The American politics of Canadian health care

September 5, 2012 ~ Graham Milne ~ 2 Comments

kochad — Scary! Screen cap from the ad featuring Shona Holmes blasting Canadian health care.

She’s back. Shona Holmes, the Hamilton, Ontario native who became a poster child for the American right wing in 2009 as the debate over health care reform roared to life, is starring in a new Koch Brothers-funded Super PAC ad warning voters about the pitfalls of socialized medicine – and not only that, she’s hanging around the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte all week and available for interviews. Given all the talk about the tidal influx of corporate money into the American electoral process since the Citizens United decision, if the best spokesperson the Kochs can come up with to star in their $27-million fear-mongering campaign against the ACA is an outsider whose complaints about her native land’s health care system have been thoroughly debunked, that’s some pretty weak-ass sauce – or, dare I say it as I put on sunglasses, unhealthy? YEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Can you imagine the reaction on the right if an Obama-supporting Super PAC ran an ad featuring Canadians demanding higher taxes on the rich? Cries from the Fox News cabal about filthy foreigners tampering with the sacred trust of American elections would be positively deafening.

The message of the ad is essentially that because the Canadian health care system allegedly failed Ms. Holmes, Americans should run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. This one Canadian (out of 34 million) claims she had a bad experience, so let’s stick with the disastrous version we have now rather than pursuing a model that is so treasured by the Canadian people because of its success that no party dares broach the subject of changing it lest they suffer massive electoral blowback. I find the right wing’s approach to attacking programs they don’t like (read: they haven’t figured out a way to make money off) amusing in that it’s always the all-or-nothing gambit. They’re always looking for the insignificant opening into which they can bludgeon the moneyed weight of their angry wedge. A single slip-up, to them, warrants the dismantling of an entire organization – just as the appearance of a couple of bad apples in a malicious, heavily edited, out-of-context amateur video was grounds for taking apart ACORN (the real reason being that ACORN was instrumental in getting a lot of Democratic voters to the polls). It’s as facetious and flimsy a position on which to build an argument as suggesting that if a single brick in the Great Pyramid of Giza cracks, the entire thing might as well be dynamited. But it’s all you have when the only reason you can offer for being against something is that you don’t happen to like it very much.

It’s telling indeed that Shona Holmes is the only Canadian the Kochs could find to speak against Obamacare, and that she would be dragged out again three years after her initial appearance on the scene. They probably couldn’t find anyone else. For Canadians, what is almost as universal as our health coverage is our pride in our system – and our gratitude that getting sick in Canada doesn’t mean a financial death sentence. Several years ago I was hospitalized for a serious lung condition, requiring X-rays, painkillers, and finally an intercostal tube drainage treatment. My total bill for my week-long stay: $12, for the optional phone at my bedside. Everything else was covered by the program I pay into with my taxes, and nothing required was withheld because it wasn’t on my plan or whatever other spurious reasons the private companies invent to deny care in the U.S. And my experience is not unique. As to the myth of Canadians dying as they wait for needed surgery, it’s just that. The Canadian system is based on triage – urgent cases go to the front of the line and everyone else is placed in priority sequence. Decisions about who goes first are made by medical personnel (with apologies to the ex-Governor of Alaska, not once has any Canadian been forced to file a request with their local Member of Parliament before calling their doctor). In the case of Shona Holmes, she was diagnosed with a benign cyst and panicked, and rather than waiting as recommended by a doctor she chose to cross the border and pay over $100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to have it removed immediately. And with respect to her complaints about being attacked for expressing her opinion, if you are going to become a shill for U.S. corporate and political interests by spreading specious half-truths to every camera in sight because you didn’t get your lollipop right when you wanted it, you can’t be that shocked if more than a handful of folks decide to disagree with you. Free speech goes both ways – that’s how the concept works. (People shouldn’t have been calling her home to yell at her of course, but that’s just more proof of how passionately Canadians support and believe in their system of health care.)

It took an incredible effort on the part of President Obama, the Democratic Party and its supporters to overcome the blockades thrown up by Republican obstructionists, corporate lobbyists, lawsuit-happy state attorneys general and Tea Party zealots to get the ACA passed, half-baked half-measure as it may seem to many liberals and progressives who were longing for something more transformative. Building on this act to craft a truly fair health care system where no one ever needs to fear getting sick in America ever again is going to take even more, and unfortunately the political damage borne by the Democrats for taking it on has made the issue something of a third rail. But it should provide some comfort to those Americans dreaming of a single-payer program like Canada’s to know that the side fighting to keep the status quo has no real argument to make. They may have more financial resources, more members of Congress in their pocket, but at the end of the day, it’s all smoke and mirrors – their hand is empty. They just don’t like health care, and if you’re looking to win the conversation with the people, truth and facts are a much better starting point.

