Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
The battle for Baghdad, and thus the war in Iraq, is drawing to a close. Already the hawks in the Pentagon are rattling their sabers toward Syria. The war on terror, it is to be assumed, continues unabated even if we still can’t find Osama bin Laden.
Shortly after 9-11, President Bush, referring to terrorists, said, “They hate us for our freedom.” That sentence has been repeated many times in the past few years and every time they trot it out, we seem to have less freedom. Civil liberties are assaulted from all sides, John Kerry was accused of treason for suggesting we may not wish to re-elect Mr. Bush and economic freedom is a fond and distant memory.
Maybe this is the real strategy to fight the war on terror. If we really believe the terrorists “hate us for our freedom,” then by taking away our freedom, the terrorists will no longer hate us. They’ll pity us.
Spring is coming – slowly – to state capitals and legislators trying to put together budgets realize just how little freedom there is to be had out there. The federal government, deep in deluded deliberation over another huge tax cut for the wealthy, is passing its obligations along to overburdened states.
Here in Vermont, no one is suggesting tax cuts for the rich. We do however, ask the poor to pay more – particularly for health care. Right now, poor Vermonters pay for a small portion of the cost of health care services they use. If they stay healthy, they don’t need to pay and neither does the state.
Early this year, Governor Jim Douglas proposed a plan under which the poor would pay all their medical expenses up to a point, after which the state would take over, something like a deductible on an insurance policy.
The problem with that is, the state front-loads the cost to people with no money; so poor people will not seek medical attention because they can’t afford the deductible. This plan saves the state money in the short run, but over time, it will cost money, because minor problems left untreated will become catastrophic health events that the state will have to pay for down the line.
The goods news is, the state House of Representatives did away with the governor’s ill-advised plan. The bad news is, they replaced it with something even worse.
The elected leaders of the state of Vermont have proposed that instead of co-payments for services received or instead of a health care deductible, poor people should be charged health care premiums. All uninsured people in Vermont would be obligated to pay into the state’s health care system – whether they are sick or healthy. It’s hard to see how such a system would save money, because if people have to pay regardless of their state of health – you’d think people would use more, not fewer, health care services.
The legislature solved that problem by mandating that any poor person who misses two consecutive monthly payments will be penalized by being shut out of the system for three months. So, if a poor, sick old lady misses her January and February health care payments – even though she makes them up in March, won’t be able to get health care for March, April or May, even though she’s making payments for those months, too. The state cannot just restore the poor old lady’s health care benefits when she’s made up her back payments. Oh no, we have to subject her to a 90-day period of degradation and shame.
This will save the state money. Health care experts estimate that the legislature’s premium plan will force over 10,000 poor Vermonters out of the health care system altogether.
Is this the kind of freedom that causes terrorists on the other side of the planet to hate us? The terrorists we need to worry about are closer than you think.
Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
The battle for Baghdad, and thus the war in Iraq, is drawing to a close. Already the hawks in the Pentagon are rattling their sabers toward Syria. The war on terror, it is to be assumed, continues unabated even if we still can’t find Osama bin Laden.
Shortly after 9-11, President Bush, referring to terrorists, said, “They hate us for our freedom.” That sentence has been repeated many times in the past few years and every time they trot it out, we seem to have less freedom. Civil liberties are assaulted from all sides, John Kerry was accused of treason for suggesting we may not wish to re-elect Mr. Bush and economic freedom is a fond and distant memory.
Maybe this is the real strategy to fight the war on terror. If we really believe the terrorists “hate us for our freedom,” then by taking away our freedom, the terrorists will no longer hate us. They’ll pity us.
Spring is coming – slowly – to state capitals and legislators trying to put together budgets realize just how little freedom there is to be had out there. The federal government, deep in deluded deliberation over another huge tax cut for the wealthy, is passing its obligations along to overburdened states.
Here in Vermont, no one is suggesting tax cuts for the rich. We do however, ask the poor to pay more – particularly for health care. Right now, poor Vermonters pay for a small portion of the cost of health care services they use. If they stay healthy, they don’t need to pay and neither does the state.
Early this year, Governor Jim Douglas proposed a plan under which the poor would pay all their medical expenses up to a point, after which the state would take over, something like a deductible on an insurance policy.
The problem with that is, the state front-loads the cost to people with no money; so poor people will not seek medical attention because they can’t afford the deductible. This plan saves the state money in the short run, but over time, it will cost money, because minor problems left untreated will become catastrophic health events that the state will have to pay for down the line.
The goods news is, the state House of Representatives did away with the governor’s ill-advised plan. The bad news is, they replaced it with something even worse.
The elected leaders of the state of Vermont have proposed that instead of co-payments for services received or instead of a health care deductible, poor people should be charged health care premiums. All uninsured people in Vermont would be obligated to pay into the state’s health care system – whether they are sick or healthy. It’s hard to see how such a system would save money, because if people have to pay regardless of their state of health – you’d think people would use more, not fewer, health care services.
The legislature solved that problem by mandating that any poor person who misses two consecutive monthly payments will be penalized by being shut out of the system for three months. So, if a poor, sick old lady misses her January and February health care payments – even though she makes them up in March, won’t be able to get health care for March, April or May, even though she’s making payments for those months, too. The state cannot just restore the poor old lady’s health care benefits when she’s made up her back payments. Oh no, we have to subject her to a 90-day period of degradation and shame.
This will save the state money. Health care experts estimate that the legislature’s premium plan will force over 10,000 poor Vermonters out of the health care system altogether.
Is this the kind of freedom that causes terrorists on the other side of the planet to hate us? The terrorists we need to worry about are closer than you think.