One word.
Whore
It’s all it took to fubar what we should be talking about today.
One stupid (and yes, I mean stupid) word.
I support Bernie Sanders campaign, but I don’t support ever using the word whore.
One horrible, pejorative word.
One word with centuries of insulting weight.
One loaded word.
One distracting word.
One loser word that transforms a winning argument into a train wreck.
It’s not a gaffe as much as it’s emblematic of male entitlement.
Dr. Paul Song still doesn’t get it. He’s still digging his hole.
In some ways I envy the male entitlement mindset. Oh, the luxury of being able to swat away the word, whore as if it is just like shill, sell out or toady.
I think Dr. Song is “deeply sorry” for his poor word choice, but I’m skeptical if he’s learned to respect women in general from this teachable moment.
What Dr. Song most likely to have learned is that using the term corporate whore eclipsed anything else he had to say last night. If I read one diary posted today correctly, that one word discounted Dr. Song’s entire life’s work.
I will not defend Dr. Song’s use of the word, whore. I’m just as angry about it as anyone else. I’m angry about it on every level starting with how the word is generally used to demean, abuse and discount women.
I will, however, point out Dr. Paul Song is an advocate for improving health care access and affordability in the U.S. You might not realize this yet, but the ACA (largely due to appeasing GOP Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) has put the nation on track for a maximum deductible/maximum out of pocket costs for one covered life to be $10,000 ($18,000 for a family) by 2025 — 9 years from now. Currently that maximum is $6,830 for 2016 a pretty inaccessible amount of money if you make $14/hour. (Many people have health care plans where the deductible and the maximum out of pocket costs are the same number.) It’s also reasonable to surmise that had the ACA not passed, most of the nation would have junk insurance health plans today.
One stupid word destroyed Dr. Song’s credibility for the most troubling aspect of U.S. sick care — it still is the number one cause of bankruptcy. Yes, the ACA did a lot of good, but in 10 years we’ll be facing many of the same problems we failed to address in 2009 when it comes to accessing affordable healthcare in the United States, but we aren’t discussing that today. The day after a campaign event attended by 27,000 people and all the media and many here are talking about is the unacceptable use of the word, whore and the unacceptable implications of that word as it applies to the abuse of women (a very serious issue that cannot be excused).
I will not excuse the use of the word, whore.
I also will not use the distraction of discussing the misuse of the word, whore, to prevent me from making some observations of the current state of the dysfunctional U.S. health care system.
What we aren’t discussing are the facts that U.S. health care is still:
1. Unaffordable
2. Unaccessible for people on low incomes in non-Medicaid expanded states and people with less generous plans and provider networks.
3. Has perverse, counterproductive incentives for both providers and insurers
4. Protects price gouging
5. Allows religious bigotry to overrule sound medical efficacy
6. Inadequate provider networks despite the law
7. Millions of people still go without health care
8. Millions of people still do not have a medical home (a consistent primary care provider).
9. U.S. Health care is still fragmented by payer type (personal medical, worker’s comp. auto, liability etc.)
10. An unacceptable number of people still self-ration their health care based upon cost.
No, we are not discussing the U.S. health care system today. One stupid word is firmly, intractably in the way of having a frank discussion about it.
Up until last night Dr. Song kept his criticisms of U.S. health care circumspect — for the most part.
One word destroyed what many of us around here agree with:
Yeah, well, that word sucks…. another word that probably shouldn’t be used when discussing serious issues, but it is a tweet ….
Do the math. Compare the costs for an employee who makes $10 and hour offered company insurance costing them $335 every two weeks for the single parent and her 3 children vs. possibly paying even 20% of her income for Medicare for all. Ask anyone playing for the NFL if they would pay 10% of their earnings in exchange for complete coverage for their entire life. Ask people like Chris Matthews (who very likely STOPS paying payroll taxes by the end of January every year) if they would pay 10% for complete coverage and you get why the media is giving us a snow job about Bernie Sander’s Medicare for all idea.
By 2024 we will be close to $10,000 health care deductibles for single person health care policies and incrementalism isn’t going to fix that.
We still ration health care based upon the patient’s ability to pay.
but we aren’t talking about that today.