Following the money, missing the point

August 2, 2012August 2, 2012 ~ Graham Milne ~ 2 Comments

It’s with equal degrees of bemusement and resignation that I read articles speculating on how the real-life breakup of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart may affect the box-office performance of Breaking Dawn, Part II. Nor is it any stretch of the imagination to suspect that the morning following the Aurora massacre an emergency meeting was called in a studio boardroom somewhere to discuss how that tragedy would impact the ticket sales for The Dark Knight Rises. The biggest questions in the presidential election revolve around money – how much of it Mitt Romney may or may not have paid in taxes, how much his campaign is raking in from billionaire Super PAC donors, whether or not Barack Obama can become the first incumbent president to be outspent and still secure re-election. Austerity, whether advisable or not, and deficit reduction dominate the agenda of every government on the planet. The rich are vilified in one circle for acting like feudal overlords, and praised in another as job creators. Money is the filter through which we examine everything – we have become a species of accountants obsessed with numbers and the bottom line. And yet we’re more miserable than we’ve ever been: impatient, demanding, and more prone to outbursts of rage for the most insignificant reasons. Something is clearly askew. Is it perhaps time to undertake the first step in recovery and admit that we have a problem – that obsessing over money isn’t getting us anywhere?

I’m not naïve enough to suggest that the acquisition of wealth is ever going to fade away as a motivating factor in human behaviour; it’s been that way ever since the first Australopithecus looked out with longing at the bigger, cosier cave his neighbour across the way was occupying. But that motivation is rooted in the biggest lie of all – that having more means being happier. Marketers and advertisers understand this, which is why every commercial you’ve ever seen is designed to make you feel inadequate and envious, and to suggest, in somewhat the same manner as a drug dealer would, that you just need a hit of whatever is being sold – cars, shoes, cologne or designer jeans – to ease the pain of your unendingly terrible existence. We all know better, and yet we buy in – pun most depressingly intended – to the lie, sacrificing what we’ve earned for temporary relief, at least until the next ad comes on and we begin to think ourselves lacking in some other area. It does not have to be this way, and yet we have been conditioned in the same manner to define success in dollars alone – not influence or reach or the fundamental amelioration of our collective humanity. Somewhere along the way, the virtue of working hard as its own reward transformed into only a means to the end of securing one’s fortune at the expense of the well-being of our peers. Men of business the world over with less moral integrity than the average cockroach are revered as leaders and held up as ideals to emulate because they have managed to accumulate piles and piles of cash, with little, if any, consideration given to the lives that have been destroyed by their greed. We are forced to listen to their obscene rants and give credence to their perverted worldviews because we have decided that they deserve our attention based on the size of their bank accounts. Opinions that would otherwise be dismissed the ravings of lunacy shape policy for billions of people, because money defines the parameters of the conversation. To our everlasting shame, we have allowed it to – in whom we have voted for and whom we have chosen to place upon gilded pedestals to admire.

Enough is enough.

Some would argue that there is a moral imperative within each soul born upon this planet to leave it in a better state than which they found it. This is an aim hardly served by pillaging and plundering the earth’s treasures for the benefit of a select few. What is needed is a reorienting of our values and a new form of currency, one that cannot be tied to the whims of banks: a currency of ideas, in which the ideas are evaluated on their substance and not on how much cash is flowing behind them. Do I think this is ever going to happen? Well, probably not in my lifetime. The forces of money are too deeply entrenched within the corridors of power. But we can get the process started – by refusing to grant those forces our slavish attention, and by shedding the ridiculous belief that someone is better than we are because they are wealthier. By not caring anymore how much so-and-so gets paid for his latest album or her starring debut. By emphasizing quality over quantity, and evaluating character completely independently of the size of a person’s wallet. By making “successful businessman” roughly the same estimation of a man’s worth as “frequent water drinker.” Not going so far as vilifying financial success outright, but making it the very least important of the measures of a human being. Saying “oh, you’re a billionaire casino entrepreneur? How nice for you – my kid just scored three goals at his soccer game last Saturday.”

We cannot achieve true fairness in this world until we stop worshipping those things that make the world unfair. What’s most encouraging is that we still have the choice to do that. We just have to make it.

Dear Pasty Republican Billionaires: Haven’t You Got Anything Better To Do?

May 17, 2012 ~ Graham Milne ~ 7 Comments

jabba — Founder of the new Super PAC, “Americans for a Prosperous Tatooine.”

