Rantle

By Eric Anschutz, August 19, 2009

There is a kind of mania afoot in America. We see genuine distress among some in our country, driven by talk radio and TV, and fueled by misinformation and distortions and outright lies about the purposes and consequences of President Obama’s health care proposals.

It is no surprise, then, when town-hall meetings provoke shouts of “We want our country back,” and “Obama is shredding the Constitution.” The President has been labeled a racist, socialist, a fascist and (at least once) a murderer. And it’s not limited to snarling haters; numbers of gentle senior citizens seem genuinely distressed. I have seen cameras turned to a happy-faced little girl holding a sign: “Obama Lies, Granny Dies.”

You will have read of the pistol-packing nut-case standing outside Obama’s recent town hall meeting in New Hampshire to protest health care. Holding his sign: “It’s Time to Water the Tree of Liberty,” this Glock-armed protester was snidely making reference to Thomas Jefferson’s long-ago protest against King George, the tyrant of Jefferson’s time, implying thereby that Obama’s health care is somehow the modern equivalent of taxation without representation.

When we learn Jefferson’s full text: “ The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” we realize that the New Hampshire protester may be suggesting that American patriots should act to shed Obama’s blood so that the American “Tree of Liberty” can flourish once again.

Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity are among those who daily levy allegations of racism, nazism, and fascism. Conservative icon and writer Richard Viguerie says with all the venom he can muster that Obama is, without doubt, a socialist, and perhaps even a Marxist (is there a difference?). And Sarah Palin charges that Obama’s “evil” and “Orwellian” plans will result in the deaths of her son (born with Down Syndrome) and of her aging parents, all to be brought about by a “death panel” being created by Obama to decide who gets lifesaving care, and who dies.

Republican Minority Leader, Representative John Boehner, poured fuel on Palin’s fire by adding: “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.” To which conservative talk show hostess Laura Ingraham added that government bureaucrats would “come to an old person’s house” to discuss options for dying.

The fact is, of course, that none of these concerns has merit. Everyone who has health care today can decide to keep the policy and the insurance plan they currently have, though the proposed legislation is designed to reduce costs while improving services.

Concerns about the “rationing” of health care ignore the fact that insurance companies ration care every day. They are in business to make money, and they do so by charging the highest fees they can get away with, by excluding applicants with pre-existing conditions and by denying payout whenever possible to policy holders who get sick. Only 50% of their revenue goes to payout on claims; the remaining 50% is for “administration,” which includes very high executive compensation, very large advertising budgets, and a large cadre of clerks who review every claim with a fine-toothed comb in an effort to find a way, whenever possible, to deny payout. Obama’s proposed system seeks to improve on every aspect of the current shortfall.

The 40 million or so Americans currently not insured will be required to buy insurance from a menu of options, a menu that is proposed to include a “public” option, namely an insurance plan funded and administered by the Federal Government, ala Medicare and Medicaid and the Veteran’s Health Care System. It will be fully funded by policy payments. Coverage for the very poor will be paid for by repeal of Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 a year. Obama has promised to veto any health care legislation that is not fully funded. Health care will not add to the national debt, Republican charges to the contrary notwithstanding.

US health care currently costs Americans 17% of our Gross Domestic Product (or, to put it another way, about two months wages for the average worker). The next highest cost for health care is in Japan, at 10% of GDP. Canada and European countries (Germany, France, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and others) are at less than 10%. US health care costs, already outlandishly high, are climbing even higher. Economists tell us that without reform, if we do nothing, the cost of US health care as a percent of GDP will double again by 2050. Economists tell us too that we cannot hope to continue as a world-class economy unless health care costs are curtailed and reduced.

There is a narrow slice of Americans who distrust government and perceive a cabal of “left wing” media and “liberal” political leaders united, as they see it, in an effort to turn our country into a socialist dictatorship. Their fears, however, irrational, are stoked daily by right wing talk shows who provide constant repetition of emotionally charged phrases such as “death panels” and government “takeover” of the economy.

Let us be clear: the health-care bill that recently passed the House (the Senate has not yet acted) does not contain any provisions that would deny treatment to the elderly or infirm. Indeed, coverage to such people would be widened and improved. One provision allows doctors to be reimbursed for voluntary discussions (only if the patient wants such a discussion) of so-called “living wills” with patients, but does not in any way threaten to deny treatment to dying patients against their will. The legislation anticipates saving hundreds of billions of dollars by reforming the health-care system itself, a process that would try to increase the efficiency of medical care by better connecting payments to health outcomes and discouraging doctors from unnecessary tests and procedures. The Obama Administration hopes that many of these reforms will be made in the coming years by independent panels of scientists, who will be appointed by the President and overseen by Congress.

