Commie Health Care
Insurance Made Easy

ABC News recently devoted an entire week to "Critical Condition," (10/20/03) examining the current national health care crisis. Did I hear, "What crisis?" I didn't think so. Especially among Baby Boomers, our largest demographic cohort, enough of us have gotten sufficiently sick with insufficient health insurance that "crisis" became an understatement.

This may be why, for the first time, ABC polls showed a majority of 62 percent now favoring a single-payer, Canadian-style insurance plan. Like washing the car, such talk invariably produces thunder storms of "socialized medicine!" But we're considering nothing more "socialized" than Medicare, where the government handles the money and the doctors handle the patients.

Besides, with the Cold War over, the old pinko tar brush no longer seems so sticky. We may now experiment with common sense without being thought comsymp bomb-throwers. Every other industrialized nation, and quite a few in the "Third World," boast single-payer systems where everyone is covered, yet costs are only half of what we Americans pay, leaving 43 million of us exposed.

Here in the States, we're too busy throwing band-aids at a genuine national security threat that needs major surgery; too busy taking sick people to court for filling prescriptions in Canada, where they happen to be affordable. We're too busy navigating 150 different health care plans and their labyrinthine paperwork, responsible for 15 percent of our medical bill versus three percent for Medicare and other single-payer plans. At least 59 percent of us are too busy wondering whether we'll be able to afford health insurance or whether we'll be able to qualify for it at any cost. Got herpes? A joint implant? Any number of mild but chronic conditions? You can be rejected for almost anything.

"Oh, but America has (all together now) 'the Best Health Care System in the World'." Jingo slogans don't work for the millions who are uninsured or underinsured. Nor for the employee with a chronic condition, sick spouse or kids, who doesn't dare change jobs or, God forbid, retire, for fear of losing health insurance. Nor the Medicare recipient whose doctor finally joined the stampede out of Medicare with its puny compensation and punitive red tape.

It's true that rich people from Canada and other single-payer nations come to the U.S. for that MRI scan they want right now. But "rich" also describes the contented American health care consumer, because if you ain't rich, in good insurance or hard cash, you ain't contented. Maybe this is fair for that hot new Mercedes you really, really want. Not for health care you really, really need.

Few Canadians forced to wait for an MRI fall down and die because of the delay. Compare any who might to the thousands of Americans who perish for the lack of any MRI at all - unless they luck out with a hospital emergency room, where they often die anyway because - yes! - they waited too long. They needed a crisis before any care was available. And, since emergency care is the most expensive, and since you and I pay for it anyway, we lose the life and the money. America's uninsured suffer 15 to 18 percent greater mortality than our insured. In Canada, no one is uninsured. The math is not difficult.

The insurance industry operates a powerful lobby. There is money to be made in medicine, and in "supporting" cooperative politicians (who invariably vote themselves government coverage.) The combination has made American health care what it is today: sick. And it's contagious. We remain in "jobless recovery" largely because in this country, for some reason, employers must suffer the calamity of providing health insurance. Essentially, the insurance industry profits by hobbling every other American enterprise with this anti-competitive, parasitical burden.

The mere fact that health care is regarded as an "industry" is sick. You can't stalk out of an operating room with the used car shopper's theatricality, seeking to nail a better price. Your health is not a widget in some ideological "free market." The government must, can and does do some things well. Some things that it does poorly it must still do, because "privatization" would be foolish. ("Got a war coming? Call ACME Army Guys! Check out our Middle East Special this month only! No coupons.")

This is one of those infuriatingly proliferating categories where America slots into "the only advanced nation in the world that...." Never mind hand guns, capital punishment or the mess in primary education: what do all these other countries know about basic health care that we just can't figure out? Along with relics like "Best Health Care System in the

World," we used to talk about "American know-how." We don't even know how to take care of our children. Millions of uninsured kids are skating on the thin ice of our refusal to face reality and the corruption that makes our refusal possible, even, until recently, popular.

Hopefully, that will change. With good luck, it will change before your next accident or illness. We need good luck, 'cause, so far, good government just ain't in it.

Travis Charbeneau
Travis Charbeneau is a freelance writer and futurist living in Richmond, VA.


