Why Jen Doesn't Have to Die. Part Two
The short answer: If we wake up and remind our legislators that all, not just some, Americans should have the right to life, liberty and happiness.
The elephant in our operating room: Both Sen. Sanders and House Speaker Mike Johnson have spent decades studying U.S. health care. Their consensus: We spend up to 10 times more on care, yet have among the highest death rates in the developed world. Why? Johnson, who researched health policy for Trump, nails some overspending in Medicaid, while Sanders wants to give Americans the chance to choose a “public option,” where the government’s collective buying power could easily drive down rates.
It’s hard to flaw Substack’s tight group of top-tier writers, who manage to be far more prolific and brilliant than I, but all of us share a secret shame: Writing, with bombastic 20/20 hindsight about tragedies that occur far after you readers have even a distant shot at help averting them.
Legislation (now heading toward the desks of President Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson) might help Jen and millions of other Americans who want to work hard for their deserved piece of the American dream.
I use the word might rather than could be because the bill is not exactly top-priority in this lurid year of politic theater.
Senate Bill 2922, “Advancing Research for Chronic Pain Act of 2023,” would make a host of sweeping changes including: creating a National Chronic Pain Information System that would would sunshine now-private research (funded generously through FY 2028) that would among other things redefine “chronic pain” not simply as the Hellish spasms before death from cancer but “persistent or recurrent [severe and debilitating] pain lasing long than three months.” (Thus at least culturally taking some of the pressure off of doctors mentioned in Part 1 of this series.)
The bill recognizes a callow if profound change in academic medicine worldwide toward “shared decision-making,” where patients, not only doctors, have civil rights over their soma.
Now more than ever—even here on Substack—it has been a commonplace for writers to simply echo the despair in D,C,
Alas, I have a bit of breaking news for you: that despair is largely a social construct, no more real than acrophobia or film-induced fears of E.T.’s.
Last night Democratic and GOP staffers studying SB 922 told me on bacground it had little chance of law because pro-life House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) would never take the bill up.
No one bothered to vet Johnson’s numerous studies opposing any legislation that excludes or overcharges Americans with pre-exiting conditions. Johnson, in fact, wrote the RNC’s 2016 “Conservative Playbook,” which suffered from a few egregious errors of fact; e.g., that “The ACA has failed to make health insurnace more affordable..and accessible. But Johnson also addressed more recondite if legitimate challenges, such as how to put limits on Medicaid benefits that in some regions are almost Scandinavian in their generosity.
The MSM have done a better job exposing the elephant in our national room: the fact that change is difficult in a capitol where lobbyists against change outnumber lobbyists for change 100 to one. Unfortunately the MSM go on to overdramatize the power of special interests, saying (contray to polling data) that Americans are nothing more than pawns of the ultrawealthy.
It’s hard to finger just one of the memes Washington D.C. churns out to belittle us.
The “MSM” is an easy mark, but having spent 20 years in that ethos, and I’ve yet to meet a single reporter who wasn’t religious about Americans’ right to free information.
Speaking of which, our “Fourth” branch of government is obviously so dessicated it’s about to snap.
But life is a circle so I hold out hope that Reddit, Substack and other freshly watered stems continue budding so America remains what Ben Franklin answered Elizabeth Willing Powell when she asked “We’ll,1 Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
“A republic, if you can keep it,” was the inventor’s famous reply.
The central theme of this blog has been that U.S. public schools since the nulls have seemed bizarrely motivated to their blind their kids to any awareness of the words our Founding Fathers used to envision our national ideals. Elizabeth Powell railed against dumbing down of the ‘hoi polloi” s from her place in the high 18th Century Philadelphia. To this day schools fail to imbue students with the most basic terms they need to fathom politics.
So what’s the distinction? In a Republic, the people elect their leaders directly and frequent community meetings encure the people not the President determine policy. In a Monarch, a single ruler is respecred because his assumed connection to higher power. In general Republics involve frequent public participation, while monarchies work to obfuscate public awareness.