So, what better time then to realize that we can construct a much healthier money system

I think the key might be that Evergrowing Consumption can be superseded by Voluntary Resonance.

It is the transition that can be supported by our new media infrastructure, and which by its own inherently playful nature is more healthy.

So where does this get us? One side is fighting against corporatism which they have painted as socialism. While the other side will take anything with the name “nationalized healthcare” even if it doesn’t nationalize anything. Seems like everyone is fighting against each other to deliver a golden egg to corporate insurance.

I’m getting the feeling that I should just move to Canada.

Well, no, the Republicans don’t really want ANY bill passed. They mostly either don’t care and just want Obama to fail, or (in a small handful of cases like Ron Paul) want a legitimately free market system, including dismantling Medicare and deregulation of drug development. On that point, I actually DO want to get you started. What do you think that would look like?

Personally, I wouldn’t mind a system that is corporatist but still cuts costs and expands coverage, while eliminating the ridiculous and counterproductive tying of health insurance to employment. But unfortunately that is not what most of the proposals are.

Guess backwards didn’t go away when Bush left office; it still reigns supreme.

You state: “the act will still require everyone have insurance, and then subsidize a person’s participation in a private health plan. ”

Is this true? I hadn’t heard the universal requirement before. If that’s the case, this is like privatizing Social Security.

“that the sanctity of the free market is in some ways more important than the health of the nation’s people”

I don’t understand this statement. I know you’re saying that “Obama understands this perspective” but the statement, itself is so inherently backwards and simply wrong, I’m wondering the following:

1) Do you believe this?
2) Do you think Obama agrees with this?
3) Do you really think this is a sane thing for anyone to believe?

Seriously: systems exist to protect and aid humanity in its survival and, after that, in its ability to thrive. No system should be viewed as more important than the people it is supposed to provide a service to. To believe anything but is to believe wrongthinking is punishable and that 2+2=5.

I’m not assuming anything here, I’m just frustrated because I see a lot of this attitude around but I’ve never seen anyone explain it in such precise terms. So, when I see such specific terms, I feel compelled to confirm the context and meaning you’re trying to get across here.

the sanctity of the free market is in some ways more important than the health of the nation’s people.

This is really the heart of the matter. Everything hinges upon it, and it’s the reason the health care issue is backwards.

We place the health of people below the market. And, people ARE the market. It’s just incredibly bad business. We’ve created our own version of Soylent Green. People making money off the death and bad health of other people. They aren’t actually eating the dead people, but they are eating off the profiteering of the dead and dying. No doubt about that.

The pharmaceutical business is a billion dollar industry based on the process that you don’t fix the problem, you muzzle the symptoms. (And, in many cases cause a handful of other symptoms. The side effects from most major drugs are as bad or in some cases worse than the symptom they mean to abate.)

The system as it exists is eating it’s own appendages. It’s consuming it’s own market strength – the people – for a few dollars more.

That’s why it’s collapsing.

What is being ignored is that health insurance is not a free market. It is part of a monopoly of corporations currently controlling what we call healthcare in America – a healthcare system that promotes the use of costsly patented pharmaceuticals over preventative care, nutrition, and basic health education.

Yup. It’s eating itself alive. And, we’re the food.

Australia is heading in the opposite direction to the US. We have historically had a very strong public option, with private insurance an option for only a small proportion of the population who wanted special treatment.

Over the last ten years taxation has changes to effectively penalizes you for not taking out private insurance. An additional 1% tax rate if you earn over a middle class salary or above and a carrot in the form of a 30% tax rebate on the cost of private insurance.

With a hidden, but still significant diversion of financial resources from a public system focusing on cost containment to a private system which competes on growing the consumption of lifestyle extras within the plan.

No surprises that the cost of private health insurance has dramatically risen, whilst funding for public health has stagnated relative to the private sector.

Richard Fernandez (aka Wretchard the Cat), over at the Belmont Club has a good blog entry titled Sitting in Judgment, where he talks about some of the serious problems with the health care plan. I would encourage everyone to head over there and read it.

I mostly agree with Doug. I see any government involvement as little more than monopoly welfare for corporations in a captive market.

From my perspective, this latest health care scam is yet another power grab by the central control corruptokrats and their pay masters, the international corporate mafia. And these guys are nothing but merchants of devastation and expropriation. Neither do I buy into their partisan theater.

Kleptocracy, fake elections, systemic corruption, central currency, banking fraud, debt peonage, high taxes, extractive resource theft, environmental terrorism, jackboot corporate imperialism, brazen militarism, etc., these are all spokes on the wheels of the great fascist neo-feudal neo-Roman imperial wagon. And it’s all bad news.

