For your edification...
May. 2nd, 2007 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseIn today's Juneau Empire are two editorials that I think make a rather interesting contrast to each other. The first one, an outside editorial originally printed in the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, has to do with the recently-vetoed Iraq deadline bill:
Thursday's Senate vote for a war spending bill - with an Oct. 1 deadline to begin troop withdrawals - followed a similar debate in the House. Votes closely followed party lines; Democrats for deadlines, Republicans opposed. The president pledges a veto. That could come Tuesday, the four-year anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" flight-deck triumph.
Mindful of the timing, the White House called the Democratic stance "Mission Defeated." Republicans label troop-withdrawal deadlines "surrender." Democrats say they're a signal to the Iraqi government of the need for rapid progress, and that most Americans believe the war, with 3,300 service personnel killed over four years, must start winding down.
Indeed it must. The public's patience for troop losses is not unlimited, nor is the public purse - Iraq is costing us about $2 billion a week. The military has been drained by too-frequent deployments and a long, grinding occupation.*
The second editorial runs a lot closer to home - in fact, it has nothing to do with the war or international politics. It consists of a personal anecdote from a small-business owner here in town and his battle with cancer, or more specifically, his battle with our health-care system trying to find affordable insurance coverage since he doesn't qualify for a corporate employee plan:
I was lucky in another way. Most of my cancer treatment expenses were covered by my health insurance. When I started my own small business in 2001, I suddenly discovered that as a healthy, nonsmoking 51-year-old male, I simply could not afford traditional health care insurance. I shopped around and found the next best thing: A catastrophic care policy that paid a lump sum of $75,000 in the event I was diagnosed with cancer or certain other serious illnesses.
[...]
But catastrophic care policies have a little kicker: Once the patient receives the payment, the policy is canceled and cannot be renewed. And believe me, it's not easy to find medical insurance once you have been diagnosed with cancer.
[...]
I've been able to find only one legitimate insurance company willing to insure me, the Alaska Comprehensive Health Care Insurance Association. ACHIA was established for people who are not covered by other insurance companies and have been previously diagnosed with serious diseases such as cancer. The only catch is that for someone my age the monthly premium exceeds $1,000, there is a $10,000 deductible and ACHIA chooses the physician. What a deal. After just a few months of making the monthly payments, I doubt I'd be able to pay the deductible.
I feel like there's a point to be made here, but rather than sound like I'm trying to bash it home, I think I'll let you all draw your own conclusions here. From where I'm sitting, though, I have to say it seems pretty darn obvious...
*Given the news-media source of the quote, this number may seem inflated for the sake of drawing readership, so here's some hard data on the various funding bills and costs associated with this war. As the page points out, their calculated cost (set to reach $456 billion by the end of September) includes only incremental costs, i.e. money that we wouldn't be spending right now were we not involved in the war. It does not include regular soldier pay, for instance, nor does it attempt to quantify potential future costs such as medical/psychological care for wounded soldiers, nor does it account for the fact that "the Iraq War {is} being deficit-financed and taxpayers will need to make additional interest payments on the national debt due to those deficits".
Thursday's Senate vote for a war spending bill - with an Oct. 1 deadline to begin troop withdrawals - followed a similar debate in the House. Votes closely followed party lines; Democrats for deadlines, Republicans opposed. The president pledges a veto. That could come Tuesday, the four-year anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" flight-deck triumph.
Mindful of the timing, the White House called the Democratic stance "Mission Defeated." Republicans label troop-withdrawal deadlines "surrender." Democrats say they're a signal to the Iraqi government of the need for rapid progress, and that most Americans believe the war, with 3,300 service personnel killed over four years, must start winding down.
Indeed it must. The public's patience for troop losses is not unlimited, nor is the public purse - Iraq is costing us about $2 billion a week. The military has been drained by too-frequent deployments and a long, grinding occupation.*
The second editorial runs a lot closer to home - in fact, it has nothing to do with the war or international politics. It consists of a personal anecdote from a small-business owner here in town and his battle with cancer, or more specifically, his battle with our health-care system trying to find affordable insurance coverage since he doesn't qualify for a corporate employee plan:
I was lucky in another way. Most of my cancer treatment expenses were covered by my health insurance. When I started my own small business in 2001, I suddenly discovered that as a healthy, nonsmoking 51-year-old male, I simply could not afford traditional health care insurance. I shopped around and found the next best thing: A catastrophic care policy that paid a lump sum of $75,000 in the event I was diagnosed with cancer or certain other serious illnesses.
[...]
But catastrophic care policies have a little kicker: Once the patient receives the payment, the policy is canceled and cannot be renewed. And believe me, it's not easy to find medical insurance once you have been diagnosed with cancer.
[...]
I've been able to find only one legitimate insurance company willing to insure me, the Alaska Comprehensive Health Care Insurance Association. ACHIA was established for people who are not covered by other insurance companies and have been previously diagnosed with serious diseases such as cancer. The only catch is that for someone my age the monthly premium exceeds $1,000, there is a $10,000 deductible and ACHIA chooses the physician. What a deal. After just a few months of making the monthly payments, I doubt I'd be able to pay the deductible.
I feel like there's a point to be made here, but rather than sound like I'm trying to bash it home, I think I'll let you all draw your own conclusions here. From where I'm sitting, though, I have to say it seems pretty darn obvious...
*Given the news-media source of the quote, this number may seem inflated for the sake of drawing readership, so here's some hard data on the various funding bills and costs associated with this war. As the page points out, their calculated cost (set to reach $456 billion by the end of September) includes only incremental costs, i.e. money that we wouldn't be spending right now were we not involved in the war. It does not include regular soldier pay, for instance, nor does it attempt to quantify potential future costs such as medical/psychological care for wounded soldiers, nor does it account for the fact that "the Iraq War {is} being deficit-financed and taxpayers will need to make additional interest payments on the national debt due to those deficits".
