Written by Andor Carnes   

After reading Michael Moore’s “The Obamacare We Deserve” - The New York Times-RSN 01-January 2014

This is a Test of the Emergency “See if you are really part of our society or not” System of Collaborative Democracy:

Our collective society has agreed (like it or not) to the following to define our society, and if you simply do not see that majority foundation, then you do not understand our progressive but humane society. This is a test (more easily illustrated through the “Affordable Care Act”):

1-Adequate & Humane
-Agreed:
Adequate, humane healthcare should be accessible to everyone in our society
***-That means everyone.

2-Affordable Access
-Agreed:
That healthcare access should be affordable to all of our citizens.
***-That means everyone

3-No More Tolerance For Costly Impact On Others
-Agreed:
No citizen’s actions, as well as ultimately no institution’s actions, should be allowed to disproportionally affect the cost of that healthcare system to the public and to the system’s participants –which especially means insulating the public and the system participants from paying for the non-participant’s unpaid medical charges (institutional loss write-offs) and exorbitant usage such as emergency room use for regular care or once a preventable condition has been allowed to evolve to its costliest.
***-That means no more using a system for which you do not directly participate in the cost.

***-That means no longer tolerating: those, from every socio-economic stratum, and from institutions and vendors who game the system and drive up the costs for those who do participate.

4-You Cannot Simply Do What You Want To Do
-Agreed:
That sure, you should be able to do anything you want as long as it does not hurt others, and in this case that “hurt” is to cost others dearly through costly non-healthcare system formal participation behavior.

***-Since those who do not wish to participate in the shared costs of the healthcare system still directly, by eventually impacting the system with their health issues, cause the system to be far more expensive and thus ironically less accessible to others, they can no longer be allowed to do what they want in our society’s healthcare arena.

5-Significant Changes Must Be Relevant To The Lifetimes Of Those Served
-Agreed:
That changes to allow these societal healthcare building block criteria to be met shall no longer be held hostage by virtually decades of non-action and damning with faint effort/support by those who are indifferent to the plight of their fellow citizens and those institutions who clearly gain from the historical status quo of inaction.

***In other words; positive, demonstrative changes must be mandated to occur in timelines relevant to the lifetimes and wellbeing of our citizens, who are alive now and are immediately affected by those changes.


6-Those, Who Claim That Such Action Is Worse Than Doing Nothing, Diminish, Not Enhance Society
-Agreed:
All the decades of disruptive rhetoric and obstructionist actions (of course resplendently continuing today) and the truly indifferent behavior on the part of ill-informed and informed players will be rendered as the destructive and damaging behavior that they are, if others finally take a stand to help those in need and implement a catalyzing set of laws setting the basics for all 5 above goals.

****-That is precisely what the Affordable Healthcare Act has done –the congressional records for all recorded Congressional time stand as irrefutable proof of such.

7-Any Enacted Legislation Can And Should Be Reviewed And Improved For The Dynamic Good Of Our Society
-Agreed:
That nothing is perfect but the lack of action simply can no longer be condoned or ignored by a fair society and is too costly now to society; so, reasonable action will be taken immediately, and the criticisms of the non-doers will no longer be allowed to impede societal progress. Changing the past and a recalcitrant healthcare system will cost more up front but, when adjusted and allowed to accommodate greater numbers and better containment of costs, will result in better coverage and costs, as an average in our society, not just for the few. The sustainable wellbeing of a society is not defined by its extremes but by its average.

***-In other words, our society demands a better level of care for our collective citizens than relentless, destructive rhetoric; so, our collective population will better thrive as a whole.

8-The Affordable Care Act Is An Imperfect Piece Of Legislation But it is a Start For Caring Legislators and Better Minds to Move Ahead
–Agreed:
That we must protect our own and better our society, and talking about it for decades causes unimaginable suffering in our ranks. That suffering will no longer be acceptable in the name of some fantasy of a perfect plan. The trick to improvement and innovation is to start. The Affordable Care Act is the start our society needed to catalyze real on the ground changes and to field-test flaws for improvement and better realization of the goals.

***-Talking about what needs improvement, reworking, and re-planning is usually healthy. Nevertheless such criticism is still always suspect in who actually cares about the health and welfare of our citizenry and who has virtually no credibility of doing something about caring for the others in our communities. However, to spend all our waking energy on trying to say that our intolerance-to-action for the suffering caused by years of inaction is actually the cause of that suffering is to expose one’s self as simply a practitioner of chaos and not a caring, contributing member of our society.


10-The Heart Of The Disruption Of Lives:
All aspects of the Affordable Care Act, and even its criticisms and illustrated needed changes are irrelevant, if we do not recognize the above foundation goals of its enactment in our society. Worrying about technical rollout complex failures, whether or not good folks who are in a healthcare provider niche that is affordable until they seriously use it will lose their coverage in that niche for a better long-term solution, and jumping on a bandwagon to criticize those who left a “single care provider for everyone” approach because the reality of that would be another five decades of inaction and untold levels corporate profits and citizen suffering, makes those who perpetuate the healthcare disruptive “speak” the poster children of prolonged lack of true care for the other and for being disingenuous, all fostered by true indifference to the life timelines of our own people. Relentless destructive talk eventually takes the time that action needs. Some recognize that and get off that rhetoric train. Others cling to those rails, never seeing or regarding the costs to their neighbors.

***-If we tried to care as much about our fellow struggling citizens as we do about criticizing Obama (like him or not) and the Affordable Care Act on ultimately trivial, past social issues, and we ceased to find the path of least resistance by our diarrheic politicization of everything, we might learn to empathize with the suffering out there, and we might differentiate true metrics and analogue empathies of suffering from mere inconveniences.


TEST NOTE:
This is a difficult test to pass because it is self-administered, and that can lead only to what we know and not to what is right, fair and collaborative –all things that are greatly more personally gratifying and community reinforcing than an endless plate of disappointment, frustration and anger.