Over and over and over ad nauseum I’ve seen blogs and “tweets” and letters to the editor filled with craziness, outright, bald-faced lies and inaccuracies not only about the intentions and effects of the (FOUR) potential, proposed bills/new systems – but also about what life is like in the rest of the civilized world where they DO have universal health care. (For you accuracy buffs, there’s no such thing as “Obamacare”… yet, anyway.)

Few people -if any – are idiotic enough to believe that having a system of universal health care creates instant nirvana, nor would any thinking people living in a country with such a system insist that their systems are perfect.

However, because of the work that I do and the fact that I am married to a man who was born in Europe, I know and work with- regularly and intimately- people all over the world. I also, obviously, have relatives by marriage living in other countries, and I am here to tell you that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM would come here for health care, nor would they trade our system for theirs, nor do any of them have any desire whatsoever to come here to live. Period. In fact, none of them will even set foot on US soil without (expensive!) traveler’s health insurance, due to the fact that any sane person knows that a minor accident (much less a serious one) can BANKRUPT a person who doesn’t have health insurance.

Unlike what people have assumed elsewhere, and asked me about, these people/relatives/clients I am referring to – in various European countries – are not exclusively or even usually:

• Very Young
• Very Healthy
• Extremely Poor
• Incredibly Heavily Taxed
• Interested in coming to the USA for health care
• Of the belief that the US is the sole seat of innovation in health care and science in the world. (Check the facts! Other countries invent and produce things too!)

I’m sorry that I’m screaming at you if you have read this far but I’m truly annoyed and sickened and disappointed in the way this health care debate thing is going. I despair at the apparent level of discourse and the seeming inability to think critically about this issue. It’s all fear, fear, fear, machismo, “we’re number one,” fear, money, fear, socialism strawmen, and “I’ve got mine, to heck with the rest of you.” (Oh yeah? Who’s going to perform the roles you take for granted if we little people all kick the bucket? You gonna take your own trash to the dump? Fix your own sewers, your own car, wait your own tables???)

Yes, okay, as someone once  said to me, reasonable people can disagree about the best way to solve the problem. It’s just that there seems to be precious little reasonableness around this issue in the public fora. From anywhere or anyone (quite frankly, at this moment, including Ms. Sanity!)

If you’ve been paying attention, and are living in the USA, you must have seen this stuff flying around also.

Here’s a quote from one of the more authoritative writers who has bothered to do research and to try to deconstruct some of the lies (which are being widely circulated!) One thing many of my fellow Americans are insanely failing to do is to consider the costs of DOING NOTHING. Here’s a glimpse, folks:

The US CBO {Congressional Budget Office} estimates that, with no changes to the {current USA} health care system, premiums will increase by $1,800 per year for the next ten years. That means a family will pay an average annual premium of more than $32,000 by then.

Oh, yeah, that’s going to be easy to handle with an average income in this country of about $48K or so. You really think that with this fabulous economy that your wages are going to go up that much in a decade? Think again.

Look, please, for your own good, for our collective good, for heaven’s sake, do some research, consider (shocking, I know) actually speaking to someone who lives in a country besides the USA about their experiences with their health care, read more than one source, don’t just believe the first chain email you get or the supremely unintelligent Sarah Palin stupidly telling you that we’re suddenly going to start killing off old people.

The simple fact is this: We ARE all in this life together. You do not live in isolation, you do not single-handedly completely create the prosperity and wealth that you have amassed, no matter how much you have–and you have a vested interest in the good health of your fellow man.

If a majority of people in this country cannot begin to grasp that simple fact, then our collective future is far darker than it seems.

In the meantime, cut the crap. There are a bazillion resources out there (factcheck.org is a good one, too) if you don’t trust the ones the government is putting out. But if you’re pulling your hair out over some chain email (or even blog posting, purporting to be from someone’s brother in law who is just “concerned” or from some dude the “health care ranger…”) first have a look here:  at the aptly named “Please Cut the Crap.”

My grandfather once, with a grimace,  years ago, said “People get the government they deserve.” (When the people of the state I live in elected – for his second term- a guy who if not a felon, was certainly “crooked.”) If that’s the case, then by the look of things at the zeitgeist, we are deserving not very much…since so many of you seem to believe you are all living on desert islands, and so on….

To riff on a lovely line from the movie Serenity:

You are not John Galt. Universal health care is not some Evil Empire or socialistic conspiracy leading us to the evils of communism. The Obama Administration is also not some Evil Empire. You people railing against health care are not the plucky heroes. This is not the grand arena.

Get a grip. Cut the crap. Read some stuff and don’t limit your information intake to Fox (Faux) news or, for that matter, Daily Kos or the Huffington Post.

If you don’t or won’t, don’t go crying to the rest of the world in a few years when only five perecent of the population has much access to health care, your premiums are $20 grand a year, and our trade imbalance and business competitiveness is even lower than it is at the moment.

I grew up in this land of hyperbole, these United States, and I know I am prone to overstating the case, (culture seeps in, inorexably, after all.) But these days I cannot escape near-constant visions that many, many thousands are going to have to literally lose their lives due to inadequate health care, before the “plucky heroes” of the right-wing begin to see it. And that quite literally breaks my bleeding heart. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Instead of using their Federal credit cards to go to brothels and such, these folks are helping their fellow man. Cool!

