Not everything in America needs to make a profit.
Bill Maher is one of my favorite comedians working today. Like most of the greats, he can make a very serious topic both informative and entertaining. He can break down the ironies and the hyperbole, and make a concept easy to understand, while at the same time forcing you to explore your own biases and conclusions and look at things in a different way.
It's a shame more Republicans don't have a sense of humor.
It's because he says things like this:
I know Americans vote for their wallets, but how about voting for your kidneys or your lungs, or your grandchildren?'
And this:
If conservatives get to call universal healthcare 'socialized medicine,' then I get to call private for-profit healthcare 'soul-less vampire bastards making money off human pain.'
and this:
I would love to have some journalist ask a Republican who talks about socialized medicine: If it’s so awful, how come it’s what we have for our veterans?
or this:
As Maher said recently, anyone can drop a letter into a blue metal box on the sidewalk, and in a couple of days it arrives at the place listed on the envelope. For 44 cents. Off the top of your head, can you name anything that costs 44 cents and actually functions exactly as advertised?
This raises an interesting point. When it comes to government, Republicans talk all the time about two things: a) Government's ineptness and b) the lack of fairness in requiring private companies to compete with it. This is certainly their argument when it relates to healthcare. We all know that argument doesn't hold water.
To address the first part, just because the opposition is LOUD doesn't mean that they make any sense. Chris Rock said, in a famous sketch, that men should never get into an argument with women because men have a need to make sense . . . but women won't let a little thing like "making sense" fuck up their argument. They're not in it to make sense -- they're in it for stress and irritation. </paraphrase> I would argue that is doubly true for Republicans. Government does well in healthcare -- why else would the rabid right say to keep their hands off their medicare, even while they picket outside town-hall meetings discussing government healthcare for everyone? The truth of the matter is that people are ok with government health care. It already takes care of 1/3rd of the population if you count tri-care, medicaid, and SCHIP.
The second part -- that private industry can't cpmpete with the government -- is also malarkey. Some of us use USPS, others use USPS, DHL, Fed-EX, etc. They're all in the business of getting packages and letters from one place to another. The government does it cheapest domestially for letters -- .44c for a letter from Nome Alaska to Miami Florida (or from Miami to Miami . . . but I digress). But others do priority shipping quicker, or ship internationally, or ship larger packages than others. They all do this relatively effectively, and with price points to appeal to everyone. There are pros and cons to both. But one cannot dispute the fact that private industry has co-existed with a government plan that does services the same industry (if not the exact same people). USPS is an equalizer if anything -- how much would Fed-Ex or UPS charge if the USPS WASN'T Competing? And how much trouble would we be facing if UPS/Fed-Ex/DHL had existed FIRST, and we were thinking of adding the USPS in after the fact? (Thank god our Founding Fathers weren't that dumb!)
I'm taking a play from the playbook of Rep Anthony Weiner (D-NY), and taking it all the way up to 11. I propose a bill that I expect will meet with little resistance from the Republicans -- eliminate all government programs that currently have competition from the private sector, or open them up to private competition if they're not already. This would include the post office (which has a monopoly on 1st class mail, though the rest is already up for grabs), eliminate medicare/medicaid/tri-care entirely, replace our volunteer army with private mercenaries, and a host of other services and programs that are cheap, necessary and effective. were I in congress, I'd certainly vote against it, but I'm also not a Republican. This would be their dream bill, to paraphrase Rep. Weiner, but I doubt they'd be able to explain it to their constituency.
I, for one, am curious to see how far they are willing to truly take this ideology. . . . or whether they're just content to gum up the works with disingenuous arguments and fear-mongering among the intellectually deficient.