(Originally posted in March, 2010)<\/p>\n
US House of Representatives has passed the US Senate version of the healthcare reform bill, and the President has signed the bill into law.\u00a0 If you are happy about it, I\u2019m happy about it too!\u00a0 If you are unhappy about it because it isn\u2019t good enough \u2014 I don\u2019t know if we ever get to a single-payer universal healthcare system (Medicare for all) in our lifetime, but it is a first decisive step toward the right direction.\u00a0 Perhaps in the future, hopefully soon, we\u2019ll get the coveted public option.\u00a0 And if you are raged about the passage of the bill, it is you I\u2019d really like to talk to.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know anyone from health insurance companies and I have no millionaire or billionaire acquaintances; you must be an ordinary American who thinks that the Federal government should not intervene in your liberty.\u00a0 You love your country but doubt the authority, and believe in the small government.\u00a0 Or, simply, you are misled and misinformed about this bill, and you may end up liking it if you knew what\u2019s in the bill.<\/p>\n
This post is not really about GOP vs. Dems.\u00a0 This is about unfairness in our society that we as the people can, and should, no longer tolerate.\u00a0 And I want us to think about where this unfairness is coming from and what we can do about it.<\/p>\n
A Christmas Carol<\/em>, a short story by Charles Dickens, was released in 1843 when the New Poor Law was passed by the British government.\u00a0 The Industrial Revolution ended up forcing many people into poverty, and Dickens asked for people to recognize the plight of those, perhaps because he himself experienced the hardships they were going through.\u00a0 Entrepreneurs and progressive businessmen made huge profits, but when the business as usual was no longer usual, the new urban society had a large number of the poor as a consequence.\u00a0 Dickens talks about social obligation to help those in need, and through the story, he sends us the message of love and generosity.\u00a0 Most people found this message beautiful, and the story was a huge success.<\/p>\n Just last year, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis adapted this story to a 3D CG-animated film.\u00a0 And many people thought, including myself, that the release timing was pretty appropriate.\u00a0 We were in a recession caused by, mostly, corporate greed and by the lack of regulations to make companies profit fairly.\u00a0 Is it a coincidence?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, but the story\u2019s message was the right one for today\u2019s America, I believe.<\/p>\n The richest 1% have more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined in this country.\u00a0 This is a shocking statement a liberal filmmaker made to criticize the American capitalism of today.\u00a0 It is an overstatement, I thought, but according to the non-partisan fact-checking site PolitiFact.com, this claim is mostly true.\u00a0 If he had said the richest 2%, the statement would have been true no matter how you read the numbers.\u00a0 This tremendous gap between the rich and the rest of us is only possible because this country, the United States of America, protects individual \u201cLife, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness\u201d as our inalienable rights, and it practices a free market economy based on that concept.\u00a0 It is a beautiful thing that anyone can be successful, but when a seller took advantage of buyer\u2019s need, that\u2019s a different story.\u00a0 And if a corporate did the same to vulnerable individuals, that is a social injustice.\u00a0 The antitrust laws (i.e. the government) are there to protect consumers from being taken advantage of by companies.\u00a0 But if there aren\u2019t rules to protect the consumers, companies could exploit the consumers\u2019 needs to get richer.\u00a0 Not because they lack the morality, but because companies are for profit \u2014 their reason to exist is to make money, period.\u00a0 Without help of the government as law, regulations or intervention, a corporate can take over individuals\u2019 inalienable rights by exploiting their needs.<\/p>\n When a social injustice happens, who can stop it?\u00a0 When a corporate takes advantage of you when you are in need of its product, who can protect you from its exploitation?\u00a0 It\u2019s the government.\u00a0 However untrustworthy it seems for you, only the government can hit the brakes on the out-of-control corporate behavior.\u00a0 Auto safety regulations are there to protect you.\u00a0 Traffic laws are there to protect you.\u00a0 No government is perfect, granted, but it is there to protect the law-abiding citizens.<\/p>\n Then what about the healthcare system?\u00a0 The health insurance industry has been exempt from the antitrust laws.\u00a0 They hiked the premiums to the amount some could no longer afford.\u00a0 They could drop your coverage when you became ill.\u00a0 They could deny your coverage if you had a pre-existing condition.\u00a0 They do all of those for what?\u00a0 To make more money… and again, that\u2019s what for-profit companies do.\u00a0 People have been suffering because of the industry\u2019s inhumane behavior.\u00a0 Our government finally did something about it, and for some reason many people are raged about it \u2014 not because the government took too long to legislate and implement it, but possibly because they just don’t like the government doing anything.<\/p>\n If you are upset about the passage of the bill, is it because it\u2019s against your conservative small-government philosophy?\u00a0 You are smart enough to know that many of the Republican talking points are flat-out lies.\u00a0 This is not a government takeover of healthcare, it\u2019s far from it.\u00a0 If it\u2019s a single-payer plan, although many other industrialized and advanced countries have it and love it, you *could* word it like that to insinuate that you don\u2019t like it.\u00a0 But remember, this healthcare reform leaves most of today\u2019s health insurance system untouched.\u00a0 Nobody is taking away your plan if you like yours.\u00a0 The government isn\u2019t getting in between you and your doctor.\u00a0 What it does is to prohibit the healthcare industry from behaving inhumanely, and to help uninsured get coverage.\u00a0 Go and check those facts yourself, if you don\u2019t believe me.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not an economist and I shouldn\u2019t really talk about the fiscal sustainability of this reform, but just one thing: unless you earn more than $200,000 a year or receive highest-premium plans ($10,200 a year for an individual), you are not going to get a tax increase.