Hi Folks,

I'm just getting back to email after a number of days away on the road, and appreciate the discussion that ensued after my prickly email last Friday.  Eva is right that there are certain aspects of the rights we wished we had that will always be tied to employment in some way. of course...and while we have employer-based insurance (the few of us who do), I would of course support everyone getting to put someone else who doesn't have insurance on their insurance policy, especially if that didn't become a reason for the employers who continue to cover their employees to stop doing so.  (Though I'd also like to put my siblings and nephews and nieces on my plan in addition to my kids and partner--and if we go there, empoyer-based insurance comes to a grinding halt--which gets us back to the same point, the whole thing is ass-backwards.) 

What I'm worried about is that Obama's plan is too tied to the private insurance industry, when it seems that the cultural momentum finally exists (maybe?) to push through a real national health plan.  If folks would switch now from getting Obama elected to organizing with the same enthusiasm to get real health policies passed, we'd get it done now I think... but "healthcare" doesn't have Obama's pretty smile, and I fear that his charisma was too big a part of the mobilization to have that energy now directed at giving him a visible and in-the-streets popular mandate to do something.  In other words, I think folks won't realize that we have to make demands on him, like any other president, not just back him up, and rush up to the TV (as my 14 year old does) to kiss him when he comes on stage.  I say this as someone who has been convinced over the course of the election that Obama's call to basic human decency is actually genuine, but that's nothing without an on-going, visible, and demanding popular mandate.  

Bonnie


On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 07:14:47 -0800, Gaile Pohlhaus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Bonnie (et al),
> 
> My comment was said with tongue fully in cheek (note smiley face)--meaning something like exactly what you say below--I don't think that we should care for our citizens by divvying out "benefits" to households, the logic leads to all kinds of absurdities.  The retirement worry (which is a real worry for folks who choose not to have children even as they/we contribute to society and the lives of children in other ways) was meant to highlight that point as well.  One should not have to have children (or a whole lot of money) in order to make sure that someone is there when one becomes vulnerable and/or infirm due to old age.
> 
> Apologies for other interpretations abounding...
> 
> GP
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- On Fri, 11/7/08, Bonnie Mann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > From: Bonnie Mann <[log in to unmask]>
> > Subject: Kids/Pets
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Date: Friday, November 7, 2008, 6:20 PM
> > Folks, 
> > 
> > The posts suggesting that folks who don't have kids
> > should get some equal benefit package as folks who do seem
> > to me to be based on the same logic that is being
> > criticized.  The history of these "family
> > benefits" is that the one with the right to the benefit
> > is the wage earning male (the one who matters to the
> > society) who can bestow the benefit on his wife and kids by
> > virtue of their relationship to him, instead of folks
> > receiving benefits because they are human beings with human
> > needs. Kids should be insured period, not only if they have
> > parents with employers who provide benefits, or parents who
> > can afford insurance...not, that is to say, by virtue of
> > their relation to a parent at all.  To suggest that
> > one's children receiving what should be a basic human
> > right somehow needs to be made up for by bestowing an extra
> > benefit on those who don't have kids is to continue to
> > see the right to the benefit as accruing to the
> > "productive" (i.e. worthwhile) adult, rather than
> > to the ch!
> > ild.  Call me species-ist, but to suggest that middle class
> > pet owners should get their pet's insurance covered
> > while thousands of poor children are uninsured, that to do
> > so would be to somehow equalize a fantasized inequality
> > between employees with kids and employees without kids, is,
> > well I don't know what to call it....awful. Sorry for
> > the tone of this, but as someone who came up out of poverty
> > to my university job and has multiple nieces and nephews,
> > not to mention sisters and brothers and cousins, without
> > insurance, and sees everyday what this means in terms of
> > their health, I am surprised by the suggestion that a parent
> > receiving health benefits for their children somehow
> > constitutes a "privilege" over other folks who
> > have health insurance for themselves already but no
> > children.  When I was fourteen both of my eardrums burst
> > from an ear infection because my mother couldn't afford
> > to take me to the doctor... once my father died and I was no
> > longer related to a unionized e!
> > mployee of the Oregon sawmill, I had no separate right to!
> >   health 
> > care and neither did my mother or siblings. Would it have
> > seemed like a move toward "fairness" if the
> > university employees in the next town who were without
> > children got to insure their pets? 
> > 
> > Bonnie Mann
> 
> 
>       
>