You can’t read U.S.political news lately without seeing a story about a septuagenarian Republican one-percenter with a hate-on for the President pouring millions of his fortune into a new Super PAC. Thanks to Citizens United, right-wing sugar daddies are emptying their coffers to Karl Rove and ilk to flood the airwaves with ads blaming President Obama for everything from sunspots to the common cold. Figures like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friess and most recently, Joe Ricketts, are positioning themselves as the new architects of what is left of American democracy. You’d think that achieving staggering levels of wealth would be enough, but apparently, multiple mansions and car elevators are not where it’s at anymore. These oligarchs-in-waiting are determined that the government is destined to be a rich guys-only club, and who gives a damn how many poor people get steamrolled out of existence in the process. In fact, the more poor are simply obliterated, the better.

Stories about Republican Super PAC funders seem to have one thing in common – the men in question are uniformly old, bloated and incredibly sour-faced, as if their soul has been eaten away by a lifetime of stress, drinking, smoking and rage. Paul McCartney told us that money can’t buy me love; these characters are the embodiment of that axiom. These real-life Charles Foster Kanes have conquered the business world, crushed enemies in their wake and accumulated wealth to rival that of the pharaohs. But love remains elusive for them, no matter how many zeroes in their Cayman Islands offshore holding account. Nobody loves these guys. No young boy goes to sleep at night dreaming of being a hedge fund manager and forcing people out of their homes.

Instead, Republican billionaires squirm and twist in a constant state of paranoia, terrified that colleagues, friends, family members and even the postal carrier who slips on the ice in their two-mile long driveway in Aspen are scheming to take everything away. It’s no surprise, given the path a man has to take to claw his way into mega-millions. You simply don’t get there by being adored. How frustrating, then, that others of far more limited means can still manage to find love. Joe Ricketts’ recently announced plan to dredge up Reverend Wright again centers on trying to make voters hate the President. Not disagree with his policies; hate him. So, presumably, the President can then feel as down-trodden and hopeless about life as Joe Ricketts must. You get the feeling that we could have been spared the phenomenon of the Super PAC had their mothers just hugged these people more.

What Ricketts and the rest of these billionaires despise most about President Obama is that he is everything they are not, and will never become. Truly self-made; someone who came from nothing and got where he is by working hard and applying himself, instead of being parachuted into accidental greatness by a generous trust fund. A man with a beautiful wife he clearly adores beyond words and a happy, loving family. President Obama is a greater embodiment of the American Dream than any of these grumpy old guys. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, he has the ability to inspire people across all walks of life, and around the globe. Hope and change remains a potent campaign slogan because it appeals to our better angels.

For crusty old billionaires, this does not compute. They believe everyone is as greedy and money-grubbing as they are; that altruism is a fool’s game, that no one ever does anything out of a simple wish to be good. And it positively bakes their collective noodles that not everyone wants to be rich. The majority of us just want to earn enough to look after our families, so they don’t have to worry about getting sick or feeding themselves or having a roof over their heads. Amazingly, you can still do that without millions in a diversified asset portfolio, and working hard at that goal despite difficult odds is far more likely to earn you genuine love than the extra fifty million you’ll earn if Obamacare is tossed by the Supreme Court.

Simply put, a heart that is rotting cannot lift others. The Koch brothers may have helped the Tea Party become a ground-shifting political force, but no one would ever accuse David and Charles Koch of being inspiring men. They and those like them don’t inspire with words and ideas; they push with threats and cattle prods, because they don’t know any other way. And they come to envy and hate the ones who do. Whenever you see Karl Rove’s picture, this pudgy, balding sinister figure without a kind word to say about anything left of Genghis Khan, you can’t help thinking that he must have been the fat kid who was always picked last for the team, and is continuing to take his revenge on the popular kids forty years on to satisfy some long-simmering Freudian dysfunction. And it is all so futile. Mitt Romney could sweep all 50 states and half of Australia and these people will still be stewing in their self-loathing and cursing their inability to feel any better. No one will love them any more. They’ll feel even worse if they blow all this cash and President Obama still wins.

So here is my modest suggestion.

Take the money you had intended for your Super PAC and found a charity instead. Build a school. Refurbish a hospital. Fund cancer or AIDS research. Erect a nature preserve. Start a new business and hire some people, for god’s sake. Then go visit one of these places anonymously and look for the genuine joy in the eyes of the people you’ve been able to help. Just stand there and soak it in – the sense of gratitude, of warm feelings. Let your heart quicken. Feel the love. Then think about how you can do even more. How good it will feel when a child whose life has been saved because of an initiative you backed mentions you in their prayers before going to sleep at night? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Don’t you like the idea of being remembered, like Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of the story, as “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world”? Or would you rather spend your money on TV ads demonizing the President of the United States, ads that will be as forgotten as swiftly as you will be the day your rotten heart finally croaks its last beat?

Ball’s in your court, Super PACs. I know I’m sleeping fine tonight.