Health Care

I have written about this before—more than once.

A healthy people are absolutely imperative for a successful and prosperous country, and that's an irrefutable fact. We the people, every last one of us, must have access to affordable healthcare where and when we need it.

To that end, we should and must adapt a single payer healthcare system, i.e. Medicare for everyone, cradle to the grave. We don't have to conduct any more studies. This thing has been studied to death—we have experts “running out our ears”; and, from my personal experience, Medicare, which pays 80%, along with a good supplemental insurance which pays the remaining 20%, is a fine system (I may be off 5% on this). Also, there is a small deductible at the beginning of each year—presently approximately $150. Now, if there are any faults which we can find in this kind of program, we surely have enough representatives in our Congress who are smart enough to correct them in the writing of this new healthcare bill before it is passed.

This having been said, surely we know that nothing is free—there are no free lunches. Our healthcare must be financed. To this end, I strongly recommend that we establish a “pay as you go” self-liquidating stand-alone fund, similar to Social Security, completely independent from our general fund and budget and financed by a designated and fully transparent healthcare tax. At the end of each year, no deficit should remain. I would suggest that in this particular instance a wise government would create this tax as a non-deductible adjunct to the corporate income tax—no payroll taxes, etc. A good time to do this would be when we reform corporate taxes. It’s imperative, however, that the healthcare tax be identified separately so as to maintain its transparency. We need this! We need it now! It makes no sense for us to continue wasting millions, if not billions, of dollars arguing, bickering, and playing politics over it. Let's "Gitter Done". Let's do it now.

I’m certain you all know that, presently, Medicare runs a deficit every year and is one of the largest contributors to our national deficit and debt, as it is underfunded by our payroll deductions. Our adoption of a single payer national healthcare plan in the manner I have suggested will immediately relieve the state and federal governments of the burden of Medicaid, facilitate our efforts toward reduction of the national debt, and, in addition, employee healthcare will no longer be a burden on business—especially small business. We will, also, be better able to better control the upward movement in our healthcare costs and stabilize our spending.

In closing this comment, let me briefly discuss another aspect which I’m sure will be argued by some who will shout, “This is Socialism; this is Communism”. Rubbish! Hogwash! This is no more Communism than the man in the moon by any definition, and it is no more Socialism than anything we are doing now and have been doing for many years in many areas of our government and then some. The people of our nation have enjoyed the conveniences of publicly owned institutions since before we were born, i.e. roads, bridges, transportation, schools, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. Especially in our country, the words Socialism and Communism serve only as pejoratives used to stir up emotions and cause conflict, costing millions of dollars and heartbreak in the process. Adopting a Single Payer Healthcare system will save billions of dollars and rid our people of a major worry as well as leave us with a better government in the process.

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com.

Smokescreen

It is my view that the current presidential debates are little more than an insult to the intelligence of the American people, a smokescreen “majoring in minors” and “minoring in majors”, casting a cloud over the real issues confronting the citizens of our great nation in this forthcoming election. Let me tell you this up front. I abhor and disapprove of both of these candidates, neither of which, in the long run, truly represents the interests of our people or our nation—one is a fascist, and the other, Mrs. Clinton, represents the Corporatocracy and Power Elite, our Shadow Government now in control of our nation. I submit to you that, if elected, Mr. Trump will prove to be a catastrophe. Mrs. Clinton, over a longer period of time, will prove to be a disaster. We really missed the boat when we turned our back on Bernie Sanders, a huge mistake for which we will pay dearly.

That having been said, I want to call one other subject to your attention which I must believe you already know but may have overlooked due to all the hype involved in the matter. This is just my opinion, I admit; but I don’t believe Donald Trump’s everyday morals are any worse than those of Hillary Clinton or the majority of others ranging from the elite among us to the proletariat. As evidence of what I am saying, I call your attention to such examples as Richard Nixon, John and Edward Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dennis Hastert, etc. I also remind you of what gave the internet its biggest boost in the beginning, i.e. the widespread popularity of pornography. I also ask you to look at our daily television programming. There is programming on television today that would have been banned in yesteryears. Also, consider all the births out of wedlock, abortions, and our rate of divorce— So much for morality in this election. As Jesus said, “Let those without sin cast the first stone.”

