The 81,135th Day

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Single Payer is our common goal and our eventual common victory.

For purposes of discussion lets assume that everyone at DU desires a single payer health care system, expects the Democratic Party to bear the fight for a single payer health care system, and will not consider the United States to have crossed the minimum threshold of civilized countries until a single payer health care system is passed and implemented.

In the United States many people, millions of families and thousands of small isolated communities consider this to be a radical far left proposal that is socialistic in nature and brings the country closer to communism.

It does not.

Single Payer is not a particularly revolutionary point. All of the most conservative parties in Australia, Canada, England, and all of the other developed countries embrace single payer and regularly compete with liberal parties in expanding or improving their single payer system. No one wants to abandon their single payer system, the issue is never raised.

Looking at trees and missing the forrest.

We differ simply on strategy and tactics on how to get the US to a single payer system.

If you were to take at random any two active DUers who were normally at bitter odds at DU and drop them into a Representative group of 500 Americans for a 4 hour cocktail party there is a 76% chance that the two DUers (who normally would be fighting in GD) would end up in the corner discussing how little they have in common with the other 498 people at the party.

In our hyper policy analysis, discussion, snark and pummeling we examine trees. We look closely at the tree examine the bark with a magnifying glass and argue with passion about the subtle differences between two trees that appear to the casual observer to be arboric twins.

Sometimes we need to take a step back and see the historic things that are happening.

The 81,135th Day.

Since the United States Constitution came into effect on September 17,1787 the House of Representatives has existed for 81,135 days.

Every single day that Americans woke up during those 81,135 days they knew that any medical calamity could destroy everything that a lifetime of hard work had built. That any family could bring into the world a child whose demanding medical condition was the sole responsibility of the family.

Some of those families on some of those days could wake up feeling fortunate that they had better coverage than the rest of their neighbors and citizens because their employment meant that they had reasonable care except that they always knew that the care could be revoked, the job lost or the company could cease to exist.

Certain band aid approaches have been applied to keep the system from literally being out of the middle ages. All senior citizens are covered. Many children were covered. Some expenses of some poor people were covered. But essentially the responsibility of bearing the burden of being at the losing end of nature's medical lottery was an individual and family affair.

But on the 81,135th day of the House Of Representatives the peoples representatives stood up to the most powerful lobbying effort in the history of modern democracy and said that starting on the 81,136th day and for every day that this country is in existence the system of health care that is responsible for the health of all of its citizens is going to be a shared burden. From now on the risk is going to be shared by all. This country is now committed to the idea that basic medical care should be provided to every single citizen.

The future

The bill is a compromise. It is defective. It is a work in progress. There will be some terrible unintended results. There will be some face reddening fuck ups.

And it is a thing of beauty.

It is a thing of beauty because it starts us on the road to a real solution. Senator Orrin Hatch is 100% correct when he states that this bill will lead to the complete socialization of health care insurance. This is not a slippery slope it is a cliff that is as abrupt as the Grand Canyon, once we start rolling the decayed insurance companies towards the edge they will start falling over like like logs.

It is inevitable. Today is a small step but it is the highest step up.

Like Medicare it will be eventually seen as normal.

Like the CDC, the EPA, the FDA it will be a real increase of federal responsibility that very quickly will be perceived as normative and as a traditional American point of view.

In time the Public Option will develop a constituency. Others will demand access and the comparison between private and practice will become as absurd as saying that the fire department should not have ambulances as they infringe on private ambulance companies (which in the last few years have virtually disappeared from the EMS system in most urban areas).

States will be given the right to "opt in" for single payer and a couple of small states, possibly Hawaii and Vermont will take the first step. Oregon, Rhode Island and Delaware will follow and some state that no one every expected, possibly from the south will jump the cue and the race will be on. A couple will hold out for a while but the shrinking private sector will lose their efficiencies in size and simply become "add on plans".

On the 85,945th day or the 86,342nd day or the 88,343rd day or whatever day it is when virtually all of the citizens of the United States come under a Universal Single Payer system, Americans will look back on the 81,135th day of the House of Representatives and they won't be seeing the faults of the bill but the long delayed but still historic big first step.