Main Street

Interesting Things Around the Internet

• I defy you to read this story and not conclude that our health care system is entirely broken. This family has health insurance. But they’ve lost their house to medical bills, they’ve cashed out their life insurance policies, relatives have helped all they can, and they continue to drown in debt. Now, the mother has decided to give up the fight for the small amount of vision she has and go entirely blind in order to devote the money for her treatments to care for her daughters who have the same condition.
• Facebook vs. MySpace.
• Remember Betsy McCaughey? You may have seen her being destroyed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, or been exposed to her falsehood-riddled fearmongering in another venue. Well, back in 1994 she played a role in killing President Clinton’s attempt at health care reform, publishing an article called “No Exit” that misrepresented the proposed reforms. It now turns out it also dramatically misrepresented its own genesis. See, the article didn’t mention anywhere what we know now, which is that a tobacco lobbyist had significant input on the article.
• A local union president links opposition to health care reform and opposition to unions in “Health care and the ‘I’ve got mine’ crowd”:
  

  The mind-set seems to be that if someone — even someone less fortunate — “gets” something, then I “lose” something. For example, proposals to cover the uninsured are routinely characterized as help for “freeloaders.” Freeloaders? At some point that would be just about all of us. Our current system makes health insurance hard to get and easy to lose.

  I see the same “me, me, me” outlook in the propaganda and money poured into preventing workers from forming unions. Sure I “get” the employer argument that unions raise labor costs, so it’s natural for employers to resist. I don’t accept the argument, but I understand where it is coming from. But I suspect that there is something much deeper and more worrisome at work.

  Unions, after all, stand for looking out for one another. The very idea of a union is a version of yes, I am my brother and my sister’s keeper. An injury to one is an injury to all, is one of our core principles.

• Not like what we need is more fast food, but…fast food menu options that aren’t actually on the menu.