By Eric Anschutz, June 18, 2009

Having just become an octogenarian, I thought it timely to write today, not only because reaching 80 marks a milestone of some import, but also because I thought it useful to think a bit about progress made during those 80 years, and also to take note of the lack of progress in ways that matter most to our lives.

In the 80 years of my life span, our world has achieved unprecedented technological and scientific developments. But in those same 80 years we have still not learned to peaceably resolve international conflicts, poverty remains a problem, kids today are less well educated than before, and crime, drugs and obesity plague us as never before. Progress in the physical sciences during the last 80 years has been nothing less than dazzling. Progress in the social sciences has been disappointing, even abysmal.

Born in June of 1929, just four months prior to the onset of the Great Depression, I was raised in Detroit, then as now the epicenter of industrial stress. Though my family lived in a neighborhood of modest means, our Detroit public schools and other communal facilities were good by any standard. My first school (Alexander Hamilton Elementary) possessed a library and an auditorium. We put together plays and sang in a glee club, and we had an active athletic program (featuring city-wide Decathlon competition). I remember teachers that were kind, thoughtful and good at their craft. My next school, Andrew Jackson Intermediate, was excellent academically and featured an indoor swimming pool (believe it or not!). For grades 10-12, high-achieving kids across Detroit were brought together in a special high school, Cass Tech.

In addition to Detroit’s good schools, my neighborhood featured a large park for after-school and weekend sports (endless baseball for me!). During winter months, the park featured a skating rink, which was well lighted at night. Chandler Park, as it was called, was verdant, beautifully maintained, and safe.

Think of it: these excellent facilities and services were provided in a working-class neighborhood, in a relatively poor industrial city, and they continued to serve our community uninterruptedly during the economically bleak years of the Great Depression.

I recount all this to make a point: these depression years offered, in terms of public facilities and services, a better life for our Detroit community than is being provided today in many California communities. During my lifetime, once-strong Detroit has deteriorated to economic and social chaos. Today, California’s embarrassing and egregious budget shortfall is forcing statewide closure of our already minimal public parks and health care clinics; school teachers and policemen and firefighters are being laid off by the thousands; and the state’s infrastructure, long in dire straits, continues to decline for lack of funds to repair and build.

We really do need to change our ways. Our state and our nation need a grand design for the 21st century. To implement the design, both state and federal governments need more revenue, best gotten through a steeply progressive income and corporate tax system (the alleged virtues of tax-cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down economics to the contrary notwithstanding!), and we need political officials with the wisdom and the courage to make wise investments (energy grid, high-speed rails, levees, and far far more). In failing, during the last 40 years or so, to make imaginative and massive long-term investments (except in defense and space, which unexpectedly gave us the web and global communications), we had lost sight of a simple yet powerful fact: investments, good ones, pay big dividends. Obama’s health care program, for example, is expected to cost $1.2 trillion over ten years, but will save $2 trillion in public costs, plus countless billions of private health care costs saved over that same time. One more thing: we also need an electorate with the intelligence to vote thinking individuals into office. Barack Obama provides a standard of excellence needed (and not uniformly present) in Congress and in state government.

Back to being 80! Mark Twain had it right: Old age really does beat the alternative. Life at 80 is not only good – it is in many ways better than the young years. Sure, I might prefer to be 18-20 again – until I remember my years as an engineering student and how hard I had to struggle with differential calculus. I might prefer to be 40 or 50 again, but then I remember too much work and too little time to enjoy the manifold blessings of life. Here’s a poem that says it well:

What thou lovest well remains.
The rest is dross.
What thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee.
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.

Ezra Pound, who wrote those words, was right. In the end, what remains best and most important is love and those that we hold dearest. What I love well is, first and foremost, my family: my wonderful wife and my great kids and grandchildren. I love too my friends – and our Rossmoor Eden. In fact, at 80, I have come to love everyone that is good to me! As Ezra said, “the rest is dross.”

As I ponder thoughts about aging and dying, I conclude that though we age, we never really feel old. Every day, whether one is 21 or 45 or 65 or 80 or more, every new day is a gift. Every day is one more day that can be seen, as the cliché would have it, as the first day of the rest of your life. For each of us there is always something that we have not quite gotten to. A letter than needs writing, a book that needs reading, a friend that heeds to be touched, a gourmet meal that needs to be created, a child or mate or sibling that needs to be told “I love you.” So, tomorrow is not a day older, it is a day on which we might get to do one or more of the things that remains on our list of stuff that needs to be done (“bucket list!”). These homilies are as true for the aged as for the young: indeed, the press of deeds yet to be undertaken is the very thing that keeps us young!