Common Sense Politics
By: Joel Michael Herbert
Tags: Politics, Congress, Change, Health Care, Common Sense

Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the news, by politics, by the constant onslaught of issues that seem never-ending and unnecessarily complex. It’s easy to feel like the issues facing us are nearly impossible to solve.

They’re not. It’s time for a return to common-sense politics, a retreat from the smokescreening that so many politicians are so skilled at, that make us average folks feel overwhelmed by it all, to where we want to throw up our hands and disengage completely.

Certainly, many issues are complex, and require complex strategy and exceptional leadership to resolve. But many, many issues are not. Many issues are quite simple, really. There are clear solutions, and then there are powerful people making a LOT of money off of the status quo. What is lacking is simply the political courage of politicians on both sides of the aisle to stand up and do what is right for their constituents that elected them rather than the good old boys’ club that they belong to.

I am convinced that we need more straight talk in our politics, a boiling down of issues to points that make sense to the average person, not bills which consist of, to quote Hamilton, “too many damn pages for any man to understand.”

Health care is one of these issues. Most of us haven’t the faintest idea how health care and insurance really work, so we disengage in frustration, lamenting the broken system that we are bound under. In the meantime, obscenely wealthy insurance and pharmaceutical companies get even more wealthy, while the average American struggles to pay insurance premiums and afford prescription drugs.

I have personally lived this. I know what it is like to not be able to afford my prescription, so I’ve had to choose to simply do without. If I as a college-educated, privileged white man just trying to get allergy and ADHD medication have a hard time with this, I can only imagine what it must be like for people trying to get life-saving prescription drugs.

Just last week, my wife had COVID-19, and for 8 days ran a 103 degree fever, struggling to breathe each night. She was prescribed an inhaler to her by a local doctor here in Nashville, but then our insurance wouldn’t cover the inhaler, so we had to pay for it out of pocket. This same week, we both, who are part of the gig economy (my wife as a musician and I as a handyman) lost our biggest paychecks of the year because we were quarantining with the virus.

I have three small children, all of whom can be very accident-prone. I have been the young father examining a profusely bleeding head wound, wondering if the injury was worth a $1000 Emergency Room visit or a $1200 ambulance ride. I once raced my 6-month-old having a febrile seizure to an urgent care in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm, only to discover that they didn’t accept our insurance. I’ve received medical bills in the mail for thousands of dollars that weren’t covered by our insurance. No parent should EVER have to make those kinds of decisions about the health and safety of their child. It is immoral, plain and simple, that our society puts people in those kinds of positions.

One of the most common refrains I hear when it comes to health care — from both Republicans and Democrats — is the question, “who is going to pay for it?”, as if our country lacks the resources to ensure that all her citizens have access to health care. This is simply a ludicrous argument. The reality is, we have the money as a country to accomplish whatever we want to. Our problem is not money, but priorities. We have the largest military on the planet by a long shot, costing taxpayers trillions of dollars. Trillions. We continue to keep marijuana illegal at the federal level, losing access to all of that tax revenue, and we continue to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders in prisons, all at taxpayer expense. Imagine how much money could be freed up if we simply reduced the military budget by 10% — just 10%! — legalized and taxed marijuana, and expunged the records of all non-violent drug offenders, releasing them back into the workforce to work, create capital, and pay taxes again.

Imagine how much tax revenue could be raised if capital gains were simply taxed at the same level as any other kind of income. Why should rich people make money that gets taxed at a lower rate than your barista’s income is taxed at? Imagine how much money was wasted by President Trump’s creation of a “Space Force,” that could have been put to use saving lives. 15.4 billion dollars — that’s how much. Imagine how many people’s health care premiums could have been covered by the money allotted for a wall at our southern border.

We can do anything we put our minds to. We — the United States of America — could eliminate poverty and homelessness in our country tomorrow. We could move quickly toward net zero emissions and fight the scourge of climate change accelerating poverty, famine, and people displacement all over the world right now. We could provide health care for every single American. We could retire student debt. Actually, the estimated cost for the border wall and the estimated cost to eliminate homelessness in America are about the same: $20 billion.

Let that sink in.

Yes, health care is expensive. Taking care of our planet is expensive. But these are investments that will actually create returns, and in the long run generate more capital as we have a healthier populace and a thriving ecological system.

It’s time to stop pretending we don’t have the tools in our tool belt to raise the standard of living for every American. We do, we simply have a oligarchy of wealthy power brokers and lobbyists that don’t want to share the pie and find meaningful solutions to our most pressing problem.

It’s time for common sense politics again. It’s time for politics to start working for everyone, not just a handful of people at the top profiting from the status quo.