A Census Calamity

Between the war, Katrina, and the prospect of Mikey Fitzpatrick returning to the spotlight once more, I know I’m just full of bad news today (sorry, but I’m not done yet).

The New York Times had twin doses of disillusionment concerning the latest census report, including the following excerpt from this editorial…

Sputtering under the weight of the credit crisis and the associated drop in the housing market, the economic expansion that started in 2001 looks like it might enter history books with the dubious distinction of being the only sustained expansion on record in which the incomes of typical American households never reached the peak of the previous cycle. It seems that ordinary working families are going to have to wait — at the very minimum — until the next cycle to make up the losses they suffered in this one. There’s no guarantee they will.

The gains against poverty last year were remarkably narrow. The poverty rate declined among the elderly, but it remained unchanged for people under 65. Analyzed by race, only Hispanics saw poverty decline on average while other groups experienced no gains.

The fortunes of middle-class, working Americans also appear less upbeat on closer consideration of the data. Indeed, earnings of men and women working full time actually fell more than 1 percent last year.

This suggests that when household incomes rose, it was because more members of the household went to work, not because anybody got a bigger paycheck. The median income of working-age households, those headed by somebody younger than 65, remained more than 2 percent lower than in 2001, the year of the recession.

And if you were looking for good news when it came to health coverage – well, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking…

The number of uninsured Americans has been rising inexorably over the past six years as soaring health care costs have driven up premiums, employers have scaled back or eliminated health benefits and hard-pressed families have found themselves unable to purchase insurance at a reasonable price. Last year, the number of uninsured Americans increased by a daunting 2.2 million, from 44.8 million in 2005 to 47.0 million in 2006. That scotched any hope that the faltering economic recovery would help alleviate the problem.

The main reason for the upsurge in uninsured Americans is that employment-based coverage continued to deteriorate. Indeed, the number of full-time workers without health insurance rose from 20.8 million in 2005 to 22.0 million in 2006, presumably because either the employers or the workers or both found it too costly.

The editorial also went on to decry the losses in children’s health coverage…

The number of uninsured children under 18 dropped steadily and significantly from 1999 to 2004, thanks largely to an expansion in coverage of low-income children under two programs operated jointly by the states and the federal government, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Then last year the number of uninsured children jumped more than 600,000 to reach 8.6 million. The main reason, advocacy groups say, is that access and funding for the low-income programs became tighter while employer coverage for dependents eroded.

At this point, I must digress briefly for a short rant.

As I read the second editorial, I have to admit that I had a question that arose in my mind, and as a Roman Catholic I must ask it; what is the position of my church on this issue?

I know all about the good work performed by Catholic Social Services and other agencies for those in dire need, but what is it going to take for someone in authority in this country to (in all likelihood) go against the Holy See and try to effect policy change in this country? We’re talking about kids here, for God’s sake.

Do me a favor and stop haranguing me about the evils of abortion and the so-called “homosexual agenda” (whatever the hell that is) and our culture of permissiveness for a minute and realize that children are sick and dying because the head of the political party you support isn’t lifting his little finger to help them because of a “philosophical difference”! Tell Bill Donahue to get worked up over that for a change instead of women bloggers using objectionable language! (embedded in the Rudy! post)

There…I’m done.

In addition to the column by Paul Krugman that I linked to above about Dubya and CHIP, here is his column from Monday where he argues that health care should be available to children in the same manner as a public school education.

Now, can someone read this and give me a good reason as to why he may be wrong?

The column notes that Rudy! of course favors our wonderful profit-driven free-market system of delivering health care that has produced the current mess that needs to be fixed (I actually stumbled across an appearance by “America’s Mayor”…tongue in cheek here, I assure you…on C-SPAN last weekend where he was spouting the usual blather about encouraging participation in private coverage, more participants, lower payment percentages, cost efficiencies, etc., with Steve Forbes sitting in the background smiling like the Cheshire Cat; it also looks like Giuliani is using the same cheesy Bushco graphics, with a blue backdrop that says, "Your Money, Your Choice" all over the place – how original).

And as long as we’re discussing health care here, it might be a good idea to take a look at what former Massachusetts governor Willard Mitt (Throw Larry “I’m Not Gay” Craig Under The Bus) Romney has proposed.

Simply put, he’s decided to leave it up to the states, though he would not sanction employers who do not provide it for their employees and would not do the same for individuals who do not purchase it for themselves as he does in MA (sorry for the quadruple negative here).

That’s just great, isn’t it? Leave it up to the states and our wonderful profit-driven system, a la Rudy! (see, costs can be reduced by deregulating the insurance market, capping malpractice damages, and guaranteeing care for all – hey, the Inky published it here, so it must be true, right?). Can you envision the same crazy patchwork quilt of “reasonable and customary” deductibles and coverages across this country that I can in the event of this horrid development?

And Mitt concocted this wonderful rationale for his Simply Excellent Plan…

"A one-size-fits-all national health-care system is bound to fail," Romney said. "It ignores the sharp difference between states, and it relies on Washington bureaucracy to manage. I don't want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health-care system."

And in response to that idiotic remark, I give you DarkSyde once more…

The tragic lesson of Katrina is what will happen when men and women who openly despise our government -- who brag they plan to weaken it until they can drown it in a bathtub -- are allowed to govern. After telling the nation that they and only they could keep us safe from any and all threats, the neo-clowns were caught off guard by a Weapon of Mass Destruction called 'water,' arising from a storm that could be seen lumbering toward the Gulf Coast from the surface of the moon for a week. Choose your leaders wisely; these neo-GOP idiots couldn't run a rib-joint let alone the United States of America. And sooner or later, given the chance, it will be your town they drown in the bathtub.

Either that, or they’ll toss you out of the emergency room while awaiting critical care because you don’t have enough money for the co-payment.

Just remember – independent of any politician (though with the help of John Edwards, preferably - scroll down a bit), it’s never too late to start a revolution.