Apologia

I have no idea why Blogger no long allows me to insert paragraph breaks, even though they're there in the documents I paste in. I'm working on it. I think it wants me to write the draft here in Blogger, which is cumbersome but which I could adjust to. Still, writing in Word then pasting into Blogger used to work, so I'll spend some time trying to figure out why it doesn't any more. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.

Oh happy day

Yippee! We now, finally-- unless a future Republican Congress and President strike it down-- have a system of access to universal health care. It's an achievement that has eluded us since Harry Truman first proposed it sixty years ago and which has been in effect in virtually every other modern democracy in the world for decades. "Why don't you believe in America"? we should ask the Republicans. If all those other countries can do it, what makes us so dysfunctional? Well, now we're not. Obamacare is an unnecessarily complicated and often confusing law because it preserves private insurance companies, a burden on both individuals and businesses. I currently have a $13,000 hospital bill for a one-night stay which my insurance company is giving "further study." If they deny the claim, I'm screwed financially and will have virtually no legal recourse. As long as a national right to health care is based on a profit-driven market, it will be needlessly expensive and often punitive to individuals. But it's the best compromise that was available, and it holds out the hope that now that we've cleared the first and highest hurdle, the program can be refined and improved. I'm no lawyer, but I've wondered all along why universal health care is any different than Social Security, a system that only works so long as people start paying into it at a young age when they first begin working. We can't wait until we start thinking about retirement, usually some time in our fifties or sixties, to start paying into the system. If that were the case, people would wait until the last minute before opting in and Social Security would completely collapse in just a few years. The same holds true for health care. If the Obama administration had called the individual mandate a tax from the beginning, that aspect of the law would have been far less controversial. Ironically, Justice John Roberts went along with the tax argument even though government lawyers never raised it. Good job, John. I'm happy to learn we're eye-to-eye on this. I never thought I'd see a Black American elected president. I never thought I'd see a system of universal access to affordable health care in this country. Now, as the cartoon character used to say, I've seen everything. But then he'd shoot himself in the head, which I have no plans to do. I'm far too happy and proud to be an American right now to spoil such a lovely morning.