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Tuesday, August 16, 2005
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Why we need single-payer health insurance:
Debbie Shank stocked shelves at a Wal-Mart store in Cape Girardeau, Mo., until five years ago, when her minivan was hit by a tractor-trailer. Her Wal-Mart health insurance paid the medical bills. Proceeds from a lawsuit helped finance her care in a nursing home.
Brain damage forces her to use a wheelchair and limits her upper body movement to one arm and two fingers. It stole her memory and her ability to talk to her husband and three sons.
“She’ll ask about the boys, she’ll ask about the cat,” said her husband, Jim Shank. “Whenever I’m there, she thinks it must be a mealtime. We don’t really hold a conversation.”
Now the Shanks face a new obstacle. Her Wal-Mart health insurance plan wants the lawsuit money to repay its costs.
Last week, the health plan sued Debbie Shank in federal court in St. Louis, demanding the full $417,000 she got in the civil suit – plus at least $51,000 more from the share that already went to lawyers and costs.
A suit such as this is not uncommon, and is a way for self-financed health plans – employer and union-funded plans – to recoup medical expenses, say lawyers who handle health and insurance law.
(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)
4:48:47 PM 
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The contrasts between LBJ and GWB -- one anguished over the casualties from the VietNam War, the other "feels no pain."
Bush is the detached CEO, a man who got his position thanks to a lifetime of privilege; Johnson was a hands-on CEO who got the job after having worked his way up from the very bottom of the political world. Bush doesn't do details; Johnson pored over the aerial maps of Vietnam, hoping that he could pick a bombing target that would turn the tide of the war.
Bush doesn't go to funerals for our dead soldiers. Until last week, his administration had refused to release photos of the flag-draped caskets coming back to the United States. (The Pentagon caved as a result of a Freedom of Information Act suit.) When it comes to the second Iraq war, Bush displays no doubt, no anguish. And therein lies the key: It is that quality that made Johnson, for all his faults and failings, a great president. It's the same quality that exposes Bush as the wrong president at the wrong time, fighting the wrong war in the wrong place.
...
Often, late at night, the president would go down to the White House Situation Room to check on casualty reports. At times, when Johnson sat with visitors in the Oval Office, he would weep openly as he read from the previous day's casualty lists."
Johnson felt the pain of others. And his courage and determination (along with the sharp prodding that came from Martin Luther King Jr.) to help the less fortunate forced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act. In doing so, Johnson achieved one of the great political -- and human rights -- victories of the last century.
W. doesn't do human rights. He doesn't do casualty lists. Nor, apparently, does he cry. And as noted by author James Moore, that's what makes Sheehan such a powerful figure. Sheehan has rendered the complexities and carnage of the war into a simple question: Are you on the side of a grieving mother of a dead soldier? Or are you on the side of a president who continues to insist that this war is, in some way, noble?
(Via No More Apples.)
4:03:52 PM
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"George Bush took a 2 hour bike ride on Saturday, and when he got back, he was asked how he could go for a two hour bike ride when he doesn't have time to meet with me, and he said: "I have to go on with my life." WHAT!!!!!????? He has to get on with his life!!! I am so offended by that statement. Every person, war fan, or not, who has had a child killed in this mistake of an occupation should be highly offended by that remark. Who does he think he is? I wish I could EVER be able to get on with my life. Getting on with my life means a life without my dear, sweet boy. Getting on with my life means learning to live with a pain that is so intense that sometimes I feel like throwing up, or screaming until I pass out from sorrow. I wish a little bike ride could help me get on with my life."
- Cindy Sheehan, whose son was denied a chance to get on with his life by the illegal invasion of Iraq.
(Via Left I on the News.)
3:46:36 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 9/2/2005; 10:19:04 AM.
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