Obamacare

The state legislative session is now in full swing, and lobbyists and advocates are descending on Sacramento to talk health care coverage – who should be eligible and how they should get it. It's a debate you might have expected Obamacare to end. But though California and millions in our state will benefit when the president's plan kicks in next January, about 3 million to 4 million Californians, the majority of whom are legal residents, will remain uninsured.

After the recent election, many Americans are unsure how the health care reform bill initiated by President Obama will affect them.  This bill includes several provisions that deal with individuals seeking drug addiction prevention and treatment.  Many believe (and hope) that this plan really will make addiction care more affordable and accessible. However, although Obamacare may provide needed assistance to drug addicts, proponents and officials of the bill are hesitant to publicize these benefits in fear of the bill attaining the negative stigma often associated with drug addicts themselves.  

In the highly charged, relentlessly partisan political climate of today, one only worsened by the ongoing presidential campaign, it is sometimes easy to forget that Romney isn’t exactly the Republican base’s favorite son.  Indeed, in their fervent desire to defeat President Obama, the dislike and distinct distrust that many on the far right have for Governor Romney has been effectively swept under the proverbial rug. If, however, Romney is successful in his quest for the presidency, this unity on the right will likely prove transient.

Escape Fire, which opens October 5, 2012, is constructed on three-levels: the human element, the problems with healthcare and the examination of the solutions for providing world-class, cost-efficient healthcare. While a work of nonfiction, the message and narrative pace suffers to some degree without an impact singular villain-- no Roger for Michael Moore to badger, no McDonald’s dollar menu to clog Morgan Spurlock’s arteries or usurpers to the King of Kong throne. Only the mass poor decisions of nutritional diet, antiquated training of medical students and a system that is more profitable if the U.S. general population is in need of constant medicinal treatment. 

Shakespeare's plays all begin with a conflict that is well underway by the time the curtain goes up.  A divided court, controversial law, and a presidential election five months away took center stage in this summertime drama.   In what seems to be the climax for President’s Obama signature legislation, we are actually in the midst of the greatest health care transition this country has ever seen. 

Talk of the end of American exceptionalism seems to be everywhere lately, but in at least one area, the United States inarguably reigns supreme.  Currently, per capita health care expenditures in the U.S. are approaching $8,000 a year, far more than anywhere else in the world.  The nation with the second-highest per capita cost, Norway, spends  $2,500 less per person per year.  What do Americans get for their money?  A life expectancy of 78.2 years, slightly ahead of Panama and Libya.

Willard Mitt Romney has emerged as the most winsome debutante of this season’s corporate cotillion, a quadrennial bash sponsored by Wall Street tycoons, right-wing entrepreneurs, K Street lobbyists, golfers, and industrial polluters. Every four years since 1928, the big bucks boys of amalgamated power rally around some beau of the ball who agrees to insist that business acumen is the paramount qualification for election to the office of president.  

There was never much doubt that if the Supreme Court ever got a chance to decide the constitutionality of the health care reform law that it would be in for rough sledding from the court’s five conservatives. The judicial torpedoing of the law will hurt millions of poor, working-class Americans who desperately need health care, but couldn’t get affordable care before the law was passed, and are just as unlikely to get affordable care if it’s struck down. It’s no mystery who among those millions will be hurt the most.