OUTSOURCE EMPLOYERS!!!

Well, it's the start of another New Year, with all the promise and worry that ever goes along with that.  So, it should be of no surprise that the ever-lucky, ol' Jersey McJones tore the living hell out of his "lower abdomen" over the holidays. I may well need more surgery (this would make it six for this little problem) sometime in the near future, unless I manage to heal up - which I might.  I have a plastic screen holding it all together now, but this tear seems to have circumvented it.  It's not that I physically over-do it much anymore, but my body is settling and the problem has been with me since birth.

I asked one of my surgeons, once, "Why does this keep happening to me?"

"Evolution," he said, without so much as blink.  "The human animal's physical development still hasn't fully caught up with walking upright.  The muscle walls in the groin take a lot of pressure from the abdomen and so occasionally break."  We call this an inguinal hernia.  He even drew me a diagram.

It just goes to show that Evolution is not some grand plan to perfect species.  It is simply change - or lack of - over time.  (and if this is "Intelligent Design," there's a certain deity who deserves a smack on the head...)

But that's not what this post is about.

I am lucky, multiple surgeries or not.  I have quality health insurance and I pay very, very little for it (and I live in an area that still has good hospitals!).  Not all Americans are so lucky - job or no job.  One reason that I have, and have most always had, good coverage is that I avoid working for Americans - and especially small firms.  Yes, American companies tend to pay a little better, but that's because you are working far more hours, and their benefits, from time off to insurance, are the obnoxious. They just plain work you like a dog.  It's the Protestant Work ethic gone awry.  "Work," like "Business," in and of itself is held up as the prime indicator of who we are as human beings - not what we actually accomplish.  We are not even "Personell" anymore -  now we are "Resources," like coal or timber.  And it doesn't matter why we work or do business, just that we do.  The Protestants, the bulk of our nation, took the "Good" out of "Good Works."  A concept like Universal Healthcare is anathema to such thinking.

Yet, we already sort of have Universal Healthcare.  When an uninsured person needs treatment, they show up somewhere that will treat them (usually an emergency room, though more and more it's some clinic) and the taxpayors flit the bill.  If I were uninsured, and had to go to an emergency room for my little problem, the total cost would be much higher than it is through my insurance.  But the costs to the employers is much lower if they can just shift the burdon to the taxpayors.

Take Walmart, the nation's biggest retail chain:  Not only do they avoid most any American labor standards through their 32 hour work week and other anti-worker practices, but they actually intentionally show their employees how to get on the public dole.  When the Maryland legislature tried to work around Walmart by actually dealing with the healthcare costs that late Sam Walton's company creates, they were rebuffed.  "We don't support a tax on payroll to subsidize government health care," says Ellen Valentino of the National Federation of Independent Businesses.  Someone forgot to tell Ms. Valentino that there's nothing "independent" about the way Walmart handles it's employees' healthcare.  Subsidation of Walmart employees is something all of us taxpayors are doing.

In a way, a very sleazy way, Walmart's actions makes some sense.  Employer-based healthcare is a heavy burden on our employers.  It is a significant reason for our astounding trade deficit, as our more even competitors (Germany, for example, has a trade surplus) do not place that burden on employers.  It's a huge overhead.  But the CEOs and the corporate cronies have no intentions of changing the status quo because they know, individually, that they will see some devaluation in their easy-money investments in Insurance and the Pharmies, and because they would have to pay more personal income taxes to make Universal Healthcare happen.  They would rather cannibalize their own country than fix the system.  Another problem with these Americans - they suffer serious near-sightedness.

The irony here is that two out of three Americans want Universal Healthcare!  But the Powers that Be have no intention of doing that either.  The Insurance Industry has little or nothing to do with treating the ailing - they are all about Investment Banking. That is why Prudential Insurance changed it's name to Prudential Investments, and it's also why the whole Tort "Reform" issue raised it's ugly, sleazy head after the last serious market down-turn, even though tort cases add up to a few percentage points of cost.  The politicians are just as vested in the Insurance/Investment Banking Industry as their masters on Wall Street - just ask the Clintons about when the their healthcare plan was beaten by the lying, Insurance Industry-funded "Harry & Louise" ads! 

The obstacle - the only reason we do not have Universal Healthcare - is that the "Insurance" industry is a deeply entrenched financial interest in our economy.  It's status quo, and the weak amongst us have a hard time with change.  But it could be done.  If we simply installed a plan that would phase in over the years and allowed for private, competitive actuation, we could make it work.  It would take guts and far-sightedness - two traits absent from the Majority's idium.

So what to do?

I have an idea...

Since International Outsourcing of Employees is okay with the politicians and the CEOs, how about we workers Outsource our Labor to Foreign Companies?  There are lots of them here.  The Brits, Germans, et al - they're all here for one reason or another, and they have benefits actually worth the work!  The fact is that we working Americans - as opposed to the sleazy corporatists - are pretty darn hard-working, productive people.  These foreign employers respect that - and they give us benefits like time off with our families, and healthcare!  I've worked for Mexicans, Chinese, Brits and Germans. They all treated me very, very well - like a Human Being as opposed to coal or timber.  Being a vagabond when I was younger, I didn't appreciate them as much as I do now that I am settled and have put in the years.  Now I'll never go back.

Let's start an Outsource Employers Movement!

(eh, it's a thought...)