courtesy of city-data.com
posted by WMassToNC
new to gardening; or, how I grew broccoli and
some other vegetables in raised beds and not from seeds
As per the photo above, I have blogged on this subject before, and especially since I am interested in food. You can even forage this stuff as well as more exotic varieties. Could getting, say, health care be as easy?
Not in America, many say. And I wanted to catch up on what our USSC gurus have been up to, on that matter, this week. So like most informed Americans, I went to Jon Stewart (first) .. then Steve Colbert .. both of whom discuss .. plants ..
More seriously, I had checked in on (and found worthwhile reading), as linked, Paul Krugman (also broccoli).. The Washington Post (Mythology) .. Truthout (Translations) .. and Common Dreams (where I found that Rose Ann DeMoro posed what had to be the most important question of all ..)
Supreme Court Judges Have Access to Guaranteed Care, Shouldn’t You?
Yes, I think I should. Hey, that wasn't hard to say.
She further points out:
More striking, this case which dominated the court’s agenda and massive media coverage this week did not need to be in front of the court at all. If the Obama administration and the Democrats on the Hill had fought for the reform they should have pursued from the outset – lowering the Medicare age to zero.I know why that happened. As does every other American adult.
Ms. DeMoro states that 4 justices who disagree (Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer) still have one thing very much in common (and apart from her argument's thrust, so do all of them - which is not the case for far too many Americans - sharing quite the opposite experience):
They won’t have to [and none of them have to] worry about being bankrupted by medical bills, about being denied needed treatment their doctor recommended because some insurance bean counter deemed it ‘experimental’ or ‘not medically necessary.’
They won’t have to worry about being barred from choosing the provider of their choice because they were ‘out of network’ or forced to keep an unwanted job to maintain their present employer-paid coverage.
Why? It’s not just because of their wealth, or even their federal paychecks or federal health plan.
It’s because all four are over 65, and thus eligible for Medicare – which gives the four justices the same guaranteed coverage that every other American at 65 has. The same coverage that all Americans need and deserve [at every moment of their life].
Regrettably, none of those roadblocks are removed under the law the judges spent so many hours debating
For more than 45 years, Medicare has stood the test of time and law.
It works, even when its opponents try to underfund or privatize or destabilize Medicare.
Nevertheless, and nobly still, the first three journalists (serious and comedic) take on the broccoli argument, and much more effectively (it appears) than the Obama Adminsitration's counsel. In a nutshell, says Paul Krugman (and in case you're hearing about this for the first time), it all started with the "exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter."
Can you believe these people?
He continues (for we must):
That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.
Got that right, says this blogger. Or growing it, or foraging it like wild dandelion greens ..not to mention that not eating it doesn't kill you or help cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people .. who desire its crunch ?
I take a breath.
Furthermore, says Mr. Krugman:
When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don’t make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don’t buy health insurance until they get sick — which is what happens in the absence of a mandate — the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn’t work, and never has.
God bless you, Mr. Krugman.
So this is the point, America: We can live without broccoli. We can't live without health care.
(And this is why we also need a better education system.)
Paul Krugman seems to predict a demise of the mandate in this court; Mr. Colbert and legal analyst Emily Bazelon bump heads thus:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
One of Jon Stewart's sum-ups (below) which is pretty much how I felt about following it, mostly because I agree with Rose Ann DeMoro's main point, and, I'm tired of watching this circus. It's only in town because there are so many lobbyists. And when there are lobbyists in the mix, we know the end of this tale!
Like Spike Lee says, Just Do ThE RiGht THing. For a change.
In an alternate universe, the justices, taking the advice of director Spike Lee, throw everyone out of the room, declaring that, we already have a very good broccoli recipe - Medicare to Age Zero! That under the Constitution, health care is a right, and an improved Medicare is to be opened to the entire country immediately, and funded through taxes. Perhaps one or the other also writes an impassioned, historic opinion that separate is not equal - in medicine either - and discusses the rationality of doctors making decisions about health care treatment on the basis of the quality of a person's insurance policy rather than the quality of their health - or the effort to deliver quality health care unconditionally, and regardless of socioeconomic status. There is only one status in health care delivery (or should be), and that is human status! This brings in a whole lot of Amendments, and in between, they can talk about public schools, fire departments, the police, public libraries, post offices - and how - health care belongs in there with the rest just as much, if not moreso.
But this isn't about Great Court Opinions in an Age of Reason in an Era of Scientific Enlightenment in an Advanced, Civilized, and Sane Society; heck, it's not even about good broccoli recipes.
It's just about lobbyists and corporations, and at this point, a court that passed Citizens United with justices appointed by politicians who were elected because of who was funding them.
Let's make more.
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