A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Expanded Medicaid goes into effect in Montana today. There are, reports Molly Priddy at the Flathead Beacon, specialists ready to help people navigate the system, which is not true Medicaid but, thanks to Republican cruelty and Democratic inability to win a majority in the legislature, bastardized and privatized, expanded Medicaid.
Yes, the system may be an improvement on health care before the Affordable Care Act. And Montana’s soak the poor expanded Medicare that Democrats so shamelessly cheer may help some who would not have been helped before.
But let no one lose sight of the fact that our system is stingy and hideously complex. Even Medicare, a single payer system, doesn’t cover everything, forcing financially strapped seniors to purchase outrageously expensive supplemental policies.
What we need, what should be our right, is American Care — an everyone covered for everything federal single-payer system, every American automatically enrolled at birth, financed by progressive taxes. If we had American Care, we wouldn’t need private health insurance. If we outlawed that parasitic industry, the savings would pay for American Care.
But we don’t have American Care because Republicans are cruel and Democrats embrace single-payer opponents like Hillary Clinton.
Will this nation ever come to its senses on health care? Or is the crooked timber of humankind incapable of rescuing itself from the knuckleheads and merciless ideologues we choose to govern and provide a health care system?