No More ‘Working for The Man’ Just for Health Insurance

On the eve of the first Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) mano-a-mano showdown in Congress – well, at least the participants were in the same boxing ring – I re-emphasize my position that after all the overinflated chatter is aired and convoluted schemes are floated, the only real, efficient, cost-effective and sustainable solution is a single-payer health care system (Medicare for All, universal health care coverage).

I’ll give the Republicans a chance, with their Repeal and Replace initiative (or Repeal and Posture, or Repeal and Delay, or Repeal and High-Five) and monitor the trends and see where we are a few years after implementation. As I advocated on my sister blog site Sirenian Publishing, the Democrats should not participate in crafting an Obamacare Replacement, so it will be a pristinely GOP invention without Democratic fingerprints and can be evaluated as such.

Why discuss Obamacare in a midlife blog? Because I’m one step away from needing health insurance through a system like Obamacare, and I may need that program or something similar in the future as I grapple with transition and living authentically in midlife.

In my transition to a new career as a mental health counselor, I eventually had to leave full-time employment to meet my graduate program’s internship and class requirements. And with that move went my health insurance. I was lucky I have a wife with an employer-sponsored plan that I could join. But we all know how tenuous are jobs – and the potluck health insurance that may come with them – in today’s economy.

I’ve written about joining the Gig Economy since my transition, working multiple part-time, temporary, or entrepreneurial jobs with no health insurance or other benefits to cobble together an income. While I may sometime again have a full-time job with health insurance benefits, I plan to stay a member of the Gig Economy for the rest of my career by establishing an independent counseling practice. And I abhor the thought of health insurance posing a major barrier to venturing out on my own. A single-payer health care system, or perhaps an Obamacare-like system, could remove that impediment for me and many others with an entrepreneurial bent who no longer want to be obligated to ‘working for The Man’ just so they can have health insurance.

I wrote extensively about the merits of a nonprofit single-payer system and the tribulations of Obamacare in my political memoir about my campaign for Maryland delegate, Don’t Knock, He’s Dead: A Longshot Candidate Get Schooled in the Unseemly Underbelly of American Campaign Politics, as advocating for a more equitable, less costly health care system was a cornerstone of my campaign.

Read more about the looming health care battle below…

Sirenian Publishing Blog Post: No Democratic Lifeline for ‘Repeal and Replace’

New Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said if congressional Republicans, in conjunction with President-elect Donald Trump’s exhortations, vote to repeal Obamacare, Democrats won’t participate in crafting a so-called “replacement.”

“If they repeal without a replacement, they will own it,” Schumer told The Washington Post. “Democrats will not then step up to the plate and come up with a half-baked solution that we will partially own. It’s all theirs.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Schumer’s approach and urge Democrats to stick to that plan, instead of capitulating to the Republicans and trying to modify or soften whatever plan the GOP hatches once health care coverage is thrown into uncertainty, or worse, chaos, and millions potentially suffer.

To do so would be akin to the Democrats turning over ownership of a marginally inhabitable building to the Republicans, who level it with a wrecking ball and wander aimlessly through the rubble, only to have the Democrats return with hard hats and shovels and mortar to salvage the wreckage, with the promise, “We’ll help you rebuild from these ruins, but we gotta warn ya, dollars to donuts, this building will be condemned.”

As I advised Democrats previously, Do The Opposite, like Seinfeld’s George Costanza. The GOP will expect Democrats to come running to save the day for people who may be losers in the Obamacare tug-of-war. Then they will become complicit in whatever is enacted. Then they can be blamed for screwing up whatever plan Republicans wanted to enact in the first place, which of course will be the reason said GOP plan isn’t working as effectively as touted. Don’t do it. Let the GOP plan ride; measure the results.

I argued in my political memoir detailing my campaign for Maryland state political office, Don’t Knock, He’s Dead: A Longshot Candidate Gets Schooled in the Unseemly Underbelly of American Campaign Politics, that Obamacare is largely a piece of legislative manure that leaves the foxes – the health insurance industry – guarding the henhouse, but that it’s certainly an improvement and does a number of good things for people who need health insurance.

“Obamacare is a Rubik’s Cube—lots of turning, spinning, head-scratching, reverses, glitches, bad moves and confusion,” I wrote in Don’t Knock, He’s Dead. “Historic and groundbreaking yet torturously overwrought, the law certainly does some good, but adds yet another layer of preposterous bureaucracy and complexity and supposed ‘consumer choice,’ which really is massive consumer overload and confusion, onto a preexisting byzantine miscreation, and will become another cement-hardened convention impossible to undo.”

My campaign for Maryland state delegate in 2014 was largely based on advocating for accessible, affordable health care for all – universal health care, single-payer health care, Medicare for All – whatever you want to label it. My call was for a system that covered everyone, regardless of employment status or personal wealth, one that constituted a right rather than a privilege, and that reduced the corporate profit motive. It was for a more humane system that would put Maryland – and ideally, ultimately, the rest of the nation – in line with the rest of the democratic, industrialized nations that provide all their citizens basic health care at about half the cost or less per person than the U.S., and achieve better health outcomes on many common measures.

