load up the landfills with a petroleum-based product. I mean, “Hello – We’re fighting wars for this?!”

It immediately became obvious that years of self-imposed cultural deprivation and real food have ruined my appetite for such disgusting examples of conspicuous consumption. I was so distracted by the hawking of financial and medical services that I was unable to read the news stories about retirement, war, entertainment and so on.  Twas a pity…

A major trash hauler came to this island a few years ago and has been working diligently to put the smaller haulers out of business. Like a big fish, Maui Disposal has been on the attack. They have either devoured or crippled, not only the waste haulers but also the recycling haulers and most recently the recycling processors in their voracious quest for corporate profits.

Not that they will see those profits immediately. In fact, the very nature of predatory pricing guarantees they will see a loss during the years it takes to put the little fish out of business. After which, they will be able to raise their prices and recover those losses. Their parent company is happy to absorb the interim cost of infiltrating the waste/recycling industry on Maui.

Responsibility to the local community is not part of their business plan. Most of those forecasted dollars would not enrich the islands. Good business is all they are interested in and it is good business to move in on a territory and gobble it up.

There is no place for ethics in their plan, either. Maui Disposal’s sales people routinely call their competition’s customers and try to win them away with lower pricing and outright lies. Last week they began approaching Aloha Waste’s customers with the news that Aloha Waste does not have the proper certification to supply them with service and that Maui Disposal is the only contractor on the island that has that certification. This, of course is not true.

Ironically, nearly everyone on the island happily supports Costco and Wal-Mart while the little mom and pop groceries close shop, one by one. Big box store shoppers will tell you that the increased selection and lower prices were a godsend to Maui, yet they cry foul when a deep pocket company in their line moves in on the territory.

My conclusion is that Capitalism is a good idea that has gone terribly wrong. What was once an incentive for hard work and innovation has become a blunt instrument in the hands of monopoly-seeking mega-corporations.