I had already penned a piece to go in this spot, even going as far as dropping it in the layout, when Martha Quillen’s column came across my desk.
About halfway through it I realized she was voicing many of the same thoughts I had written except with a bit less cynicism. You see, what had prompted my unpublished tirade was a bumper sticker I had seen that day. It was stuck on an oversized SUV driven by an aging woman in downtown Salida equating liberals with laziness and unhappiness. Although I prefer not to be pigeonholed into all-too-convenient liberal/conservative tags, I certainly cannot side with a group of paranoid, angry folks who consider people like Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck their spokespersons.
I also happen to know a lot of hard working, happy, so-called liberals and a whole bunch of lazy, unhappy, so-called conservatives.
So I decided to calm down, take a breath and write a less sanctimonious piece on the current state of our national affairs.
It seems the public dialog in this country has regressed to the point where we have a low-life southern congressman shouting at the president during an address like a drunk at a NASCAR race, then getting held up by the teabaggers on the right as a champion of their cause.
As “You lie!” echoed through the chamber many calmer heads, including the President’s, prevailed. Whether the unsolicited gibe from that side of the aisle will have any long term effect on the health care debate is unlikely.
There is so much shouting these days it’s hard to hear the rational debate behind the proposals being put forth – and that is exactly what the health insurance companies want. Shouting. Distraction. If we are too busy fighting among ourselves, we may not notice the industry-friendly packages being formulated, such as the one released by Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, that may as well have been written by the industry itself. (Baucus has received over a half million dollars in campaign contributions from the health care industry since 2005).
Mandatory health insurance for all Americans with no public option? Eureka! All those campaign contributions sure did paid off! The rest of us? Well, many of us voted for “change” in the last election. What we didn’t know how much of it is chump change.
Meaningful health care reform should have started with single-payer, which got yanked from the game so early on we hardly got to know it’s name. Soon the pols were chipping away at the public option, talking about “triggers” and “co-ops” – anything that would prevent real reform and accountability from the health care industry. While Democrats twist themselves into contortions in the hopes of gaining one, maybe two Republicans to support any kind of reform, they end up watering it down to the point of non-recognition, basically neutering any real reform.
What do we, the average citizens, end up with? Well, according to many opponents of reform, we have “the best health-care system in the world!” Sure, we do have the advanced technology to prolong life with drugs and machinery helping to keep those insurance profits rolling in. To whit, Terri Schiavo.
Trouble is, most of us can’t afford it. Many of us live with the burdensome knowledge that we live only one health crisis away from total bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, the insurance industry, with the help of Dick Armey and his FreedomWorks front, as well as Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, have managed to unleash the anger of a certain segment of the population over Barack Obama’s election and channelled it into sabotaging any kind of meaningful reform.
It is an amazing feat to get folks to march and rally against their own best interests. Maybe it is the mental – not the physical health of this nation we should be most worried about.
What can those of us do who believe we need serious reform of the health-care system? Well, we can call Senators Bennet and Udall. Perlmutter and Salazar as well. (Don’t waste your time on Lamborn). Demand that they represent us, not the lobbyists. Also, we all need to be proactive with our own health. We can make positive lifestyle choices that directly impact our physical and mental health in the foods we eat, the amount of exercise we get and especially, the amount of cable TV we watch.
– Mike Rosso, Sept. 2009
Correction: In the September 2009 article, A 21st Century Look at Ranching in the San Luis Valley, this editor misidentified the location of the Villa Grove Trade. It is on U.S. 285, not U.S. 17. Be sure and stop in on Amber and Jeff the next time you are out that way and say hi.
