“It’s OK to dream…” JFK
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the cold, placid, partly cloudy island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Wednesday morning, the 28th day of March, 2012, a quite day in Cotuit, ‘where the ocean meets the wood’, looking out onto Cotuit Bay and the lone blue boat drifting about on a giant liquid plate glass vision, beckoning one back to warm days in the sun… sailing, surfing, biking, golfing or just walking the miles and miles of open beaches that stretch seemingly to infinity–a place for ALL to visit, not just the ‘chosen’ few… And so it was yesterday on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, with at least four out of the nine Justices who embody said court ganging up on the Solicitor General, President Barack Obama’s point man on the Affordable Health Care LAW that is being sued by twenty six states, claiming that the law, because of the individual mandate (a concept that first saw the light of day via the conservative ‘think tank’ The Heritage Foundation in 1992), is unConstitutional. Justice Scalia and Roberts led the charge against the government, citing logic (in their minds) that if the government can force you to buy health insurance, then they can also make you buy broccoli, a cell phone, a car, or a burial plot. Several of the Justices who are part of ‘the real world’, such as Elena Kagan, made the argument that health care is not the same animal as other ‘commerce’ items, thus, congress does have the power under that Commerce clause to ‘create’ new markets, markets that, like the old Pennzoil commercial of yesteryear, ‘you can pay me a little now, or a whole lot later’, will make insurance, under our ‘for profit private insurance’ model here in the states, more available to the 311 million people living in this country today, 50 million without health insurance at all, creating large risk pools and eventually lowering health care premiums for everyone. Today’s system of health care delivery is flawed and is the most expensive in the world, riddled with waste, unnecessary tests and a bureaucracy that does not promote preventative care, thus lowering overall costs, rather, encourages knee jerk reaction medicine, the most costly of all, inviting that waste, fraud and abuse to continue driving health care costs to the outer limits of our imagination. Hence the Emergency room, the most expensive medical treatment of all. Most poor citizens here in the U.S. today use their local Emergency room as their ‘primary physician’, and therefore the cost of their care, for whatever the procedure, is exponentially passed on to the American who does buy into the system, i.e. those with insurance today, in the form of higher insurance premiums that are only on the rise (four times the rate of inflation), feeding this vicious downward cycle of ‘health care’ that serves to enrich the insurance monopoly and their investors, while shouting out on Capitol Hill, ‘to hell with those 50 million Americans without insurance, especially the children and the elderly, not to mention the poorest of the poor, for that is the new Jesus, who embrace the notion of TOUGH LOVE. That’s right, the insurance companies are just as bad as the oil and gas companies, with their ’saving grace’ being that they don’t pollute the air, water and land 24/7/365 with no consequences. On day three of this legal marathon, most analysts would agree it all comes down to that pivotal fifth vote, another 5-4 decision, ‘can you say Al Gore? I knew that you could…’, by this very conservative legislative body, and Justice Kennedy represents that vote in the coming days, weeks and months. I suppose it is ironic that the surname of that aforementioned Justice is the same as the MAN who championed “the RIGHT of health care for every American”–”The Last Lion of the Senate”, the much missed, Mr. Teddy Kennedy, hailing from, of course, Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Here was a man who fought tooth and nail for ALL Americans to gain access to health care, citing ‘it’ as a right, just as much a right as free speech or the right to ‘bear arms’. For if we are to sweep our poor, our hungry, our huddled masses into massive debt because they can’t afford the ‘health insurance’ these grifters who pose as ‘insurance companies’ offer them, leaving them ‘to fend for themselves’ against a Fortune 100 corporation who does not care a lick about you, your grandma, your son or your mother, well, I believe that this country is on a big backslide, taking the majority of her people with her. Justice Kennedy made remarks yesterday, akin to an old E.F. Hutton ad, everyone hanging on every syllable, implying ‘the burden’ of the relationship between the individual and the government would be “too heavy”, should government force Americans to purchase some kind of health insurance, therefore considering the law ‘unconstitutional’. However, he may be persuaded that, per Justice Ginsberg’s participation yesterday, that this is indeed a completely different concept all together. Because we are all in the same boat, paying into the system any which way you have it, “tomatoes”, tomato’s, if you will, only benefits the greater whole, thus improving our society in general–creating a more robust, healthy and energetic country, that translates into financial rewards for US ALL! We ought to just grow up and let this well drafted START to reforming the health care delivery system in the United States of America once and for all just BE… anything less will prove to be FOLLY! The baby boom generation will begin to retire in earnest in four years, pushing Medicare liabilities through the roof, and if we don’t allow the individual mandate to thrive, forcing insurance carriers to realign with REALITY on the ground of every city, town and oasis in America, we WILL see tens of thousands of men, women and children go without proper medical care, pushing them to that Emergency Room where they will be seen for perhaps fifteen minutes and sent on their way…an inhumane way to treat a dog, not to mention a HUMAN BEING. Our priorities in this country have been hijacked by a BOUGHT congress, a soon to be BOUGHT Senate, and, God FORBID, a BOUGHT Executive, where this once fine, proud and truly FREE nation is ripped apart at the seems, and in the new rigged system of “Judicial PRUDENCE”, in a 5-4 decision of course, the “American People”(credit our pal, and nite club comic, Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY), will get the shaft once again, proving that something quite disgusting is filling the air with a stench that must have inspired playwright William Shakespeare to proclaim over 500 years ago that,“…something stinks in Denmark!”. Stay tuned, the infinite wisdom and decision of Justice Kennedy will be revealed in June, hoping it is truly wise, a decision, I might add, that will DEFINE his legacy in that highest court in the land. Have a nice day, as you keep on dodging ‘ole Rupert, “aaaaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhh matie!” Murdoch’s wooden nickles offered up on FOX “NEWS”! Side effects include, but are not limited to, blurred tunnel vision, manic behavior, heavy drinking, hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, increased use of streets drugs, and an overwhelming feeling of DOOM, creating insomnia, sleep walking and trouble concentrating on simple tasks in life, such as tying one’s own shoe. May God’s continued grace be upon Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parent’s of that slain innocent, Floridian boy, Trayvon Martin, as that family continues to deal with inhuman character assassinations by the haters of the world, hurled at the grave of their dead son, gunned down in cold blood by a man who still walks the streets, George Zimmerman, close ‘pal’ of the Sanford Police Department, a department where one homicide detective, initially, as was just reported yesterday, wanted Zimmerman brought up on manslaughter charges, but was released because of a local prosecutor’s dropping of the ball. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools…” Martin Luther King, Jr. PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
