Dumpster Diving for Healthcare

I ran into my old friend David Chamberlain last night. Actually, I didn't run into him so much as went to see the band he plays with on occasion at a cocktail lounge in the San Fernando Valley. David is quite simply one of the best bass players on the planet. He's worked with Glenn Frey, Roy Buchanan, blah blah. He's melodic, funky and has the best tone maybe ever. More important, he's got a heart of gold, and has survived many of the addictions and afflictions musicians are prone to going through.

So in the course of conversation, we talked about... hip replacements. What else? Chamberlain is looking forward to having one. Because he's low income (as most musicians are) he has qualified, by waiting in the right lines and filling out the right forms, to have his hip replaced. And he's excited about it. I think it's cool that he's having it done. Meanwhile, I prefer to slowly let mine deteriorate. Partly out of stubbornness and blatant denial, and partly because I don't think I would qualify for such a thing.

I would certainly qualify in the income department, but because I own a house, I think my assets would throw me out of qualifying. Which is kind of the norm for a lot of us. We don't quite fit in any category. If you rent, and are below a certain income level, there are options for you. If you own, and are steadily and gainfully employed, there are options for you. If you fall through the cracks (which I'm pretty sure is how I got to this planet to begin with), you often find that your options are very limited.

I'm not complaining. And I'm actually happy for my friend, and the fact that my niece got her cancer treated, and so on. And I'm pretty okay with people who have great health insurance through their jobs or whatever. But it seems to me that the system we have is just too convoluted.

Many of us voted for Barack Obama because of his seeming dedication to universal health care. For all Americans. An expansion of existing programs to cover everyone. That's what he sold us. Many of us bought into his idea.  I still buy into it. In this country, we seem willing to fire people who work for the post office, but God forbid any insurance executives lose their jobs.

As we all know, that's not at all what we got. After a year of political wrangling, wrestling, glad handing and brown nosing we got, instead of simple and understandable universal health care, a convoluted mess that we are all required by law to buy into, even though most of us don't have a clue what it is we are buying. And many of us are just going to take the hit. We'll pay the fine, and keep living on a wing and a prayer.

If Obama is looking for the source of mass discontent among many people who voted for him, he need look no further than this. Plain and simple, he did not deliver on his promise, and then has tried to convince us that what we got was what we really needed.  It's kind of a father knows best line of thought that might work on his daughters, but  doesn't work on most grown ups.

I don't hold Obama entirely accountable for the mess of a health care bill that wormed its way through the legislative process. He has an opposition party that has been nothing short of obstructionist from day one. And I don't think he had a clue how powerful the insurance company and pharmaceutical companies truly are. His big mistakes seem to be 1) he spent too much time trying to compromise with a group of people who wanted nothing short of his political head on a platter and 2) instead of fighting for what he promised in his campaign and possibly losing, he chose a Pyrrhic victory instead. And almost everyone agrees that the result was a total mess of a health care bill signed into law.

I'm not one who expects the government to fix everything for me. But I do resent it when somebody promises me a steak dinner and then tries to convince me that a cold meatloaf sandwich is the same thing.  And then insists that I pay for the meatloaf sandwich that I didn't want to begin with.

This is going to bite Obama in the ass come election time. He's a masterful campaigner, and the Republican Party is in such disarray that I still think the smart money will be on him getting re-elected. But it's kind of reminiscent of the old Pete Townsend line, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

We have a new captain at the helm, but the ship is going the same direction.

Many of us had hoped that change would mean something... well, a little different....