Numerous grassroots and health care organizations continue advocating for such a system, and several state legislatures have made attempts to establish one. But entrenched, opposing, big-money interests are strong – hence, Obamacare was the best we could get.

Wendell Potter, a health insurance public relations executive turned industry critic, nailed the dynamic in his insider tell-all book Deadly Spin, as I quoted in Don’t Knock, He’s Dead. “The health insurance industry is dominated by a cartel of large, for-profit corporations…[T]he top priority…is to ‘enhance shareholder value.’ When that’s your top priority, you are motivated more by the obligation to meet Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations than by the obligation to meet the medical needs of your policyholders.”

I still believe a single-payer system is the only real, equitable, sustainable solution to the ongoing health care mess. Perhaps a failed “replacement plan” full of tired old ideas like Medical Savings Accounts and insurance sold across state lines and free market competition that can be laid squarely at the feet of Republicans could stoke a revival of a single-payer revolution.

Of course, that will bring out the critics and naysayers who will charge that single-payer is an un-American, “socialist” system, an asinine argument. What is Medicare? What is Medicaid? What is Social Security? Socialistic! For that matter, what are our police forces and fire departments and public schools and state universities? Socialistic! We all contribute toward them because these systems and institutions are deemed to be beneficial to society collectively. American rugged individualism is a great concept. But in some aspects, like outstanding health care and the overall health of our citizenry, we are all in this together, and will be stronger as a nation for that.

So, as Schumer said, no lifeline. There could be regression and pain in the short-term, but maybe it could turn the tide for the long-term.

Democrats: ‘Do the Opposite:’ ’Advice to Progressives in the Immediate Post-Hillary Apocalypse

A significant portion of my midlife will be lived under a Donald Trump presidency.

Given that reality, I have advice for congressional Democrats: Take a page from Seinfeld’s George Costanza playbook, and “Do the Opposite.” See how it worked for George, like it can work for Democrats, here.

Democrats understandably will feel compelled to fight Trump and the Republican ruling class, and even though they don’t have the numbers, attempt to obstruct, as the GOP strategically did to Obama. Don’t do it. Resist the urge. Be compliant. Be like rubber.

Learn from these insightful, introspective reflections from George Costanza:

“It’s just not working.”

“Every instinct I have…it’s all been wrong.”

“Bald men with no jobs and no money who live with their parents don’t approach strange women.”

Democrats are now the bald men with no jobs and no money who live with their parents. So let the Republicans have their day…or four years. They’re expecting you to fight, posture, contest, provoke, make noise, level charges, hurl criticism, erect barriers, whine and complain. Don’t. Do the opposite.

Sure, try to do some nibbling around the edges of the Republican agenda, budget and bills, where maybe they’ll accept a stray amendment to shut you up. But otherwise, be the matador, and let the bull charge through your cape.

Let the Republican agenda unfold, whole and unfettered and unadulterated and without significant compromise. It’s the only way America will discover whether the GOP is imbued with brilliance or folly, whether Republicans have been blowhards full of hot air and empty rhetoric or they’re really onto something prescient, whether they’re firmly grounded or living in an alternate reality, whether they distinguish fact from fiction.

We have a baseline and trend lines to start with. Memorialize those. Let the GOP agenda play out over four years. Ensure nonpartisan experts analyze and document the results and make projections on future course. Four years should be enough time to indicate clear trends, if not definitive outcomes.

Only then will we know more conclusively whether the nation has suffered or gained, and who has done the suffering or gaining. Will people be hurt in the process? Possibly, but it will be the only way to know. If the Republican Emperor is shown to have no clothes, he will be naked with nowhere to hide in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

What will have happened to health care costs, health care accessibility and the ranks of the uninsured?

Will millions of manufacturing jobs have been created, or “brought back?”

What will the economic indicators show?

What will be America’s status in global trade and what will it mean to industry and the economy?

Will America be viewed internationally as a treasured ally or as an isolationist with a case of the heebie-jeebies?

Will ISIS still be living strong or dead?

What will have happened to families that include an illegal immigrant?

Will there be a Mexico-U.S. wall, and if so, at what cost and benefit?

Will America be more united or more divided?

Will the swamp be draining or flooding?

Will those screaming for change be better or worse off?

Will Americans perceive the country on the “right” or “wrong” track.

Will the environment be renewed or denuded?

Will America be relying more heavily again on coal or “clean energy,” and what will be the effects of either path?

Will inner cities be revived? How will African-Americans in those areas answer Trump’s question: “What have you got to lose?”

We can then examine the evidence and facts (if indeed, either still have any currency), and know with a high degree of certainty where credit or blame lies. Then America will have a chance to make another judgment in a more transparent, less muddled environment on Trump and the GOP’s ideas and execution, out in the open, naked, with nowhere to hide and no Obama or Hillary to scapegoat.

It worked for George Costanza. It was unpredictable, confounding, paradoxically brilliant. Doing the same thing never worked for George. But doing the opposite…Anything could happen.