What were your thoughts, feelings, worries when the Senate passed the health reform bill?
What were your thoughts, feelings, worries this morning when the Senate passed the health reform bill?
This is the question I asked on Facebook this morning and there were so many thoughtful and interesting responses
that I just had to share them here. Please add yours too!
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
We Must Remind Americans that we’re FOR reform (albeit it’s not a pretty sausage at the moment) and the
For example: When I went for my yearly physical, I decided to look at it from a business perspective. My Dr. sent
I wrote down a list of every person involved in the process: The secretary who made the appointment, the insurance
Final count: 43 people.
43 people for my doctor to tell me Im perfectly healthy.
How are we going to fix that? and what happens to all those much needed jobs if we do?
Private insurers don’t see nearly the volume of fraudulent claims, and their internal controls involve arbitrarily denying claims as a means of controlling costs. So, Kelley, if we shifted to a government-controlled system, there would be plenty of jobs left .. It may seem wasteful, but it’s a necessary evil to monitor providers and make sure billing is on the level.
Even still, after all the compliance headaches, it would *still* be more cost-effective, and efficient, to administer health delivery services at the government level.
Happy holidays to you all.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
5 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
“Why am I up when I know what’s going to happen?” 🙂
Just heaved a big sigh as in, “Ok – now on to the next hurdle – or set of hurdles.”
The fact is, I am privileged. I will, GOD WILLING and with some continued fiscal responsibility and oversight and preventative health care, always have health care. But it does constantly cost more, is horribly inefficient from a customer and payee perspective, and now that I’m a city council member for a small city getting crushed by falling tax revenue and a decline in the collection of estate taxes and property devaluation, paying for it for our city’s employees is a huge matter.
i believe industrialized nations should be able to provide access to and actually cover every resident of the respective nation. Why else do we seek being industrialized and wealthy if not to do better with our resources.
It’s not that I like the idea of paying it forward in terms of thousands and thousands of dollars that we earn every day we work, thousands that could go to my kids in one way or another for their education and future, but I do believe we take care of each other – there is a cost to that, and I’m willing to pay it in money rather than pay it in them not being well-taken care of, unemployed or otherwise suffering.
I hope this makes sense – and in my case, we do live these ideals – even though it can be very, very hard to make such decisions. But greed and gluttony are vices for a reason.
Thanks for your thoughts, Jill. It’s always hard to know in the middle of such complicated legislative processes exactly where to draw one’s line in the sand. Still, I very much agree with your conclusions, that as a nation we are obligated and we can provide for a just health care system for our citizens.
I just read the transcript of NY Congressman Anthony Weiner’s liveblog from a couple days ago–you can find it on a website he has created called Count Down to Health Care. The url is http://countdowntohealthcare.com/. It’s heartening to know that there are still some champions for truly universal health care, and fighters for improving on the Senate bill as the two houses go through the conference committee process.
Hey, Gloria, I have been thinking about suggesting you run for office, though I did not think you would be interested in running for President! I never did that, because I did not think you were angry enough, yet. If this bill passes with anything like the Stupak or Nelson language intact, I think there will be lots of women mad enough to revolt. Democrats do not deserve the selfless loyalty of women. This trifling with women’s rights is no fluke. If Democrats think women’s rights are expendable, they deserve to see this bill fail, and to mourn what will befall them when more than a few women declare political independence. Anyone who agrees ought to consider running for office as a feminist revolutionary. Democrats like to pretend they are cleaning up the mess Bush left. Who will clean up the messes Democrats are making?
Seriously, I’ve considered running for office a couple of times. The last time was about the same time I was recruited for the presidency of PPFA. The decision to give a decade of my life to that endeavor pretty much clinched the probability that I won’t. I seem to be better fit for influencing from the outside where I don’t have to violate my principles. I wouldn’t be a good legislator–too little patience for the process–and executive positions are few. But mostly, I want to write and actually have a life after giving my all to a movement for three decades. I am thrilled about all the younger women who are running or want to run for office. And I totally agree that the Democrats don’t deserve women’s selfless loyalty, which is why I no longer give to or work for the party, only individuals.
I seem to be better fit for influencing from the outside where I don’t have to violate my principles.
That issue is close to my heart, and brought to mind one of my articles not on the Free Soil blog or the original version of the web site. I thought Why America Needs Radical Women Presidents would make a good introduction to the long defunct Ms. Magazine bulletin board. I wrote it almost eight years ago, but much of it still feels relevant today. The whole idea of running as a feminist revolutionary is to influence from outside so-called political reality so one can fight for principles instead of having to witness the system inexorably trivialize them away. An independent feminist-centered political party could support this, give women the clout to stand on principle and give people a reason to believe democracy can work. These are a few excerpts from that article that illustrate how that could work.
Politics could be about a fair contest of political ideas, instead of raising money and public relations gimmicks.
The gender gap is the flippant name given to women skeptical of male wisdom, but this discontent has important implications. After suffering from male control of human affairs for thousands of years, it is time for women to counter that at every level.
Democrats expect feminists to trust empty words, since the obvious alternative is worse.
The Free Soil Party will nominate women wishing to represent their feminist vision.
The party will defend this feminist vision as practical and overdue.
Things do not have to be run this way. This system is not inevitable, just a ripoff unimaginable in scale. Male power keeps it going. Woman power could destroy the gravy train, so men try to keep political women in line, moderate cooperative game-players, while radicals standing independent are supposed to keep fighting on the margin, like fringe groups.
That article elaborates on the theme, expressing my feminist vision at the time. The point is no woman should have to violate her principles to represent her feminist vision. The party exists to make that possible. If Democrats had to negotiate with feminist revolutionaries as well as guys like Sen. Nelson and Rep. Stupak, we would not have such problems as watching our rights get trifled away as expendable if it means Obama will get something he can call a health insurance reform bill on his desk. There is no reason the disappointment with Obama and his party could not get enough angry women elected to represent a balance of power Democrats could not afford to antagonize.
I will be writing more about this on my blog when I respond to Bill Clinton saying in politics the best ideas are not enough to win. That is one huge problem with this alleged democracy, money talks louder than ideas. This culture is morally bankrupt, preserving the status quo by keeping the best ideas off the table. Visionary women could do better, but the system is geared to allow only minor changes that do not rock the boat. As long as Democrats are perceived as the best hope for women, women might as well be in the predicament of Alice in Through the Looking Glass,
it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.