... then you live with it

Geez, you'd think Dick Nixon was elected to a school board someplace.

All the yelling and screaming and shouting and pontificating and calm, measured explanations by people-who-want-other-people-to-believe-them.

Yep. Congress passed, (sorta), a health care bill.

The party on the right is just about to wet its pants, wringing its hands and stomping around in righteous indignation, vowing to overturn the bill when they know all the while that they won't really do it.

The bill is a political gold mine, while its real value remains to be measured, and its cost have yet to be tabulated.

Here is how the Party* on the right sees it:

No matter how good or bad this bill turns out to be, the Party on the right, (note the capitalization) will use it as a weapon.

* (Regular readers, if any of you can be called 'regular', may recall that I tend to make a distinction between the "Party" and the party, a term I loosely define as a group or subset of like minded persons with similar opinions or leanings, in this case, conservative or libertarian leanings). One need not take offense if you think that this is a bad bill, or a bad idea, or that it was enacted in a bad way. I don't necessarily agree or disagree, but you are not whom I call "the Party". I reserve that label for the loud-mouthed pundits and a**holes who can do nothing but tear down and destroy those that do not sponsor them. (Ain't that right Rush?).

But I digress.

I don't care for the bill myself because first, I don't understand it. I may in the future, and my opinion of the bill may change. The way that it was passed and the numerous add-ons don't bode well for this though.

From my first impressions, there is no reform in this package. We are going to have something only marginally better than what we have now, with a whole lot more consumers thrown into a murky system. I see it as a sort of anti-scalping ordinance that protects the insurance industry, with only marginal protections, (if any), for the consumer.

Regulation is a dirty word in our society. In the post-Reagan era, talking about regulating an industry is like talking seriously about doing something about making Social Security solvent. Nobody wants to hear that there is no free lunch. Well, there isn't, and lunch time is over, and we can't even pick up the leftovers, because they have been recycled by India and China.

If the GOP is serious about making some changes that will stick and do some good, (my bet is they aren't, there is too much value in the supply of mud to throw and no value in taking some responsibility for the outcome), they will do the following:

1) eliminate the little gimme's that various Senator's attached to their version of the bill.

the House 'reconciliation' is supposed to accomplish that, but it appears to be cosmetic, and more than one state Attorney General plans to fight the law in federal court.

2) make the law truly national, by making the so-called 'risk pool' that is the basis for the insurance industry a national commodity. the argument that the citizens of Ohio don't want to subsidize the high risk populations of California and Texas just doesn't wash. if that is the case, the citizens of many states shouldn't have to be at war in the mideast over some lousy real estate in Manhattan.

3) make it voluntary, to protect the religious and moral sensibilities of all citizens, with a proviso that those opting out have only themselves to blame if catastrophe, in the form of economic ruin, or a sudden lack of access to care, strikes.

The GOP in the person of those who serve under its banner, or its mouthpieces, don't have the balls to even suggest these things. They are as tied to the notion of 'big government' as the other party.