In today’s busy world it seems that most of us are juggling a great deal. Work, family, friends, and very often in this economy—a side business or two. It can all get to be too much.

And of course our culture, unlike several others, doesn’t typically allow for the long term vacations that, say, many working people in Europe will get—e.g. six weeks or so of paid vacation a year. One would think looking forward to a rest like that yearly could help keep your batteries recharged.

We’ve got to deal with the culture we’re living in, of course, and that means that we need to keep re-charging our physical, emotional, and spiritual batteries on an ongoing and regular basis.

Your faithful Ms. Sanity has assembled some links that may help you to do just that. Complete – as you might have guessed – with a bit of snarky commentary involving current events.

http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2009/06/18/managing-your-energy/ I’ve linked here to a particular post on this overall most excellent blog on keeping your act together. This post covers the basics…if you aren’t paying attention to the list of things in this item, there’s little chance that you’re going to feel good and function well.

http://www.powerfull-living.biz/blog/ Life coach Lorraine Cohen has many useful and thought provoking ideas about how to live a fuller, more balanced life. Check her out.

Diogenes, Like Obama, Was Looking For an Honest Man!

I know I’m late on the uptake here but I just had to mention that it seemed that President Obama is unwittingly being called to behavior right up there with one of the original cynics, Diogenes. I’m speaking in the context of President Obama’s attempts to get his cabinet populated.   In case you don’t know, Diogenes was the guy who went around with his lantern lit at midday way back in the day (This was in the time period of Ancient Greece.) Of course his community thought he was crazy. People didn’t walk around with lit lanterns in the day time!

When they finally got around to asking Diogenes what the heck he was doing with the lantern (most likely after having made fun of him for a few years behind his back…but that’s just a guess…)

The story goes that he replied earnestly, “I’m looking for an honest man.”

Centuries later, we’re still repeating that story,  not to mention finding honest people few and far between, particularly politicians in the good ole USA.  Follow me on the flip for more…. So it was what, three, or even FOUR of Obama’s cabinet pics who turned out to have either not paid or severely underpaid their damn taxes? What’s the deal with that?

Daschle was the one I was paying the most attention to, since he was by all accounts a good guy, and he was a great hope for fixing the morass that passes for a health care “system” in this country. So, Daschle said, apparently, that he “DIDN’T KNOW” that a car and driver provided to him by someone at no charge was taxable. What the heck??? My unemployment  benefits will be taxable, (if and when I ever get any…) So it’s a safe frickin’ bet that one’s limo, even if it is ummmm donated by some ahhhhhhhhhh grateful constituent or whatever–gets taxed at market value. Sheesh. I mean, I’m no tax expert,  you know? and I would have known that I couldn’t just ride around in a limo at my leisure, and not expect to pay the taxes on the value of it.

And then, what, there were at least two, maybe three other appointees who screwed up their taxes one way or another? I mean, really. And some, if not all of them were Democrats–widely regarded to be the “good guys.”

Is there not an honest man or woman left in DC? One has to wonder, sometimes….

Obama, to his credit, somewhere recently said something along the lines of “One does not go into public service to enrich oneself, one does it to help the public.”

Ah, if only half of them saw it that way, this might be a whole other kettle of fish.

I hate to fan the flames of discontent when they are already higher than I’ve seen them in my lifetime (not that tons of people read Manic  Meltdown anyway…..yet…) but it really is ridiculous.

If you want to go into public service, and yet you aren’t prepared to pay the very same taxes you’d throw any of us in jail for not paying…. and if you don’t expect to have your “stuff” gone over with a fine tooth comb, then that is patently insane.

Yes, our leaders are just people, and we don’t have to worship the ground they walk on- nor should we (that’s  insane too.) And yes, people make mistakes, even  Ms. Sanity here. Still, I have grown more than a little weary of the folks making more in a year than I have in my entire life not living on the up-and-up. How about the IRS audits every single member of the federal congress every year and it becomes part of their job description? Now there’s an idea.

It seems to me that the “powers that be” ought to get it figured out soon that ‘we the people’ are not likely to just accept this kind of behavior indefinitely. Not when millions of us are worried about where our next meal or prescription or mortgage payment is going to come from.

I suggest that while this country is in a meltdown too, and people losing their jobs every day, etc., that Congress do the right thing (at least the US Congress, that is) and vote themselves out of their regular $4500 a year “cost of living” increase for their salaries. If they REALLY want to be impressive (and they don’t, of course…) they could also go ahead and let go of their (free) stellar health insurance paid for by the taxpayer and opt to try and purchase their OWN health insurance on the open market. That would really be a gesture of solidarity with their constituents (and an eye opening experience for them, too, but that’s beside the point.)

The cynical side of Ms. Sanity says (particularly after one Dick Cheney’s appalling “So?” statement) that our congressional representatives outside of election time don’t really care what we think or feel.

That is a situation that cannot stand, or be allowed to stand, forever. Those people work for US. NOT big corporations, not lobbyists, they work for you and me. Eventually I think they will be reminded of that in no uncertain terms,  one way or another.