Republicans Sacrifice Chickens For Healthcare

We know that the biggest reason you all are pissed about this is that your failed Reagonomic free-marketeers-run-amok ideas that caused the shadow bank meltdown and the economic mess we are in now have already been discredited to the point that nobody wants to hear them anymore. Don't tell me that your answer to healthcare is the free market.

You can not put a dollar value on life, and that is all your free market answers are about, aren't they?

a moral responsibility   those words are clearly applicable to the health care crisis  in this country.  Intellectually I knew that long before I first read (and wrote about) the Remote Area Medical Mission in Wise Virginia.  I lost any doubt during the weekend I spent there in July, which is why I am taking the first weekend in October to go to a similar event in Grundy, VA.

How do we compromise on morality?  IF we can make the case that what we are attempting do is a moral obligation, then I believe the politics will be on our side -  the conscious of most people can be challenged.  Clearly the late Senator Kennedy understood this, which is why the words of Matthew 25 were so prominent at his funeral.  For whatever human flaws he had (and acknowledged both in his letter to the Pope and in his soon to be published memoir). on this he did not lack moral clarity.

Part of the responsibility of those of us who speak out on issues is to remember our dual responsibility to afflict the comfortable as we comfort the afflicted.

Yes, in politics we must look at what is possible.  We must "advance the ball" down the field, since Americans are too fond of football metaphors.  But one should also remember that it matters not who gains the most yardage, only who scores the most points.   Thus speak not to me of points of agreement in negotiation if those do not lead to meaningful action in legislation that becomes law.

In moral tests one cannot be neutral.

Here is the real and honest moral argument:

So now we know who the real death panelists are!

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

Guaranteed Trickle Down Death

That is what happens when you put a dollar value on life. Investors would have twice the incentive to deny care to the elderly. What incentive would investors in healthcare insurance corporations have to keep them alive if they can make more money denying care to them and then, also, make more money on their investments in reverse mortgages?