#169 Hung Up ... on the Cross of Gold

Now here's the proper logo for Blue Cross, Inc.-- rather than the one in last post. Money. Coin of the realm. This is an Italian-Euro commemorative, which more accurately reproduces their countryman's "Vitruvian Man"--Da Vinci's famous anatomical flirtation with Hindu mythology (I must presume). A pretty coin ... silver center with perimeter gold, yet the image is still hauntingly cruciform.

What's stopping Health-Care Reform? To be honest, and to my shame, it's a question that I hadn't thought much until recent political events put it unavoidably on the table. Full disclosure: my kids were raised on Blue Cross (of SC). Employer provided. Never had to think twice about it; everything was covered. But things have changed; consciousness has been raised--especially about the un-covered.

To reduce the thing to its lowest intractable denominator: we must insure the un-insured. And the under-insured. Big-Health won't do it, for axiomatic reasons--they won't make a profit. Not to rehash a whole bunch of posts (but q.v. anyway if you will), short of the ideal, Single-Payer, the only ameliorative strategy at hand is non-profit Public Option, taxpayer supported. We can bail-out the banks and auto companies => we can give succor to the poor and sick ... dammit.

What's stopping Health-Care Reform? A more instrumental question: Why are our representatives in Congress having such difficulty in passing such obviously necessary legislation? Okay, the answer is also obvious at this point. But never has it become so clear just how closely some of our law-makers are tied-up with the "moneyed interests"--to use an old-fashioned term--than in the last few months. Put simply, these people are being PAID-OFF. And they're selling-out for sums tantamount to Graft and Fraud.

Just one example from my July post, "What Shall It Profit a Man ... " (DM #133). At that time the WashPost reported that Max Baucus, Inc., Chairman of the crucial Senate Finance Committee, had since 2003 received over $3 million in cash-money from Big-Med lobbyists--mainly health-care providers and insurance companies, including, of course, Blue Cross, his biggest supporter. They weren't just sending postcards back then. (The ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, got only $2 million--hey, he's a Republican. An anti-Obama vote is in the bag anyway.) Sure enough and predictably, the Senate Health Care bill was voted out of the Baucus committee WITHOUT the Public Option, four months later.

What shall it profit a man ... ? Indeed.
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