Index

Liar, Liar

This morning I heard some Republican saying that Medicare was in trouble, and that we just absolutely have to do something about it. This is one of those Fox News “truths” - a lie that has been repeated so many times people accept it as truth, even though the underlying facts are either non-existent or, at best, highly subjective. This is the same category of truth as the oft-repeated garbage that the federal government’s spending is out of control and its debt is too high.

It is not Medicare that is in trouble - it is the medical system that it is paying for. We do not have a federal deficit problem - we have a problem with the rich and powerful not paying their part of the costs. The only real problem is the underlying system that allows rich, powerful individuals and companies to abuse the rest of us and make us pay for their excesses.

If the medical system were changed from a lawyer-devised and lawyer-controlled adversarial model to one where the patient’s health actually drove care, we would cut the cost of the overall health system by 25 to 50%.  If we put the brakes on the pharmaceutical companies’ pushers and actually based their profits on solving real health problems instead of making more addictive pain pills and unneeded drugs that cause health problems, we would knock another 20% - 40% or so off of the remainder.  Guess what - no more Medicare problems.

As long as we allow Fox News to control the debate in this country, we will remain in a continuous state of disarray and disaster. If we manage to kick the schlockmeisters in the teeth and start thinking as individuals for the greater good instead of listening to the prepackaged crap the scamsters feed us, we will come out of this a stronger and more resilient nation.  A functioning shit filter in the minds of our citizens would allow us to tackle and solve the real problems, not waste our time and effort on the stuff that the garbage peddlers want us to think about while making them richer and more powerful.

On the current path, we will not remain a nation long.