... 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.
posted by eccentric recluse at 2:56 PM
6 Comments:
As expected.. you come forth with a relatively reasoned view. More common sense than most.
We're at point in our history where, "right is right.. wrong is wrong", is gone, in politics.
I'm not going to dispute anything you've said, because opinions by definition aren't disputable.
I will recall a post I made here long ago.. "Health-care is a complex, high-tech set of goods and services.. delivered by highly trained people. You can't just "legislate" that everybody can have it at the same level."
What scares me now, is that we've clearly past the point where we're being governed by our consent. An extreme, political element, holding very temporary power, has just dictated to a mostly objecting citizenery, how a huge portion of their very personal life will play out, forever.
(that aint a good thing)
And this doesn't even touch on how ridiculuosly un-affordable it all is. We can't afford the entitlements in place.
Ponder this... A $3.8 trillion federal budget works out to $38,000 per household (not including the cost of state and local government). HCR will push that to well over $40,000 per household. Plug in a $150,000 dollar debt per household.. and we're now just trying to keep each other distracted, until it all collapses. I think the battle now is, to be in the right place to pick up the pieces. Push comes to shove, I still believe we're population whose body-genetics are liberty/capitalism based.. so it will work out in the end. Trouble is,, that might be decades from now.. and it's a terrible shame that we're destroying things, now.
As for Dingell's recent stream of honest consciousness.. I've been asking for month's why we'll spend several times what it would cost to just BUY private insurance for the un-insured.. and why it takes 3,000 (and counting) pages of new laws ? His "control the people" statement was chilling enough.. but he DID answer my question... We need TRILLIONS of dollars, and thousands of new laws, because this never WAS about the un-insured. They intend to get all 300 (million) of us under their thumb.
Sure am glad I have no children.. I'll have my hands full getting my old butt through this "fundemental transformation" of this great country.
OH.. and since we know that immigration reform (amnesty) is next (to rebuild a democrat voting base they've destroyed this year).. how will they sell this, when real unemployment for legal citizens is at nearly 20% ? (not even allowing for how HCR will harm the nearly dead, economy).
What a MESS !
I agree that we have crossed a line in our governance, but I believe that it was crossed a long time ago.
I am going to soft peddle this, (to put it mildly), but there are a couple of issues before us. First, simply is health care. I think that what we have before us is overreaching and unworkable in the medium and long term, as it reforms nothing, regulates nothing, adds no discipline to any party and only serves to require those not already "card carrying" members of this quagmire to become so. A little like adding a quart of 10W-30 to an engine that has already thrown a rod.
Another issue here is that, as you pointed out, of our governance. We haven't been governed by consent in a good long time, only by the illusion of trust and by acquiescence. The mess that you have described and rightfully revile already exists, and has, for at least, (in my damn near perfect observation) for a couple of decades. A big difference is that the beneficiaries of the largesse have been able to support a PR machine to make sh*t smell something like petunias and convince many people that things were OK, because a little was 'trickling down' to them. The genesis of this was not in November of 2008, it is a lot older and better established.
The economy, however you see it, was already in the state that it is in when the party on the left and the sitting President walked in the door. There is nothing that can be done about the petty name calling that goes with being in office, save to call the name-callers out and hope for better replacements. If the economy goes down, as you say, (I tend to agree with you basically, how bad it will be and when is anyones guess), it will take this new fangled stuff as well as the other, hidden entitlements, the corporate welfare state that has piled on the debt these last thirty or so years.
What will happen then?
I don't know and neither do you.
I do have kids, and I hope you take no exception to the fact that I claim more of a stake here than just my 401K. We can drink coffee and chase p*ssy all we want, (in fact, we ought to, Viagra was subsidized by the federal government--more of the corporate welfare state), but it won't be us that rebuilds things. I hope that this opinion lasts, it will mean more than any vote for a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or Tea Party whatever ever will.
So ends the opinion.
Even though we see it all from different, ideological mountain tops, through our own lenses.. we're pretty mich seeing the same thing.
If the HC system is the engine with the thrown rod, and the car is the HC infra-structure, and the roads are the economy where all our other cars are driving along.. that we might waste quart of oil is something we've been doing for years. This HC reform package (aside from its patent dishonesty), is to take all the resources we should be spending on the roads and bridges and using it to make a new, special, gold-laced, 2.5 trillion dollar quart of oil and then spill it all over the engine trying to sneak it into the crank-case.
We should have put a salvage-yard engine into the car to keep it limping along.. and then focused on the roads/bridges. The shiniest, best running car is worthless if you cannot go anywhere in it. Even if that meant leaving HC as is for now.. because with all its faults, it would make for a better future for the kids, if they had something to build upon.
My ultra-progressive brother always shouts that human nature dictates that we have to have a top-down government.. private-sector lords are not to be trusted. Funny though, taking the worst of both (in my opinion), that same human nature does mmore damage, proportionally, as government take control of more stuff. Don't know where that sweet-spot lies.. If it were up to me, we be heading BACK toward that, instead of FORWARD to an even LARGER government.
Wonder if anyone realizes how significant it is that Social Security is officially in the red (even by its Ponzy-esque standards)?
I'm gonna go buy 40 acres in upper Michigan, before hyper-inflation sets in.
In other words... I still think there's a chance to save the country from ruin. It'll have to start with a bunkrupcy-like gutting and reorganization of the federal government. I mean.. we're gonna have to do without it all anyway, if it collapses.. might as well try to save it... and rebuild it on Constitutional basics..
There's a good idea, but I don't think that it is possible. The phrase. "constitutional basics" has a real ice ring to it, just ask anybody. Ask the various Tea Parties, either major political subdivision, (in the person of the chairperson or the third highest elected official from the party -- the one not seen on Tv all the time), any member of the Supreme Court or the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.
When the nation is as large as it is, compromises have to be made, even minimal ones and in a nation this size a minimal one raises a cry that makes somebody think that we are smashing small animals under paving machines.
You are pretty good at commenting. Consider the proposition that the nation is bankrupt but the borders intact. You have ten days to plan and propose a governmental system.
Get about it.
You hit the nail on the head. Too many of these compromises have been made by a self-serving, monstrosity of corrupt federal government. Too centralized.. too much control over a population this large and diverse. Leave that stuff as a state-by-state deal.
That's why I (nor anyone else), can (or should) (ever should have) come up with a master plan outside of what the Constitution allows.
I know that's simplistic and loaded with problems.. but they'd be no worse than the problems we face now.
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