Choice? What Choice?

[Mythsaje]

What we have in this country is a grand illusion of Choice. Five thousand varieties of toothpaste, fifty different kinds of toilet paper, kinds of deodorant, body-wash, shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, face creams, cosmetics, and whatever else you can find easily at every corner drugstore.

We've got 300 TV channels, dozens of radio stations, as many websites to visit as there are stars in the sky, YouTube videos galore, nearly every song ever imagined available for instant download to computer or Ipod.

We get home loans, student loans, payday loans, credit card debt, child support, house payments (or rent), car payments (or repair bills), insurance fees (be it car, health, home, life or whatever else) taxes, utility bills, fuel costs, childcare, grocery bills, and health care expenses to occupy our minds.

We get twelve years of Republican mismanagement (including the four years when they had Clinton to push around--though, to be fair, they did everything they possible could to keep him off balance the whole time), a staggering, stagnant economy, effective wage freezes, rampant (if not yet epidemic) unemployment, worsening working conditions leading to lower morale, multi-billion dollar corporate bailouts, usurious borrowing rates, predatory credit extortion and/or blackmail (last I heard Radio Shack required a credit check as a condition of employment. Drug testing is bad enough, but checking your CREDIT?).

We have medical bills ruining our credit, preventing us from attaining decent housing, a permanent and worsening problem with homelessness, hunger, and infectious disease.

We get two viable political parties. We get Health Insurance "reform" or nothing at all. We get one war, two wars, or three wars, but we don't get NO wars. We get Don't Ask Don't Tell. We get Defense of Marriage. We get to make bombs, guns, airplanes, or fast food, but we don't get to make anything that might be made more cheaply by indentured Chinese people.


The less important something is, the more choices we seem to have. Isn't that interesting? The things that are really important, well, we get to leave to someone else. Someone more...knowledgeable. Isn't that right? We have our elected people refusing to hear arguments supporting a health care option that 60% of American people support. We have medical and health care personnel being ARRESTED for daring to exercise their right of Free Speech in front of people doing the public's business.

Please, someone remind me who's supposed to be in charge here. It IS still THE PEOPLE, right? It's not a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations, right?

Let me get this straight, MR. BAUCHUS. You allow people employed by the corporations currently already making the vast majority of medical decisions in this country, much to their profit, to speak as they will in this forum, but you will not allow AMERICAN CITIZENS who possess FIRST HAND knowledge of what it's like IN THE GODDAMN TRENCHES and you refuse to listen to them?

So, we get to choose from any one of thousands of kinds of chemical gook to spread on our bodies, but WE DON'T GET TO DECIDE WHAT KIND OF HEALTH CARE SYSTEM WE SHOULD HAVE?

You know what? You're fired. Pack your bags and get the hell out. Why didn't our founding fathers give us a Pink Slip option? Mr. Bauchus--your services are no longer required. Please vacate the public premises at once.

You know what, folks? We should also be the ones making the decisions for the Democratic Party. Not its so-called "Leadership." Every day it becomes more clear that we've bought a pig in a poke. We've been the victims of a bait and switch, fallen for a three-card monte scam.

We get a "Oh, don't blame us. It's those Blue Dog Democrats who are screwing things up. Those Conservative Democrats over there."

How conveeeeenient. Why isn't OUR leadership (except for a few rare examples) talking about Single Payer? Talking about how it will lift a burden of debt not only off our citizens, but also from the corporations and small businesses as well. How THE ONLY reason we shouldn't have single payer universal health care is because a small but powerful lobby in the health care industry itself, and the massively powerful insurance lobby, would really prefer we didn't.

It's not about long waiting periods, or government making medical decisions, or lack of efficiency or cost effectiveness. No, it's about INSURANCE COMPANY profitability. Nothing else. NOTHING else.

Why aren't OUR pundit-types saying it? JUST LIKE THAT? Olbermann, Colbert, Stewart, Maddow, Maher? If they're on the MSM, they should be saying it every time the opportunity arises. We need to be telling the American people straight up that the only reason they have medical debt is because it serves the Insurance industry that they do so. OUR medical decisions aren't in our hands, or in the hands of our doctors. They're in the hands of the insurance companies--and woe to us if we can't pay for it if they decide we don't need something. We're just SCREWED. How could the government POSSIBLY be any worse than that? I mean, seriously--does Congress suffer greatly under the protection of THEIR single-payer health plan? How about Medicare? How about Medicaid? Or SSI?

We should be lighting up every newspaper editorial page, every news blog, every congressional office switchboard, and making sure people understand this. What they're trying to do isn't HEALTH CARE REFORM, it's HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM. They STILL want the same folks to be holding all the cards--they just want to shuffle 'em a bit first.

Don't I remember something about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? Does this feel in any way familiar?

Telephone, telegram, tell-a-friend. Just get it out there. Those involved the most in this decision have no concern for the welfare of the American people.

So, do YOU think we're "in good hands?" Honestly?

Make it KNOWN.



edited to pluralize

[briscott]

1. disillusion

I couldnt agree with you more. It seemds as if the media is leaning toward the right more every minute. I dont understand why msnbc allows assholes like joe scarborough talk shit for hours each morning.

[sam sarrha]

2. that is simple.. they give him the script..