\u00a0 Actually this reform will provide the largest middle class tax cuts for healthcare in American history.<\/p>\n Perhaps you don\u2019t like the individual mandate of the healthcare.\u00a0 The individual mandate, which really is a Republican idea, is there to contain the cost of healthcare \u2014\u2014 it is to protect your tax money from irresponsible uninsured people who rely on the Emergency Room services, and to make sure that insurers offer insurance at the same price to a diabetic and to a triathlete (do you think we can keep the auto insurance prices low if safe drivers can opt out from it?).\u00a0 The mandate is what keeps average premium costs low, and it\u2019s there to be fair for the responsible majority of American people who get employer-based plans or buy private plans.\u00a0 Do you know that participation in universal healthcare is compulsory in most countries that have it?\u00a0 Socialized medicine in Britain.\u00a0 Single-payer in Canada.\u00a0 Multi-payer with a government floor in France and Japan.\u00a0 Private plans with heavy public regulation in Sweden, Germany and elsewhere.\u00a0 None of these plans are voluntary, because universal healthcare won\u2019t work without the individual mandate.\u00a0 And, here in America, if you can\u2019t afford it, the government will help you pay for it.<\/p>\n ..And you know what?\u00a0 The individual mandate is not actually subject to any criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n What is your concern?<\/p>\n I hear so much distorted and fake information about the healthcare reform from the right \u2014 I\u2019m not saying that I don\u2019t hear any misleading talking points from the left or the President, but the stuff from the right is simply crazy, and those who lie publicly to incite anti-government sentiment should be held responsible.\u00a0 So many falsehoods and distortions, instead of healthy political discourse, have been heard from Washington and the right-wing media lately…\u00a0 But your common sense can tell you that the \u2018death panel\u2019 IS NOT true (it was the\u00a0lie of the year<\/em>\u00a0at PolitiFacts.com!).\u00a0 You are smart enough to check the facts yourself.\u00a0 Medicare benefits will NOT be slashed.\u00a0 Illegal immigrants will NOT be covered.\u00a0 There\u2019s NO public funding for abortion.\u00a0 Lies, lies, lies.\u00a0 Who thought it is good politics to misinform their constituents?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s go back to Dickens\u2019s message of love and generosity that we, still today, find beautiful.\u00a0 The background might be different; in the context of healthcare, the poor, though not all, are covered under Medicaid in the US today.\u00a0 But we have the middle class people who are seriously struggling through this difficult time.\u00a0 If the government didn\u2019t act now, our deficit would grow.\u00a0 More families would go bankrupt.\u00a0 More businesses would close.\u00a0 More people would lose their coverage when they get sick and need it the most… and more would die as a result.\u00a0 The late Senator Ted Kennedy wrote in his letter to President Obama: \u201cWhat we face is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.\u201d\u00a0 He understood the sheer terror and helplessness of families with badly sick members.\u00a0 And imagine how you feel when you cannot afford your child\u2019s or aging parent\u2019s healthcare…\u00a0 And we are the people who have gotten big-enough hearts to help those in need.\u00a0 That\u2019s an American character that I love.\u00a0 That\u2019s the part of America that made it easy for me to waive my Japanese citizenship and to be just an American… for Bach.\u00a0 Now why can\u2019t our government have a big heart?\u00a0 Why do you oppose to the government when it is trying to help the middle class America that seriously needs some help right now?\u00a0 As the President said several times, our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government has always been a source of rigorous and sometimes angry debate.\u00a0 But we do realize that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little, as he said in his address to a joint session of congress: \u201cthat without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited.\u00a0 And [our predecessors] knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted of beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter \u2014 that at that point we don\u2019t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges.\u00a0 We lose something essential about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not lose it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not lose what is important to us.\u00a0 Slandering the President or other elected officials for slander\u2019s sake will not help anything; it will make us lose our loving character as the people.\u00a0 If you still are upset, please try to see objectively how much you actually know about this reform, and see if you can clarify what this is about.\u00a0 And let us not forget, we are the government and only we as the people could protect ourselves from health insurance companies\u2019 exploiting the vulnerable.\u00a0 Dickens\u2019s message is morally true to us.\u00a0 But we as individuals could not stop the corporate takeover of our healthcare system and help the middle class America\u2014 only we as the government could.\u00a0 The government could still do something beautiful once in a while, regardless of its majority party.\u00a0 And I want us to be able to recognize that the government\u2019s actions can be the helping hands that a lot of us truly and desperately need.\u00a0 I know you know that not all spending is wasteful, and not all regulations are evil.\u00a0 We as the people have big hearts.\u00a0 So can our government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Originally posted in March, 2010) US House of Representatives has passed the US Senate version of the healthcare reform bill, and the President has signed the bill into law.\u00a0 If you are happy about it, I\u2019m happy about it too!\u00a0 If you are unhappy about it because it isn\u2019t good enough \u2014 I don\u2019t know if we ever get to a single-payer universal healthcare system (Medicare for all) in our lifetime, but it is a first decisive step toward the right direction.\u00a0 Perhaps in the future, hopefully soon, we\u2019ll get the coveted public option.\u00a0 And if you are raged about the passage of the bill, it is you I\u2019d really 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