I find it funny (i.e. it makes me want to weep) that the idea of universal healthcare has been conflated with universal insurance coverage.

If we do get a scheme where the gov’t subsidizes our mandatory participation in private corporate healthcare, how would that differ from the current system of auto insurance? Would auto insurance be an accurate analogy for what this system might look like? Would I have to stand on line at a AAA office to get a kidney transplant?

I’m with you mika. It has not taken long for the dems to take their eye off the prize. The last four paragraphs of Doug’s assessment can not be denied. Let the Blue Dogs and the Republicans keep and serve their shitty cake as it is. Anything less than single payer universal health is not worth fighting for. But letObama and the dems elected since ‘06 bear in mind, they all came to office promising change.

And DJ, this is terrifying to me. To realise healthcare is not considered to be a universal right is to wonder what *can* we claim to believe anymore?

The only thing left, for now, seems non profit cooperative providers subsidised by the government along with a regulatory structure that keeps big insurance from screwing everyone.

-mason

And DJ, this is terrifying to me. To realise healthcare is not considered to be a universal right is to wonder what *can* we claim to believe anymore?

It is terrifying. Beyond the personal reasons, it’s terrifying because we’ve realized the fascist dream of the state being controlled by corporate entities and large swaths of the public are being persuaded by public relations campaigns funded by those corporations to create the impression of public support. When in actuality, that public support is based upon disinformation and lies. It’s been gong on for years of course, but this particular issue and time in history will bode quite significant, simply because we have the opportunity to alter the system – and the economic debacle is a great hint to the severity of our collective capitalistic day dream – yet the very methods that have proven to push the democratic process towards change have been usurped.

The loss of both a clear ethical center and the inability to discern reality from disinformation (as Doug notes) are to blame.

Historically, we are in great company. Doug’s book takes note of a number of systems from the past which eventually collapsed of their own weight for much less than what we currently face.

It should terrify us.

Timing is everything. Obama should have thought twice about spending trillions on everything else before adding another trillion or so with the health care debate.

America is bailout fatigued and see Government health care as a bailout of the poor. whether it is right or wrong, it is difficult to ask a nation sinking under its own weight to add extra tonnage to the load.

I agree completely with your assessment of the plan.

On the political side, it’s not as bizarre as you make it out. You have two corporatist parties fighting for corporate cash. The reason the Republicans are so anxious to see the Obama corporate giveaway fail is because if he succeeds in delivering such a prize to the drug and insurance companies, the Dems will get the bulk of the insurance/pharma cash. Jane Hamsher had a great piece on this the other day: http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/08/19/the-baucus-caucus-phrma-insurance-hospitals-and-rahm/

Might you stop positing to know it all?

I do not know it all. I don’t know, for instance, how you think that contributes to this discussion. But I’ve clicked “approve” so you can have your say.

As for the real discussion between all us people who do not know it all, I wonder what the alternative solution is at this point? Is it to develop a different healthcare system with those practitioners who see the body and health more in the way that we see the economy and society?

In other words, perhaps the corporate medical services offered by the corporate medical model aren’t the ones we really want and need, anyway. I mean, I’d like my chemo if I get to that point, but I think there’s a range of “out of network” practitioners who stand a better chance of keeping me from needing corporate healthcare – at least until end-of-life kinds of stuff start to happen.

It’s tricky. You have a baby born with cancer or something, and there’s not much alternative to having some kind of insurance. But the majority of our medically treated ailments could have probably been avoided had we been living our lives differently, and attending to our body’s needs in ways that may not be entirely profitable to medical and drug corporations.

“In other words, perhaps the corporate medical services offered by the corporate medical model aren’t the ones we really want and need, anyway.”

Why the uncertainty? It is because you’re married to the Left and their big government rackets? You’ve been caught on several occasions playing both sides of the fence. You’ve already made your advocacy for ObamaCare plenty clear on your radio show, so don’t play innocent.

Hey mika,

I can speak for *my* uncertainty. But i will make use of Doug’s examples and figures. I have a strong relationship with the left. “Marriage” does not come to mind until we are in the “Democratic Socialism” sphere and spectrum.

In a world where an infant can be born with cancer, in a world as polluted and degraded by man as much as man pollutes and degrades his fellow man, i believe we need universal and local methods to address the harm that has come to us all. Not all private and governmental agency need seek wealth and power for narrow interests. Nor need *all* regulation and remedy come from said agency.

None of us know it all. And, to the degree we do know certain things, very very few of us are off the grid and living innocent lives. We are responsible to each other.

If we have rights to live and work in equity and health, i believe less of us will be born with cancer. If we find a way to live less mediated by and predicated upon corporatism, i believe many of us can live healthily without recourse to the pharmaceutical industrial complex.