[ejpoeta]

3. well, there was a reason why one person or corporation couldn't own ALL the media.

they have a stake in this. and they all benefit from the status quo, the corporate masters. at least ed shultz is out there banging the drum.

[Fumesucker]

4. Ultimately though, we as citizens are to blame..

I see it here on DU when Ralph Nader is mentioned.

Do you think we would *really* be any closer to single payer if Gore had become POTUS?

There should have been ten million Democrats in DC raising hell when the SCOTUS was deciding Bush v Gore.

Hell, there should have been a general strike that shut the fucking country down.

If the citizenry were to become more like French citizens, things would change.

That won't happen until the cable TV gets shut off, by which point it will be far too late.

I see it in my own family and circle of acquaintances, the only person in real life I can have a reasonably deep conversation about current events with is my son in law's 87 year old grandmother.

We are so far beyond pathetic that the light from pathetic won't reach us for ten billion years.

:cry:

[eridani]

5. "Choice" in health insurance is about as useless and stupid--

--as having choices about what size you want to make plugs and electrical outlets, or what line voltages you get to use. Taking away choice at that level increases choices at the consumer level.

[Fumesucker]

6. That is a very good analogy..

And an excellent point.

Sometimes restricting some choices can lead to greater freedom of overall choice.

[Triana]

7. It IS government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations...

...and therein lies the problem.

On health care
On climate change
On war
On the economy

THEREIN lies the problem. All those issues are dominated by corporate interests and those corporate interests are recognized and represented by the government they BOUGHT. WE can't afford to buy a government so WE aren't represented.

Simple as that.

[Echo In Light]

13. Bingo. Phony choice, phony war, phony democracy

[Triana]

22. phony democracy - it definitely is

they make a good enough pretense of it to give the ILLUSION of choice but there really is none.

[Jakes Progress]

16. And they are closing in on Education. nt

[HamdenRice]

8. Basic Poli Sci in a democracy -- the bigger the issue, the more deciders, the less choice

I agree with your overall anger at the present lack of single payer as an option.

But the larger analysis I think misses an important point. You are comparing individual decisions (toothpaste) to collective decisions (a health insurance system).

With small, individual issues, you have a lot of choice. With large, collective issues, you have to decide in a way that is agreeable to hundreds of millions of fellow citizens -- with all their prejudices, lack of information, and preferences. The choice becomes very narrow with every large collective decision.

[nichomachus]

9. But there aren't a lot of "deciders"

That's exactly the problem --

We get to make no decisions

The members of Congress only pretend to make decisions, but take their marching orders from the people who ante up the money to put them into office.

The real decisions are made by the lobbyists for the insurance companies and the medical industry who own the asses of the members of Congress, lock, stock, and barrel.

You can quote PolySci all you want, but this isn't a "democracy." It's a "corporatocracy."

[The2ndWheel]

15. There's at least one right there

"The members of Congress only pretend to make decisions, but take their marching orders from the people who ante up the money to put them into office."

Then stop voting for them. Stop voting period. If you cast your vote knowing that the people you are voting for take their marching orders from the people with money, all you are doing is giving legitimacy to that system by participating in it.

On the other hand, few can escape that system, as it is totalizing in nature. It forces you into being just another cog, which as was said, then limits your choices concerning mass produced, large scale, distant, anonymous, collective decisions.

When one entity represents 300,000,000 people, you can't be a decider.

[nichomachus]

17. They don't care about who you vote for

And I say you, in particular, not everyone. Because most other people aren't really paying attention. Members of Congress care only about money. Because with enough money, they can buy enough TV time for a one-way propaganda effort to make enough other people (other than you) vote for them.

Members of Congress -- and I'm old enough to remember when this was the case -- used to care about what you and I thought. If we called, they responded. If a member got six letters in his mailbox about a single subject, he would take notice. If he got a petition with 10,000 signatures, he'd start crapping in his pants.

Now, your phone calls are answered by robots. Your letters get canned, computer-generated responses with a policy paper attached. And petitions are consigned to the shredder.

If 100 constituents call, the effect of those calls can be canceled out by one phone call from s corporate lobbyist with a campaign donation.

[blindpig]

10. k&r

Very good. It's a fuckin' racket.

[bvar22]

11. Nailed It !

K&R

[Javaman]

12. K&R. nt

[Raineyb]

14. Well said.

Your pink slip line gave me an idea though. It would be an interesting campaign for people to write their senators and congressmen "pink slips" in response to their refusal to listen to we the people.

Regards

[sendero]

20. Nothing is going to change ..

.... until there is an ANTI-INCUMBENT movement to vote out a few congresspersons who thought they could keep buying re-election with corporate money.

Until we THROW A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF THE ASSHOLES OUT ON THEIR ASSES, everything will stay the same.

[Wednesdays]

18. Actually, the choices of toothpaste and toilet paper are narrowing too

Thanks to corporate mergers...leading to everything becoming monopolized.

K&R

[pleah]

19. K&R

[slay]

21. Exactly!

Lets see, on the one hand I can choose from a stinky steaming pile of shit, and on the other hand I can choose a slightly less stinky pile of shit. How the fuck is that choice? Now I'm not implying Obama is a pile of shit, just making a point that we do NOT have true choice in this country. Bravo on a great post Mythsaje!