'Listen and Learn': NOW or NEVER On Healthcare

Millions-Deprived Equals Rage, Revolt “Sooner or Later”.

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Courtesy: usv-jsc.org

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Ever since Teddy Roosevelt’s tenure in 1912 this “richest nation in the world” has been allowing many millions of its too-often otherwise-enslaved citizens to be deprived also of their world-recognized human right to adequate, available, affordable healthcare.

Private/profit providers have long-ago proven that without rigorous regulation their dollar-driven marketmanipulation can manage only distortion and perversion.

Rational, reasonable, respectable supervision --as demanded in other essential areas of our national life already underway-- is clearly the essential action NOW.

Every other “advanced” nation across the world has already --over many decades-- taken that demanded step to solve the problems we still choose to ignore.

None has EVER REVERSED --OR even considered ABANDONING-- that simple honest step to safeguard their citizens, as a truly demanded function of wise, equitable, cost-effective governance.

Many have further consolidated and extended access to private providers working under supervision. ALL others operate their plans at strikingly lower administrative costs than we do, at TWENTY PERCENT.

Many others use private providers and allow choices; major innovations CONTINUE to come from many. We lead ONLY in overall cost-levels per person, now already “insupportable”, demanding reform to permit any access for another nearly-FIFTY MILLION persons. (See reader’s Notes for serious documentation.)

That cumulated international record is demonstrated as overwhelmingly positive and completely proven-so -- despite desperate dollar-driven propaganda to make it seem otherwise, for obvious motives of profit-protection and inevitable political pandering.

The same common enslaving forces have found ways to keep it that way --paying off fantastically for the few, while depriving the other-millions-- over all those decades in this “our” nation.

Their very-same points of propaganda, first found emerging versus Teddy, and transcended only by FDR’s furious fight for the bare beginnings, is firmly on the public record for all to see -- and NOW plainly understand, as essential for rapid and wise reform.

It becomes even better understood in the further light of futility --forced to forefront for those millions by the parallel painfully-repeated process of further healthcare obstruction “they” lately perpetrated by other billions-.spent to kill the Clinton plan.

The current increasingly desperate, extremely revealing machinations and again-massive dollar/driven counter-measures -- even more irrational and obviously intentionally obstructive-- are sure signs of changing times and major, massive attitude-alterations.

But the fascinating feature is emergence AGAIN of the true wit, wisdom and indomitable WILL of the many millions of human-right/deprived Americans.

Those millions it is who KNOW, from their own painful part in the national experience, that “NOW we must act, in some way, and via sensible social means”, to obliterate and transcend this national miasma and its massive monetary and health-momentous consequences.

Corporate control of governance is clearly now close to becoming near-immutable fact, facilitated by “corporate campaign contributions” --an unavoidable fact-of-life in most all major American communities, as well as every state legislature.

“They”-who-follow “the money” now fear the full impact on their powers, though still prevailing through dollar-dominion over both the economy and the lifestyle we have long termed “The American Dream”.

What we envisioned for 200 years as our American agenda of freedoms and liberties, including a universal move to lifelong home-ownership;and manufacturing jobs with health/pension benefits and massive small-business entrepreneurship, and continued lifelong learning for personal advancement and honest-wage earnings in both professional and primary/level labor-work has now become exceptionally enervating ennui -- an overstrong apathy-inducing nightmare of unavoidable consequences and consternations now surely undeniable, as proven by the problems and passions of millions NOW confronted with realities demanding rapid intercession.

One might almost say of our healthcare concerns that “Lives depend on its success this time”. As matter-of-fact, they truly DO: FIFTY or more, every single day, on the public record, directly traceable to these tragic deprivations - -some of them children, naturally.

There can be no possible question, given undeniable declarations from knowing sources closely encountering the national disaster of rapid-rise in all healthcare expenditures: This radically rising, constantly escalating cost-level is now forcefully overshooting any possible way we can any longer sustain the myth-puncturing upwards-curve.

