B.A.D. To The Bone

Healthcare Bill of Rights image from Project HealthCare

Around Blogtopia (y,Sctp!) this morning. Stopping to nibble here and there. We rediscover Brian's home on the Net (well, one of them. The fellow has many lairs).

Blogrolling appears to be down. Dammit. We spent most of the first week of February figuring out how to use the damn thing, and blogrolling everybody and their sister-in-law. We coulda just hand-hacked the HTML. Sheesh. We can't help but wonder, somewhat guiltily, if Blogroll Amnesty Day crashed Blogrolling?

All you people! We're working on adding you, it's just taking time.

Meanwhile, check out what today's Featured Blogger has to say.

Over at American Street (our new fave hangout since they gave Cosmic Christian Cosmetician Sister Nancy a guest spot), Comrade Kevin holds forth on health care policy and the likelihood of universal health care for all Americans. It's an impassioned and moving piece, and Comrade, we are pleased to have met you and even more pleased that you are saying what needs to be said.

Kevin Tongzhi, you speak for more of us than you know. Some of us are young, with chronic ongoing health problems, but the number of older people is large and growing. And anyone over forty years of age knows, a lot of health problems come with age. Cancer, for example. It's not a young person's disease, as a rule. You have to live long enough to get it. Adult-onset diabetes, stroke, heart disease, Alzheimer's, COPD, and that unavoidable scourge of even the fittest over-forty: arthritis. We won't even discuss how the joy of an athletic youth bears fruit in midlife with ACL injuries and missing cartilage, "replacement previously used" tendons, bursae at various stages of inflammation, and torn or frozen rotator cuffs. Oh, yes, and all the RSIs, most significantly carpal tunnel which is inevitable for computer users, among others.

We quote only the smallest snippet from this eminently readable article:

However, taxes will need to be raised. How much and on whom is a matter of debate. The fairest system would increase taxes directly proportional to income. Those living in poverty could not afford the increased tax load and would benefit from universal coverage the most. Not just because they are often the ones fleeced by greedy Big Pharma, but that with more money in their pockets, less bankruptcy and less poverty would result. These people would have more more at their disposal and no matter where they spend it, they would thrust more capital into the system and increase the economy. I’m not nearly naive enough to believe that people will best spend their money to benefit themselves. The money not spent on healthcare might be spent on cell phones, lottery tickets, or computer games systems but at least these people would be able to add money into the economy rather than draining it by contributing nothing at all.

I think taxation would then need to begin at a minimum income that would be adjusted for inflation periodically. Those who make more would ultimately be taxed more. That’s how we do it now to fund a variety of other social services. A Compromise that includes a Democratic tax raise in return for a promise of deregulation to appease Republicans is the best solution.

Yaknow, we'd love to see the corporations pay their fair share of the fucking tax bill. Ever since Snuffles McPigboy took power those bastards have kept their foot on our neck while siphoning off whatever squeezes out of our prone forms by way of dollars. It's time for this obscenity to stop.

Either that, or it's time to hang the lot of them from the nearest high structure.

OK, American Street is way bigger than we are, but the health care issue really burns our ass. We'll link to smaller blogs tomorrow, we swears!

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