Healthscare
According to BusinessWeek, the health insurance companies have already defeated meaningful health reform. Their strategy? Wow or buy the “Blue Dogs” and use them against the other Democrats. I’m not sure whether there’s any quality behind this article, but it claims that the insurance companies stand to actually increase profits (and with them, costs). I guess the overall strategy is to allow proponents to pass something neutered and bad, then show that it didn’t work, then claim that any reform is worse for you.
I hate to sound like a partisan hack, but our healthcare really is going to crush the country if we don’t figure out something meaningful. One particular issue I have is with this public option debate. I keep hearing this argument that if there’s no level playing field, the government will put the private industry out of business. That’s supposed to be an argument not to have a public option? Sounds to me like it’s just an argument to ensure a level playing field. Surely we can figure that out? If not, we’re just plain old screwed either way.
Bottom line is that congress is some combination of corrupt and inept. We need to elect more people who promise not to run for re-election (at least until we get citizen-funded elections) so they can spend the whole time they are there actually producing quality legislation and reading what other people produce. And we should probably do that within the next few cycles.
