It’s The Problem, Not The Solution – TGIF
Marxism is out of favor and folks don’t like to talk about class distinctions in America but what is happening, under the smoke and mirrors of the new budget and making health care better, is that these bills are a clumsily disguised taking of $700 billion dollars from those who need it most and giving it to those who need it least.

Think I’m kidding? If you make $875,000 per year, your tax obligation would be lowered by $45,000. If you make $5 million per year, you just saved $250,000.

On the other hand, if you’re making $56,000 a year, your health insurance will run around $20,500, an easily affordable sum if you don’t eat and live in your car. Even the president called it “mean.”

That $700 billion dollar gift to the rich; how’s that paid for? Simply put, it’s coming from the money we give the government to keep us safe.

Governor John Kasich of Ohio summed it up nicely, asking, why we would take away vital services for a depleted middle class, the mentally ill, the elderly and the poor to give more money to the people who don’t need it?

Many of the cuts make no sense. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are charged with the formidable task of preventing threats to American’s health. Cutting the CDC’s budget by 1.2 billion is concerning. Congress cut the CDC’s tuberculosis control budget in 1990 and TB came back with a vengeance, costing billions along with a tragic spike in mortality.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the CDC, said “What CDC does is probably more important to the average American than, in a sense, the Defense Department.” All who care about Americans’ health should make sure Congress preserves and increases CDC’s budget.

The National Cancer Institute’s budget would lose $1 billion that would go to the wealthy. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Association donates $575 million to the dire plight of the one-percenters, while the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases kicks in $838 million to help defray the staggering costs of wax for the Bentley. The National Science Foundation’s funding cut pushes another $776 million into wealthy IRA’s. But these pale in comparison to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’ gift of over 5 billion dollars going to offshore tax shelters of the affluent.

How do we convince our leaders that health care is a human right in a democratic society? How do we turn away from this nattering gridlock of bipartisanship and deal with the real issue of providing affordable and comprehensive health care to each of America’s 326 million people? It can be done. Proof that it can be done better than us is to look no further than the 30 advanced countries that do it better than we do.

How do we convince our leaders that insurance is not the answer? America is the only nation to make profit centers out of cancer and old age. That’s because we don’t pay for health care. We pay for health insurance.

Single-payer health care for all is the answer. It wouldn’t be like coal, there’d still be lots of jobs in health care administration; all it would do would be to strip the profits to be made by denying coverage and the obscene nine-figure salaries paid to executives that contribute absolutely nothing to your health.

One gentleman who could help achieve that goal is our Senator Cory Gardner. Call him during office hours at (303) 391-5777 or in Washington at (202) 224-5941. Identify yourself as a constituent living in 80442 (or wherever) and explain that insurance is the problem, not the solution.