Bye, Bye, Water
Who Needs It?

A bipartisan group of 218 members of the U.S. House of Representatives has asked the Bush Administration to halt its attempt to eliminate 30-year-old provisions of the Clean Water Act that protect small streams and wetlands. The House members sent a "Dear Colleague" letter to the President prior to departing for Thanksgiving break.

The congressional letter challenges the Bush Administration's initiative to limit the scope of the Clean Water Act. In January, the administration issued an "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" that asked for public comment on whether Clean Water Act protections should apply to waters that are "isolated," non-navigable and contained wholly within a state. At the same time, the administration instructed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers not to enforce the Clean Water Act for these waters without first seeking permission from headquarters. The EPA estimated that protections could be eliminated for up to 20 million acres of wetlands outside Alaska. Without current protections, the wetlands and small streams would be vulnerable to pollution from increased development, industrial uses, mining and waste disposal.

"Our nation has made tremendous gains in cleaning up our lakes, rivers and streams since the 1970s, but the Bush Administration's actions threaten to reverse the progress, taking us backwards," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director. "We are grateful that 218 members of Congress are sending the Bush Administration a wake-up call: 'don't weaken the Clean Water Act.'"

Protecting headwater streams and wetlands is essential to safeguarding drinking water supplies, mitigating floods, making water safe for fishing and swimming, and protecting habitat for threatened and endangered species and migratory birds. Recognizing the potential harm the Bush Administration's rulemaking could cause, 39 of the 42 state environmental agencies that commented on the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking were critical of reducing the scope of protected waters.

A draft rule change, recently leaked to the Los Angeles Times, suggests the scope of the Bush Administration's changes to clean water rules. The draft rule eliminates protections for streams that do not flow for more than six months of the year and are not fed by groundwater, streams created by snowmelt or rainfall, waters that generate interstate commerce through birdwatching, hunting and fishing and other recreation; waters used for industrial purposes; and waters that provide habitat to endangered species.

"The Bush Administration's changes are completely inconsistent with the original purpose of the Clean Water act, misinterpret court rulings, and certainly fail the most basic tests of scientific understanding of our waters," said Pope. "Continued congressional oversight is essential to protecting America's waters. We particularly thank the Members of Congress who showed leadership in initiating this letter: Representatives Dingell, Leach, Oberstar and Saxton."

Wendy Balazik
Wendy Balazik is on the staff of the Sierra Club in Washington, DC, www.sierraclub.org.


Bye, Bye, Trees
Destroy To Save

President Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (HR1904). Conservation groups likened the bill to the double-speak rhetoric offered by "Clear Skies" which relaxes pollution standards for air quality. This "Healthy Forests" legislation leaves homes and communities vulnerable to wildfire, severely limits public participation, undermines the very heart of the National Environmental Policy Act and does not ensure protections for ancient, old-growth forests or roadless wildlands.

Especially troubling for Eastern forests is a new authority to exclude 1,000-acre logging projects from environmental review whenever the agency claims "forest-damaging insects" threaten the area. This authority combines with other new rule changes to institute the most significant commercial logging incentives since President Nixon signed the National Environmental Protection Act in 1970.

Local ecologists are concerned by these scientifically controversial provisions for more logging, including our native old-growth forests, in the Southeastern United States.

"This bill fails to address forest health on an ecological level or in a fiscally responsible manner. Commercial logging is going to exacerbate epidemics of native insects, such as the Southern pine beetle, beyond their original scope," stated Scot Waring, Ecologist with the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project.

National forest advocates have been using independent studies to demonstrate that the administration's so-called "Healthy Forests Initiative" is nothing more than a thinly veiled plan to increase logging in national forests. The bill specifically authorizes logging and other treatment of 20 million acres of public land under special rules that circumvent normal procedures for environmental review and citizen input.

"Conservationists consider this bill an assault on our forests and our democracy," stated Joshua Martin, Southeast Organizer with the American Lands Alliance. "We are very concerned about the bill's broad negative impact on both the ecological integrity of our forests and the rights of all of us as citizens."