But until the day all technologies and agencies strive and provide equally (or according to their means) for the human commons, people will need to hold government and industry accountable.

What we are talking about is not a fence or one with merely two sides. But i believe in fences oddly enough! A fence for my self, a fence that keeps me crossing too far in what i do not know and causing harm. I also believe in goads! A goading comes from knowledge. It is the imperative to do what is right once one knows what that is,
and to do it the right way.

I am an animal, just like corporations and governments are after their own fashions animal.

I am an animal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUVbRM1vq-Q

I was always here in the silence
But I was never under your eye
Gather up your love in some wiseness,
For every memory shall always survive
And you will see me.

I am an animal
My teeth are sharp and my mouth is full
And the passion is so strong
When I’m alone, loneliness will change me

I am a vegetable
I get my body badly pulled
I’m rooted to the spot
Nothing will rearrange me

I’m looking back and I can’t see the past
Anymore so, hazy
I’m on a track and I’m traveling so fast
Oh for sure I’m crazy

I am a human being
I can’t believe all the things I’m seeing
I’ve nowhere to hide anymore
I’m losing my way

I am an angel
I booked in here I came straight from hell
I don’t know how to lie anymore
I’m boozing to pray

I’m looking back and I can’t see the past
Anymore so, hazy
I’m on a track and I’m traveling so fast
Oh for sure I’m crazy

I was always here in the silence
But I was never under your eye
Gather up your love in some wiseness
for every memory shall always survive
And you will see me

I will be immersed
Queen of the fucking Universe
And I don’t know what I have anymore
Anymore than you do

I am a nothing king
Been right around on a golden ring
I don’t know where you are anymore
I’ve got no clue

I was always here in the silence
But I was never under your eye
Gather up your love in some wiseness
for every memory shall always survive
And you will see me

I am an animal.

No, mason, what we are talking about is false paradigms and partisan theater for the clueless. Now, you and I both know that Rushkoff is not a clueless idiot and that he has a very good idea of the political masquerades being perpetrated on the public. Rushkoff is also very well aware of the corruption and graft by in the system, and yet he continues to pander to these fscks and their schemes to the defraud the public thru ever growing government intrusion, debt peonage, monopoly taxes, and the clueless minions that propagate these scams.

Doug is among the last folks i know of interested in perpetuating debt or any other peonage system. Universal Healthcare, by my definition and many others’, is not Government Intrusion. The Pentagon and the ancillary Foreign Policies are intrusive.

I would have no problem receiving support from my health plan for allopathic *and* homeopathic treatment. And neither Doug nor i, (i think), would mind it if the folks on universal got the same coverage.

Where is the pandering?

Help me out here, mika.

-mason

“Doug is among the last folks i know of interested in perpetuating debt or any other peonage system.”

And that’s the rub. That’s why Rushkoff’s actions are so irksome. There’s a complete intellectual disconnect between his action and his stated goals and intentions.

As for “Universal Healthcare”, my view on this is very straightforward. I view the IRS and everything that stems from it as an illegal and unconstitutional intrusion. I believe the consensus is to abolish the IRS, abolish the Federal Reserve, abolish the military industrial complex, abolish the subsidies and graft that large corporations enjoy, and to the extent that this consensus continues to be thwarted by the current collection of Corruptokrats and the rigged political system, I believe that the stability of the American Union is in real danger of dissolution.

You state that the Pentagon and the ancillary Foreign Policies are intrusive. My argument is, there really is no difference between all these government programs. The only difference between these government programs is in your personal political preference for one over the other, but the net effect is the same.

Where is the pandering?

The pandering is to the Marxists and Leftists Rushkoff hangs with. Again, from an intellectual perspective, there really is no difference between the one set of big government pushers and the other. Fascists and Socialists are two heads of the same big government beast.

I agree there is much “government” practice to be abolished. And, to the extent there seems to be no end to its crookedness in sight, i will make that final leap with you with one condition. The IRS should be abolished until government weans itself completely from the corporate teat.

After that, the oil business will lose its strangle hold on our lives, the military will no longer have to “bring democracy” to unimpressed Arab states and we can completely busy ourselves with the world you and i and Doug want our children to maintain and to live in.

Then, if it should happen that a useful government still exists, a government that cares for the health of its citizens and favours no corporations, then they can have an IRS.

If this were to come to pass, mika, how about a nice fat progressive tax? Well, come to think of it, since the fat cats are already swinging and wagging the dog, why not a tax even more slanted to taxation of the wealthy *right now?*

Can you see my point? There are more than one or two or four ways to skin cats and dogs when the vast majority of people in a state are considered to be and treated less than equal.

