Lalo Alcaraz by Lalo Alcaraz
- June 17, 2009
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About Lalo Alcaraz
Lalo Alcaraz -- award-winning editorial cartoonist and Latino journalist -- captures the essence of the country’s changing cultural and political landscape. Alcaraz has produced editorial cartoons for LA Weekly since 1992 and also creates cartoons in Spanish for La Opinion, the United States’ oldest Spanish-language newspaper. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Hispanic Magazine, Latina magazine, La Jornada in Mexico City, BUNTE, (Germany’s People magazine) and many other publications. Add instant variety to your Web site’s news and opinion offerings with Alcaraz’s intelligent, youthful and thought-provoking perspective.
© 2009 Universal Press Syndicate - All Rights Reserved.
Comments (31) Jump to Comments Form
Dale Hopson
said,
4 months ago
Didn’t we see this cartoon LAST week?
And it’s still not clever or funny…
pswhitlark said, 4 months ago
The money I could be SAVING?!?!? You are kidding, right??? Nothing could get more expensive than Universal Health Insurance. This is going to end up being less than nothing.
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
pswhitless: Your Republican masters have now adopted the strategy of claiming that universal health care will drive the poor insurance companies to bankruptcy (and hurt the “economy”) because government-run insurance will be so much LESS expensive and private insurance won’t be able to compete.
Try to keep up with your own talking points. Check in with Rush more often so you know what to repeat.
Madman2001 said, 4 months ago
Hmmm, government run health-care will have all the efficiency of the Post Office or the Dept of Motor Vehicles.
If government insurance is less expensive, it will be because it is subsidized by taxpayers. That’s why it’s estimated to cost $1.6 trillion !!
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
If it’s less expensive, it won’t need to be subsidized. Only expensive things get subsidized.
Norman
said,
4 months ago
If they used the private insurance companies business model it might work. But they will load it with political hacks and a*s kissers as they always do it won’t.
richgrise said, 4 months ago
Don’t they have Universal Health Care in North
Korea?
Dale Hopson
said,
4 months ago
pswhitlark states “Nothing could get more expensive than Universal Health Insurance.”
How about the war in Iraq?
cdward said, 4 months ago
They have no health care in North Korea. They have universal health care in the rest of the rich world. Which is why all the rest of the wealthiest nations enjoy longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates. And remember, we spend MORE on health care than any other wealthy nation.
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
That raises an interesting question. Does anyone have any information as to what other countries DON’T have universal health care? North Korea, probably Somalia. Who else?
Right_On said, 4 months ago
Doc says: “If it’s less expensive, it won’t need to be subsidized. Only expensive things get subsidized”
What’s up Doc? Talk to some farmers about that one …
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
We were talking consumers; you’re talking producers. Opposite rules apply.
nomad2112 said, 4 months ago
Yeah, the white background is the smokescreen hiding the 1.5 trillion in actual costs. Which is likely a low figure. Once multiple industries start dropping their group health care for their employees because it’s a government “freebie” this figure should rise significantly.
believecommonsense
said,
4 months ago
^ it’s not going to be “freebie”
isn’t time the healthcare in our country is NOT based on the financial well-being and generosity of one’s employer?
rj63 said, 4 months ago
All Gov health care programs amount to wealth re distribution - that’s what it’s all about - not that there’s anything wrong with that but I think that should be highlighted in the name of the program somehow.
The truth about Government helathcare is that it is funding provided by rich people to take care of the medical needs of poor people. It’s a form of welfare - well fine - but lets call it welfare medical or something.
believecommonsense
said,
4 months ago
boy do I disagree with your post, rj63. There are millions of working people who don’t get healthcare through their employers and can’t afford individual healthcare plans, which are NOT grouped together to share risk. There are millions of people with pre-existing conditions who can’t get an individual health policy no matter what the cost because the private profiteers won’t sell them one.
Privatized healthcare insurance has had decades to come up with a system that would allow these workers for small businesses, part-time workers and self-employed people to be put into the same kind of pool that was created for large employers and they’ve failed to do so. They’re not interested.
A public health insurance option is intended to do just that: create a pool of people to spread risk throughout. It’s the model private insurers use.
It will not be a “freebie,” just as Medicare is not “free”. Lower-income people will have premiums subsidized, just as Medicare now does.
If that’s welfare, then every member of Congress, every federal employee, every school employee, ever state government employee is also getting “welfare medical” as you put it.
If that’s wealth redistribution then about half the working insured people in this country are already benefitting from it.
HOWGOZIT said, 4 months ago
I guess the savings would be for those now paying for their own coverage since the government is going to provide instead.– yea right
believecommonsense
said,
4 months ago
Howie, what do you mean by “those now paying for their own coverage”?
people who pay full price for an individual health plan?
cdward said, 4 months ago
One of the problems with the idea that public health care is wealth distribution is that the wealthy have generally gotten that way not through their own efforts but through manipulation of the public through their government connections. All those lobbyists through the generations are (and have been) there to manipulate the public good for the increase of wealth by the wealthy. In other words, the average person has been subsidizing the wealthy for a very long time already.
