I beg to differ on your support of Medicare for All because it does not address the underlying issues that plague our health care system. Those problems center on third-party payment, which does two major things. First it removes the patient from the marketplace so that their role as consumer and brake on cost is removed from the marketplace. Linda Gorman’s study at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute looked at the origins of health care cost escalation in third party payment. This payment system was a good idea when it was insurance; it is a bad idea when it pays for health care. Removing the brake allows the remaining players to game the system for their own profit and has led to a system where there is a chasm between what we pay for and what we get. Beside removing the patient from the marketplace, it leads to learned helplessness in the insured. Learned helplessness is due to a lack of control — one is unable to escape their noxious stimulus — and is seen in this case by the many who rely on their doctor for anything out of the ordinary. Gorman’s institute is Koch-funded and her conclusions share the lack of heart of many libertarians by just putting the burden on the individual. Proper remedies must both have a heart and empower the patients.
Empowering the patient is the initial step; it’s based on Indiana’s Nobel Prize-winning Elinor Ostrom and her demonstration that the tragedy of the commons, caused by those in the commons with the financial or social power to destroy it for their own benefit, can be resolved by empowering those in the commons who lack that power.
The next step is looking at Singapore’s system. Labeled the best in the world by Bloomberg, it’s based on their Central Provident Fund (CPF) that is similar in funding to our Social Security but it is owned and managed by the patient. It is also more broad: It can be used for health care, housing, education (and conceivably any other social good; it can be shared within the family (and I would include their local faith or geographical community, or union, workplace, team, (or any other caring community) at a reduced percentage) with the government as the final support. Healthcare in Singapore costs less than 5% of their GDP. If we could realize that degree of savings implementing a similar program would save close to the $3 trillion annually that Medicare 4 All is projected to cost. Singapore’s story is told best in William Hazeltine’s “Affordable Excellence”.
A final pillar is based on sociologists from three and four decades ago who looked at what led to healthy families (McCubbin, Patterson, and Sussman) and healthy people (Antonovsky). While the words used differ, what they both found were individuals in control of their environment, who understood their environment and who had a sense of meaning in their lives. Control, we feel, is primary because it allows one to play with their environment, which leads to understanding, and doing it with others, which lends meaning. I know from my own practice that people who participate — even play — with their health conditions are healthier. We need that and empowering people, rather than providing for their needs, is the basis of populism.
LON JONES, D.O., Plainview, Texas
According to President Trump and the national conservative news media, someone who simply supports a federal government social program that helps people such as Social Security and Medicare is a “crazy socialist.”
If we go by that definition, than that would make Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon “crazy socialists” because they both signed new federal government social programs that help people into law/existence, and they both supported Social Security.
In fact, Ike wrote a letter to his brother in which he stated that any Republican who wants to abolish Social Security is “stupid.” It appears that conservative-Republicans have become a lot more conservative and “stupid” since around 1980 because we sure do have a lot of them nowadays who do want to abolish Social Security and move our country toward a “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinism.
For example, I recently saw President Trump’s “Acting Chief of Staff” and “Budget Director,” Mick Mulvaney, on television. When he was a Congressman, he was a favorite of the “Tea Party” and was well-known for stating that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” that it is “unconstitutional,” and that it should be abolished.
More and more, today’s national Republican Party stealthily advocates and stands for a crazy, creeping, and cold-hearted “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinism where there are no federal government social programs to help the lower and middle classes.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
Bribery is named in the Constitution as an impeachable offense, as in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. So [White House Chief of Staff Mick] Mulvaney says, “Get over it,” and admits to quid pro quo after not being able to lie themselves out of it.
If you only apply our Constitution to the other party, in this case the Democrats, and not your own, that’s not a stand on principle, that’s a tactic and a Nazi one at that, one that Mad King Donald approves. Our Republic is being attacked form within by this sociopathic, illegitimate president who currently occupies the Oval Office.
ANITA GRIFFITH, Vermilion, Ill.
Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? In line with Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s WWII strategy, the answer is “yes,” Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s (R&C) number-one enemy was Hitler and after Hitler turned on Stalin, R&C’s number 3 enemy, Stalin, (after Hitler and Mussolini), became their friend. What does this have to do with Progressive strategy for 2020?
