Xenophobia Breaks Out Across Colorado

Speaking of Greeley students understanding mathematical relationships, it gets really depressing spending a Saturday afternoon reading the commentaries around the state on health care. Obama is in Grand Junction trying to raise the quality of debate amongst the provincials. Below the BBC has made an easy visual to chart the comparisons between the US system and three others. I thought I'd try a more mathematical approach to help squelch the xenophobes as everything I am writing comes up screaming my disenchantment with the perceptions people are willing to show they believe as fact. You can still dispute numbers but it gets less emotional. The arguments are limited.

Note that the day you are born in Singapore you have a better life expectancy. As a child I remember Singapore being a place my dad wouldn't buy things from because the quality was questionable. Now Singapore leads a comparison on certain health statistics.



I understand, being American, that we like to think we have the greatest, most magnificent, tremendous, biggest, bestest, most significant," everything in the world. But then again it isn't only my ego that participates in this society. The reality is that excluding better ideas that have better performance for more people is, well, a major risk factor behind the disease called xenophobia.

It is a horrid, horrid, horrid disease. Did I say horrid? Make that deadly.

I am growing weary of the health care debate and the tactics deployed. How you re-educate the over-forty crowd on doing the basic math? On unwinding the political complexities? How do you reeducate the over-forty crowd on the dangers of twisted perceptions of ideology? I have noted the young are not turning out for these rallies in any significant numbers so I focus on my own generation. The generation fed buzz words like socialism, McCarthyism, videos on nuclear explosions, and liberalism to fuel the power of the political elite. Now those words, these labels, taken out of context, have come back to haunt us all.

I fear the slippery slope if Congress does not include a public option. It will be difficult, at least for me, to have any faith in a system of government which has shown that it has compromised the throat of America by allowing the fangs of monster insurance industries and accompanying profiteers to thrive permanently embedded in American citizens' pockets. Insurance isn't an option any longer. It has been made a legal necessity to survive and operate in a manner expected by civilized society. The only option not to participate in having your blood sucked through the insurance tube is to be wealthy enough to cover all catastrophic events or poor enough to live under a bridge and own nothing at all. In essence the Lord of the Realm owns all the means of production and the Lord of the Realm isn't government.

If Congress fails in its duty to protect its people, all of its people, then the Insurance Industry will be known as the Lord of the Realm. Congress will be proven to be the jesters who dress up and dance for the Lord when called upon. The foolish plebeians will be, and are, the citizens with the pitchforks and hayforks who believe they will be saving something special for themselves by undermining the public option.

Legislative power should not be bought and sold to the highest more powerful bidder. This era of Congress should be known as the Blagoveckian Era.

This nation belongs to the people. All of the people. All of the time. We need to remind Congress who is in power here. Write. Call. Speak out. The mob can't win this one or we all lose.

BBC NEWS | Health | Healthcare around the world

Healthcare around the world

Healthcare figures