Make the political will, Mindy. It’s going to take a whole bunch of people at the grassroots to create the pressure to do this, and none of you can afford to say “there isn’t the political will” or it will never be done.
Take the time to point out to all of your countrymen that the “taxes” they are so worried about are generally quite a bit less than their current premiums, and yugely less than the premiums they would pay to get the kind of coverage I get. And, being taxes, they are geared to income.
And this all makes sense, given that your insurers and networks are pure middlemen, pure rentiers: they haven’t got anything to add to the service, so perforce they must jack up the prices and limit payouts to make good profits. This is the standard practice in neo-liberal capitalism - look at the rise of the financial services industry and our friends in the MAFIAA (RIAA, MPAA). Time to roll back this pernicious ideology, one sector at a time, eh?
So maybe use the Colorado initiative, maybe even this BBS, as a springboard to start gathering like-minded souls. Start contemplating the kinds of propaganda needed to make the situation real to those who have swallowed the corporatist bullshit hook, line and sinker, maybe even sneaky tricks like a website which, after people plug in their yearly premiums and terms of coverage, presents the costs of treating certain very common grave ailments (like breast or prostate cancer), then shows how much “more” they’d have to pay in taxes (*cough*, *cough*, *wheeze*…) to get equal or better coverage.
You all need to lose despondency, because this will only get worse if you don’t, and, unfortunately, your country’s ruling ideology (of which this is a symptom) is having a pernicious effect not only on your own country, but the rest of the world as well.