So what is it about Mr. Trump which causes him, in addition to his many other shortcomings, i.e. myopic, grossly uninformed, mentally lazy (doesn’t want to learn), egocentric, narcissistic to an extreme, etc., to look worse than others with many of the same faults? I’ll tell you. He has no finesse—NONE. Do you want to know why we have so many corrupt and incompetent people in government; and yet, they are reelected time and time again? They have finesse thru which we cannot see. Over a sticky situation, finesse, a word spoken only infrequently, is like perfume.

So what are the “real issues” behind the smokescreen in the election of November 8^th?

There are many issues, but I believe the most important and urgent issue above all in this election, the threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads every day notwithstanding, is the polarity of the American people. Whoever is elected must inspire and reunite our people to a common goal, eliminating racism and xenophobia throughout. We need to decide who we are as a nation, the direction in which we are going, and do it. As we are, we are not unlike a giant ocean liner in the middle of a vast ocean without power or direction, floating aimlessly, going nowhere, and getting deeper and deeper into trouble. We have been arguing and bickering about this for 240 years. It is past time for us to decide. I might—No, I must add that this task must be determined and decided upon by the American people—not an oligarchy of the Corporatocracy and Power Elite and not the other powers around the world. This issue is of the utmost urgency for our country.

Second, and certainly in conjunction with the first, we must, once and for all, eliminate our Shadow government. We must take back our country from the Corporatocracy and Power Elite which stole it from us. We need our elite; we need our corporations; but we need them to serve us rather than for us to serve them. Somehow, in the last thirty-five or forty years, while we slept, they took over our country (or we gave it to them).  In a democracy, our representative democracy if you will, the people must do their job and participate. They must be responsible. That means keeping informed, and staying on top of matters. If we are unwilling to do that, choosing not to think beyond our own back yard, we will surely lose our democracy and ultimately our sovereignty. It will be too late to take it back. Mark my words.

That also means we must have a government that is transparent. How can a government of a representative democracy, a sovereign nation such as ours, pass laws and make treaties with foreign nations such as NAFTA, the TPP, etc, the provisions of which are so shocking that they are mandated by law not to be declassified until four years after they go into effect? Excuse me for being so dumb; but how can we be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people when the people have no voice and are literally kept in the dark about the laws we pass? Yes! I am referring to the "Investor-State Dispute Settlement" mechanism or investment court system (included in the TPP), allowing an investor the right to use dispute settlement proceedings in a world court against a country’s government for loss of profits wherein the people of that government have no voice (or even know about them for that matter). Yet, through their taxes, they pay the damages assessed.  This law is an assault on the people of the world by the Trans National Corporations who, every day, usurp our sovereignty; but where is this reported in prime time news?

Corporations are the creation of man for the purpose of serving man. It is man who should govern—not the corporations. Our government should get the TPP out of the secret vault in their basement and publish it for the people to see. It should be readily available to everyone before being voted on. The Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism is no secret at all to foreign governments and the Corporatocracy and Power Elite in our country. The only one from whom it is kept secret is we the people. In fact, we should and must defeat these agreements when they come up for a vote. If it affects our lives, we should have a voice before it is enacted. It's past time for us to practice what we preach on our bumper stickers and "Take Back Our Country" from these leaches. This, too, is of the utmost urgency.

How are we going to do this? Let us begin with the reversal of Citizens United. Let us get the money out of our election campaigns, shorten the length of campaigns making them less expensive, and finance campaign spending through our tax collections. Let our representatives be accountable once again to the electorate rather than to the lobbyists. In conjunction with this, let us nationalize voting laws, making them fair to all with every citizen having the right to vote.

There are more very serious and urgent issues before us, i.e. public education, Social Security and Disability, universal single payer healthcare for all, to name a few; but, for the immediate future, the above are the most urgent.

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com signing off.