That costly curve is now cutting away any possible consideration of further dollar consideration of effective solution to many other major problems: Unsustainable, massively manipulating all monies, making economic advance into a questionable thing, and “threatening every American family with a single emergency forcing financial disaster.

Those are the words of wise workers with wide and still-widening experience, as they continue to try to cope with the raging, radical and irrational realities of the frenetic healthcare future faced by every American citizen. That’s the reality of where-we-are today. Truly, that’s the way it is.

There can be no further doubt that healthcare reform is now the most menacing, meaningful, massive, and malign of all our major American problems. IF we fail to conquer this one --at whatever cost to any group OR to ALL of us-- there are no answers left for anything else.

Unconscionable profit is precisely the propaganda tool ready to hand of those who stand to lose money, prestige and further-projected power as millions now massively menaced and meanly deprived find themselves still at the mercy of those for whom dollars demand more worship than all others of our proven democratic American values.

Attack on President Obama is both premature and precisely the ready-to-hand natural tool of the monied interests seeking to protect themselves from loss of profit, prestige, power and projected further influence --astride the very life-substance of those new millions bound for sure into the same milieu: Nearly 50 million-more regardless of what we DO -- or DON’T DO!

That’s before there is even a single bill set forth by representative governance-function, after due-process of full, fair, equitable and probing hearings and mature forceful consideration --as our Constitution clearly requires, and those-there are pledged to perform. Until and unless we DO what MUST be DONE and SOON, we will all pay --some of us literally with lives-- for the failings and futilities we will then suffer.

Our system provides full measure for fair pattern, protocol and measured-meaning, open to understandings by all citizens as their most essential, truly democratic function.

IF we fail to listen-and-learn from those who face these threats every day --in a collapsing system set up simply and solely on proliferating private-profit, further projected, prolonged and already past any possible self amelioration, we deserve the fate ready and rolling steadily towards us.

Fascism, festering “under the surface” and about to be set off as rage turns to radicalism and revolt --and then revolution. We deserve and can earn, by courage, conviction and some patience, a far different and more positive Second American Revolution.

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Reader’s Note: Quotes are summarized, shortened or combined for space-reasons. Some 30 documenting references, from nationallyrecognized nonpartisan sources, major magazine articles and recent books, and other professional sources, were consulted for specific points and policies. These major published reports were basic to the conclusions stated: 1. “Socialized Medicine? Not Quite: 5 Myths About Health Care Around the World” by T.R. Reid; www.CommonDreams.org. 2. War of the Words: How Town Hall Crashers are Transforming Public Opinion by Anthony DiMaggio; www.CommonDreams.org. 3. New York TIMES Editorial: “The Uninsured”; www.nytimes.com 8/23/09 4. Obama’s Trust Problem by Paul Krugman; www.nytimes.com 8/21/09 “See with own eyes” at link given for each one. Until, unless, you check-and-read, YOU really remain UNinformed, thus unable to reach reasonable “opinion”. All documenting references and the verbatim quotes-record available by request to Editor, with complete ID and working phone. (Small fee). Due to move to Oregon Coast, there will be a short hiatus in further Op Eds -HCR

At 21, Henry Clay Ruark was Aroostook Editor for the Bango, Maine DAILY NEWS, covering upper 1/4 of the state. In the ‘40s, he was Staff Correspondent, then New England Wires Editor at United Press-Boston; later Editor for the Burlington, Vermont 3-daily group owned by Wm. Loeb, later notorious at Manchester, New Hampshire UNION LEADER for attacks on Democratic Presidential candidates.

Hank returned to Oregon to complete M. Ed degree at OSU, went on to Indiana University for Ed.D. (abd) and special other course-work; was selected as first Information Director for NAVA in Washington, D.C.; helped write sections of NDEA, first Act to supply math, science, foreign language consultants to state depts. of education; joined Oregon Dept. of Education as NDEA administrator/Learning Media Consultant for tenyears.

He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 560 written since then.