After our number-one enemy, Trump, Biden, Harris, Klobachar, Buttigieg, Booker, being corporate or center/right Democrats, are our enemies; but because they are enemies of our enemy these corporate Dems may have to become our friends. Because Trump is such a horror in so many ways, he must be defeated; and if Biden or any of the other corporate friendly, center-right democrats previously mentioned win the Democratic nomination, we, as progressives, must support them, beat Trump, and then fight our Stalin (the center-right corporate Dems) on another day. This does not mean that we should support Biden et al in the Democratic primary as we have a very good chance of having one of our own (Bernie or Elizabeth) as the Democratic nominee. But if Biden et al wins, we must become temporary allies with the corporate, center-right Dems. Our country cannot afford four more years of Trump!
BOB BOGNER, Aspen, Colo.
In response to Joan Retsinas article, “Are We Healthier?” [11/15/19 TPP] She used “— gasp—“ in regards to the abortion conversation. It downplayed and ridiculed the monumental weight of the abortion decision. A growing number of us are pro-life on all issues; health care, environment, wages. Abortion should never be treated lightly. All life is sacred; women, handicapped, the poor.
KEN COOPER, Washington, D.C.
Trump’s withholding of military assistance to Ukraine until they manufacture false investigations against his political opponents is illegal, unconstitutional, and weakened Ukraine’s resistance to invading Russian forces. But, his impulsive withdrawal of our troops from Kurdish Syria is a far worse calamity.
The Traitor-in-Chief has now given a big chunk of the Middle East to Russia, for no good reason. Our warriors were rushed out as if defeated in battle. Russian soldiers now stroll inside our military bases. Our stalwart allies against ISIS abandoned, Kurds now face “ethnic cleansing.” Our solemn commitments betrayed, our reputation has been desecrated, permanently. Russia now controls Kurdish oil fields.
Days later, Putin visited his new best friend in ... not Turkey ... not Syria ... but ... Saudi Arabia! He told MbS that Russia is replacing USA. Soon, Putin may control the world’s oil supply.
Trump’s gift to Putin is treason, pure and putrid.
BRUCE JOFFE, Piedmont, Calif.
From Birchers to Birthers and the economic nationalist of the Federalists and Whigs. From the Puritans to Polygamy. From the defense of property rights to stealing people’s properties to build a wall. From laissez-faire minimal government to government’s denigrating controls over people’s lives. From Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communism to D.J. Trump’s “Goomba” and “puppetmaster Vlad Putin. From Barry Goldwater and George C. Wallace to the Alt-Right’s Adolph Hitler’s “Superior Being” BS and nationlism. From monogamy as the ideal, to the wife-cheating Republicans such as Gingrich, Giuliani and D.J. Trump as the new norm, apparently celebrated amongst the world’s “alternate facts” propagators in the “new haters party” of the uninformed, ill-informed, disinformed and arrogant, ignorant segment of our misogynist male population “growing like poisonous mushrooms” throughout the globe need to be exposed as we did during our Era of Enlightenment in the 1700s and 1800s, once again for a dose of what is called “Reality” in the 21st century.
FRANK C. ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
In its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling, the Supreme Court declared that money is speech. Since then the corporations and the billionaires have been “shouting,” drowning out every word spoken by us citizens. The result is a government doing the dictates of the corporations, and the Trump administration has only brought this to dizzying heights.
The 2020 election presents us with a choice: elect progressives to turn this around or let the corporate money-machine remain in control. Let’s work to get all of our citizens out to vote and shout out the corporations.
LEE KNOHL, Evanston Ill.
At political demonstrations with thousands of participants I have seen some well-meaning, but ignorant, signs and images conflating Vladimir Putin with Communism and the hammer and sickle logo. But I never would have anticipated that The Progressive Populist would descend to this level of idiocy.
Wake up, folks! Russia has not been a Communist-run nation for almost 30 years! What was your cartoonist thinking?
You owe your readers a public retraction and apology.
ERIC A. GORDON, Los Angeles
Editor Replies: The writer objects to a cartoon that showed Putin with an imaginary hammer-and-sickle tattoo. Putin was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for 15 years while he was an officer in the KGB. Now he’s just an authoritarian with fascist inclinations.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2019
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