The General Accounting Office has found the very premise of HR1904 - that appeals and litigation were preventing hazardous fuel sales from moving forward - to be completely unfounded. Again last month the GAO released a report which found that of 818 Forest Service fuel reduction projects, 97 percent proceeded without litigation and 95 percent preceded within the standard 90-day review period. This is the fourth-consecutive GAO study to contain similar findings.

Andrew George
Andrew George is a spokesman for the National Forest Protection Alliance.


Animal Control
Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 67 calls:
4 complaints of animal cruelty
4 bite cases
3 complaints of barking dogs
4 ordinance violations
33 animals impounded
27 dogs
3 cats
1 red-tailed hawk
1 raccoon
1 red fox
12 dogs placed:
6 adopted
4 reclaimed
2 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of Dec. 4 to Dec. 10.



Cancel Primaries
Rally Around Dean

Barring some unforeseeable misstep, Gov. Howard Dean will be the Democratic nominee. Patrick Buchanan thinks so. So does Al Gore, who acknowledged Dean's soar in the polls with this endorsement: "Whether it is inspiring enthusiasm at the grassroots, and promising to remake the Democratic Party as a force for justice and progress and good in America," said President Gore, "whether it is a domestic agenda that gets our nation back on track, or whether it is protecting us against terrorists and strengthening our nation in the world, I have come to the conclusion that one candidate clearly now stands out."

Straight up. It's time for the increasingly irrelevant influence of centrist-right Al From's Democratic Leadership Council to decide which is more important: keeping control of the Democrats or electing one to the presidency. Dean is the only contender with the cash, charisma and cajones to expel Generalissimo El Busho from the White House - but he needs a unified party to pull it off.

Bush spent $100 million to beat John McCain in the 2000 GOP primaries. (Kinko's must've really soaked him on those nasty faxes claiming that the Arizona senator had fathered an illegitimate child with an African-American prostitute.) Thanks to a unified Republican Party, Bush is running unopposed this time - and saving his projected $170 million war chest for a barrage of TV spots between September and November.

"Even if Dean, the former Vermont governor, is able to match Bush dollar for dollar, he would start the general election far behind the president," reports The Christian Science Monitor. "Bush is hoarding his cash until it is clear who the Democratic nominee will be, while Dean, who has raised more than $25 million so far, has to spend furiously just to win the nomination."

Unless he doesn't.

What if the other Democratic candidates came together at a joint press conference to announce that they were dropping out of the race to endorse Dean? If nothing else, cash-starved states would love it - the average primary costs taxpayers $7 million. More to the point, it would save Dean roughly $75 million - enough to close the money gap with Bush.

A more ephemeral but bigger benefit would be the message that a unified Democratic party could send to the electorate. Canceling the primaries would convey that Democrats are no longer a clumsy amalgamation of special interests. We're organized, it would say. Fear provides plenty of impetus for our new single-mindedness. We're afraid of George Bush - so afraid that we ought to set aside our normal partisan bickering. Our great country has been through a lot, but it may not survive another four years of reckless wars based on lies and fought without a plan, a giant sucking sound stealing millions of jobs overseas or trillions of dollars in unaffordable tax cuts for the wealthy.

Rich or poor, black or white, liberal or conservative, anyone who loves America must set aside their usual biases and prejudices to open their eyes to the truth: Bush is not just a Republican. Not only is his radical "neoconservative" administration illegitimate, it is neofascist. Patriots must support the candidate with the best chance of defeating him, whoever he is. That man is Howard Dean.

The outcome of the Democratic primaries is now a foregone conclusion. Why should Dean and his fellow Democrats waste more than $100 million between them - some estimates rise as high as $150 million - to beat each other up over relatively minor differences of policy and tone? The DNC ought to read the business pages. Ours is an age of monopoly and amalgamation. Bigger wins over better except when better happens to also be big. Divided Democrats can't beat unified Republicans.

Rumor has it that Ralph Nader, whom I respect deeply as a man of integrity and intelligence and for whom I voted in 1996 and 2000, is mulling over another run. Nader should take a pass this time. Just this once, let's pull the left together. We can go back to tearing each other apart in December '04. I promise.

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the editor of the new anthology of alternative cartoons Attitude 2: The New Subversive Social Commentary Cartoonists, containing interviews with and cartoons by 21 of America's best cartoonists.