On a similar note, why not order our representatives to pass a universal health plan or loose their own?

Hang in there mika!

-mason

I’m very sympathetic to your emotional impulse, mason, unfortunately your practical solution is seriously misguided. You want to get back at these scoundrels for the fortunes they have stolen, stop supporting and patronizing their monopolies and the mechanisms by which their monopolies operate. Tax regimes, big government, centralization/statism, corporatism, copyright laws, and centralized currency are the most insidious means by which the oligarchs maintain their monopolies. It is crucial for you to understand this. The founding fathers understood this, and in fact the founding of the United States was sparked by a revolt against an instigation of a 1% tax regime by King George.

Btw, I’m not interested in skinning the chester the cat. I’m interested in having chester the cat disappear altogether.

I’m with you mika concerning the cat and the dog and the whole pony show, but even i, in my much quieter life still do business with the big corporations. A friend of mine in my rather cat empty section of the west holds “one should seek no more than 100 miles for every consumable,” but she, like me has recently gotten an appliance (a stove) from a major corporation. OTOH i know some folks who care nothing for your subtle ideology when it comes to slavish consumption and yet cook frequently with a wood fired kitchen stove. The world is filled with a great mix of practices and sensibilities. The important thing is that we wrestle with them and ourselves

Chazak, chazek, v’nitchazeik!

and share what works. we will never get anything “back” from them necessarily, but it *is* all about not giving to them or exchanging with them any more than is absolutely necessary in one’s circumstances….

-mason

Bidiyuke! Let them keep their US dollars. Them dollars will soon be worthless. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Yoseph had it right when he confronted Roman imperialism at the Temple. He wanted us to stop using Roman coin, and as example he stayed away from Roman towns. Of-course, Paulus of Tarsus, the Roman imperialist spy, and later redactors who scribed this act of national resistance, tried to turn this act of resistance against the Roman occupation of Judea on its head. I posit that there’s little difference between the times. Rome is Rome is Rome. And we all need to understand who and what we are dealing with.

Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant Secretary of Housing, on NeoRoman Financial Warfare:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5455605137215634518#

“Rome is Rome is Rome.”

Ain’t that the truth, tho.
And, given it’s nature and the nature of McAlvany and the folks he interviews, Rome seems like Rome is going to game Rome to the bitter end. I enjoyed your site and links much, but mostly that fabulous background of your site! Read about the exhibit in the New Yorker, if i am not mistaken?

Nice metaphor re Ben Joseph, his times and his redactors. Very nice!

-mason

Thank, mason. I believe I got that background from here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/isotype75/

Sorry man,
Wrong mag.
http://www.forward.com/articles/110351/

-mason

Yes, that’s his work. Oded Ezer, the Israeli artist and type designer.

Well, the next weeks are going to be interesting, that’s for sure. I popped about the links in your site again this AM. Enjoyed the Labor Day Blues and was chagrined by Peden’s Mises Piece. When it comes to your libertarian fellows and their links, i am discovering while i do not think like them i invest like them, or at least with them occupying half my mind. I suppose that makes me at the very least as inconsistent as you regard Douglas? The more i appreciate anyone’s thoughts on the market, Douglas’ included, the more i feel entitled to know some facts about their own investments. This stuff, of course, is often or often gets really personal really fast. But, with so many strong beliefs and opinions concerning government and international relations riding along side their market perspectives, i feel entitled to know at least one small thing about each person: “What is his or her cash position and since what date?”

I’ve been 25% cash since August 21.

3 letters: VNP

That should cover you as far as diversification from the US dollar, investment in metal commodity, and green renewable energy technology.

Speaking of strong opinions, I just love this guy:
http://ff.im/-7L9Kb

Long-Legged Mack Daddy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LIlA_dLWcM&feature=fvw

Thanks for the pickalicious mika!
I believe i recognise some of those metals from recent conversations…..

I know nothing. Nothing!

Douglas — re: your comment #15

The well-known alternative medicine popularizer Dr. Andrew Weil actually has just come out with a book on the healthcare debate, and has been blogging at the Huffington Post about the need to include health promotion and integrative care (his term for using the most effective methods and treatments from alternative and industrialized medicine) as part of any national plan. His terms seem to echo the sentiments you expressed here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/why-i-am-a-conservative-o_b_259869.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/a-call-to-action-why-our_b_280928.html

his book:
http://www.whyourhealthmatters.com/

Yeah, I saw Dr Weil on one of his mediated book stops and have heard him in his own forum. I would love to hear him talking health with Douglas in a trio format with someone skilled in individual and organisational psychological health. The third party should also be someone in the alternative stream and perhaps a little more feisty than Andrew and Douglas?

Best, mason