Why is Senator Max Baucus ignoring Single-Payer?

I”VE INTRODUCED A NEW CATEGORY FOR THE BLOG. It’s called “ready to punch someone in the face.” Today it’s Max Baucus. Listening to the Diane Rehm show on Friday, Ms. Rehm (Mrs.? Madam? Dame?) brought up the health care debate and said that she’d gotten a lot of complaints about not talking about a Single-Payer option on a previous show (I’m guessing the blog post “On Helath Care, Diane Rehm Makes Me Sick” was one of them) and how they would be dedicating an entire hour to Single Payer on Monday (yesterday). I missed that, but I did get to hear Dennis Kucinich talking about it on Tell Me More earlier last week.

Basically at some point, probably during the News Roundup or Tell Me More show, I heard someone saying, “If you want to talk about Single Payer, you have to do it now, as in TODAY,” because the door is closing on health care reform debate. Sure enough, my lazy ass finally gets around to–ahem–finding out what, exactly, single-payer is–it’s been a long time since the election cycle, so I’m rusty, I did remember that I kinda leaned that way–seeing as how my idea of a good Friday night does not involve delving into health care reform debate–and what do I discover? Both on NPR this morning and in a good article from the Great Falls, Montana Tribune I see that Mr. Baucus, being a solid, Washington-entrenched, health-care-industry-supported typa guy has “closed the door on” the single-payer debate.

We pause now for a great, big, FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Excuse me, my apologies.

This debate is so fucked up. And before I delve into it, let me just say that I am nearly clueless about health care and insurance–you could say I’m an average American who deals with health issues, bills, and questions as they come, just sort of getting the inkling that I need to be the pro-active one, the one that speaks up and demands more time with my doctor in the assembly-line system they’ve (often by necessity of staying afloat) developed. I know some, but I don’t know much. And let me just say, for maybe the first time on this blog, bold-faced for everyone, I have Type 1 Diabetes. This is a chronic disease, it involves intense levels of personal- and physician-based monitoring and multiple prescriptions and doctors (The type of treatment I’m on is actually called intensive insulin therapy). I will have this disease for the rest of my life.
In other words, to use a phrase I usually use for laughs, this is serious business. If I lose my job, I lose my health insurance. And that’s the crux of what most of my arguments boil down to–I have no safety net. Here’s the scenario I imagine: federal, state, or private funding dries up for the projects my company works on due to the depression (yes, we’re in a fucking depression, say it.); they say, sorry kid, we love you, but we gotta let you go; I lose my job, I lose my health insurance. I can’t get another job (this is a worst-case scenario here); the savings I have for, well, no specific purpose really but recently as a backup for just this situation, are dwindling fast to pay for my prescriptions, my doctor visits, that “not-if-but-when” visit to the ER with hypogycemia, etc; and…well, to be honest with you, I never take the what if further than that.
But the important thing I didn’t spell out there, the biggest freak-out, is this: I can’t get another insurance plan. I can’t even say, here BlueCrossNationalAetnaUniCareMetGiant, look, take my car keys, empty my bank account, just give me another year’s worth of insulin, sign me up, because the answer will be, “Oooh, you got Diabetes? Man, I hear that’s bad. Complicated. Sorry. PRE-EXISTING CONDITION! Baaamp.” (That’s the ugly You Lose buzzer.) The Man gets to choose who to take and who not to take. And it doesn’t matter how many miles I run, how many vegetables I eat, how many pushups I do, high-fructose-corn-syrups I avoid, I ain’t shaking loose The ‘Betes. No matter what angle they take, the insurance companies look at me and they see a money pit. (Aside from, you know, those nice, juicy amputation surgeries they reap after the whole sowing of the let-the-diabetic-go-undertreated business.)

Okay, I digress a bit. So from what I’m reading and hearing, there’s a great big blind spot in someone’s argument. The woman I heard on Tell Me More, and Mr. Baucus, say something along the lines of “most Americans are satisfied with their health care services” (one number I saw was 87%), and therefore we don’t need massive change, we just need to reform the system so that it runs better and is more affordable. On the other hand, seemingly completely opposing that notion, is that apparently 59% of Americans support single-payer insurance. Personally, I think it’s the old apples and oranges argument. To paraphrase “Election,” if you like apples, you’re pretty happy with apples. But maybe that’s because no one’s ever offered you a banana before…oho! Take me–I have a good job, with what I believe to be good health benefits (my optomotrist friend says our vision coverage stinks, but whatever). My doctors treat me well. But I know I’m unique–my primary doctor is the uncle of one of my oldest and dearest friends (her mom gives me a hug every time I visit the office); when I got diagnosed with diabetes, two amazing people (a DE and an NP) at the hospital wouldn’t let me leave until they’d set up an appointment for me with their personal endocrinology office.
And this is why I want to talk about this–because I have it good. I think there are a lot of people out there–especially a lot of those with diabetes–who don’t, and don’t have the time, energy, and resources to speak up.

To those who say we don’t need to change the system because people are happy with it, I say, well, yes–I’m happy with my health care coverage and my doctors, but that’s because I’m lucky and careful, things I can afford to be. And I’ll add this: up to 2008, before I got diabetes, I didn’t give a shit about health care (in fact, I didn’t want anything to do with it). I would let years go by, years of being uninsured, years of being insured and never going to a doctor. And I think that most people are pretty much like I used to be: call them up, take a poll, ask, “Are you satisfied with your health care?” They’ll be like, “shit, I just wanna finish watching Apocalypse Now, go have a beer, and not think about the next time I go to the doctor”–okay, so that would be the 20-somethings, the rest of the grown-ups are probably thinking, “eh, you know, well” teetering, but they’ve planned their lives, they’re employed, so they’ve got that chunk for the food, that chunk for the cars, and that chunk for the doctors, so sure, they’re satisfied. Just like I was.
To those, like Max Baucus, who says, 

“We’ve got to reform our system fairly quickly, and to be candid with you, very few members of the House and Senate advocate single-pay. The vast, vast majority do not,” Baucus said in an interview Friday. “It tells me that if I go down that road, it’s not going to be successful — it’s not going to pass the Congress.” [Great Falls Tribune]

…I say, are you kidding me? That’s why you can’t listen to another opinion? Because it has to happen fast? And you don’t think the members of Congress want to do it? I get it, it’s politics, but you’re a fucking REPRESENTATIVE of the people who voted you in, and 59 fucking percent of them think it’s a good idea. [In fact, I'm proud to say that my member of Congress, Elijah Cummings, supports John Conyers's HR 676.] Don’t you think you should at least bring in, say, a Harvard medical scholar (<cough>Marcia Angell!), or maybe like the mother of a 27-yr-old diabetic and 25-yr-old with epilepsy who can’t get insurance and called in to Diane Rehm, to see what the Single Payer idea is about, not just in numbers but in everyday pain?
And to those of you who say, hey, gergathon, you need to check the facts, maybe spend some time looking at the arguments, because you are dead wrong: I say, I’ll see what I can do about squeezing in some heavy-duty non-wikipedia research on the history of health care in America, current legislation, and what’s going on in Baucus’ head (not to even mention President Obama, whom I feel I should remind of the stirring scene in his World Series-half-hour ad in which he said he wanted to make sure no one ever again got turned down because of a pre-existing condition…) between my 12-hour work days, blood sugar monitoring, healthy eating, and insulin doses. For now, cutting administrative costs, not worrying about where my health care is going to come from, and not having to decide between having money for prescriptions and maybe buying a house someday sounds good to me.

Thanks for listening. As always, figure out what you want and call your congresspeople.