If the measure of a society’s greatness is the gap between the rich and the poor, the US fails.
Nurb said, 4 months ago
I found out after being diagnosed with cancer that health insurance is great for small things and emergencies, but with serious pre-existing conditions, it’s unreasonable. I can’t work because of it and I can’t afford 20% of $18,000 treatments TWICE a month for chemo, not including radiation.
And if you have cancer, NO insurance company will touch you for 3-5 years unless you feel like paying immense premiums, so rather than die, I was accepted into my state’s medical assistance program….
All I hear is “OMG THERES GUNNA BE A BEUREUCRAT BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DOCTUH!” Uhhh our current system has an insurance doctor AND a bean counter doing their best NOT to spend money on you. With my state aid program, if my doctors say I need it, I get it without any company sticking me with a bill because they decided they weren’t going to pay for something or I don’t need something despite me paying them hundreds of dollars when I was healthy.
Health insurance costs go up 300% every year. Take a look at your premiums, copays, self-costs, perscriptions and add it all up… ALL off that is more expensive than any taxes to pay for a universal system.
HOWGOZIT said, 4 months ago
BCS–I concur those 47 million unable to get healthcare should get help. However if the gov’t is going to provide “all” with healthcare–those that pay their own or even supplemental should also get some financial aid.
cynof3 said, 4 months ago
Yes because Government run programs have always been so successful. Prime example the postal service each year keeps loosing more and more money, while private companies such as UPS are making a profit. Hmmm yes I take the government run program never. Our country is about capitalism not handouts.
A government run healthcare system means only a few minor things.
1 they get to now tell you whether or not you deserve to get the healthcare you receive similar to UK, ya know if you smoke you get no cancer care or cardiac care, you know the little stuff. Dictating what you can eat or drink or do with your life. Once government healthcare is in place it is no longer “your” life it now belongs to Obama.
cdward said, 4 months ago
cynof3, you forget that the postal service was running very efficiently for more than two hundred years. Only when they decided to undermine it did it have troubles. But it is a service that still keeps working despite the previous administration’s best attempts at killing it. DHL, meanwhile, is out of business in the US.
Besides, are you telling the private companies are doing better? Can you say AIG?
It is utterly stupid to say that once there is government healthcare “it is no longer ‘your’ life it now belongs to Obama.” What utter rot. Taxes generally go up with increased services, but if it’s done well – as it is in most of western Europe – it costs less than our entirely inefficient and grossly expensive health care system we now have. That’s why Americans are some of the unhealthiest rich folks running around (and no, I don’t mean the top 5% who can have the best of everything – they don’t count in this equation).
This is also a boon to the companies because they would no longer have the expense of providing health insurance to employees. Why is this so hard to grasp?
However, my hopes are not high because the insurance industry and their friends in congress will not allow it to happen – or if Obama gets something through, they will undermine it so that it can’t possibly work.
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
As the Reagan Republicans say, “government isn’t the solution; government is the problem,” and then go about ensuring it is.
tpenna
said,
4 months ago
HOWGOZIT says: “However if the gov’t is going to provide “all” with healthcare–those that pay their own or even supplemental should also get some financial aid.”
Thing is, those of us who already have insurance will get financial assistance out of it. We will no longer be subsidizing the staggering cost of the uninsured through our own premiums. Yes, our taxes will be paying for care, but that care will be significantly less expensive, as people will be able to receive much cheaper preventative care to ward off the big-ticket expenses of crisis care.
Nomad says: “Once multiple industries start dropping their group health care for their employees because it’s a government “freebie” this figure should rise significantly.”
This won’t happen under the Obama plan. From his campaign days through to today, he has said that he would limit enrollment in the public plan to individuals and small businesses. Large corporations will not be able to pass it off to the government.
Frankly, though, I think they should be able to. There are few things in American society so anachronistic as employer-provided health insurance benefits. It is a relic of the post-WWII era, and it should be dropped. It no longer makes sense to link employment with health insurance.
HOWGOZIT said, 4 months ago
Wish it were true tp
oldlegodad
said,
4 months ago
If you want to pay a minimum of 40% of your income in Federal Taxes for “universal health care” before state, local property taxes. Be careful what you wish for. How do you think those socialist countries health care programs you admire so much are funded??
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
Well,hey; if you’re going to be making up numbers, dad, why not go for 50%? Or 60, even?
believecommonsense
said,
4 months ago
tpenna, absolutely agree .. the quality and cost of one’s healthcare insurance should not be dependent upon the size, financial stability and generosity of one’s employer
Michigander said, 4 months ago
Geico is going to be mad at you Lalo for using a character in likeness of theirs. : )
cdward said, 4 months ago
tpenna and bcs, agreed.