I‘ve written extensively about healthcare reform. Those postings are full of numbers, arguments, observations and such. If your Alzheimer’s is temporarily predominant and you need some refreshing of those details, read or reread some of those articles.
This post, based largely on those articles, is just to put all of the various options together in context in very simple terms. My intent is just to provide a bit of perspective and tie it all up with a neat little bow. It is the result of my desire to clean up before going to another topic.
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Here is my small tribute to all of the fellow members of my gender for Father’s Day.
Why it’s great to be a guy.
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The President has a headache. His healthcare reform is in trouble. He can’t even get a bipartisan agreement that Dr. Seuss ate green eggs and ham.
Two noted health reporters, the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, this week had major articles marking the difficulties the President’s reform was running into in Congress. While Speaker Pelosi continues to insist that the House will produce some vague public option that is to Obama’s liking, the Senate is still taking their marching orders from the healthcare industry.
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The headlines say that 73% support a public option as a part of healthcare reform. That sounds good for advocates of reform. There is a problem though. Almost no one cheering this actually understands what a public option would be.
There is also the question of a single-payer system. As one of the readers of this blog asked, just what is the difference between a public option and a single-payer system? This is an area of widespread confusion. This confusion is intentional. Let’s clear this up right now.
To fully explain this and divulge the motivations behind the confusion we need to begin with a look at some fundamental assumptions. These assumptions are totally false but almost universally held here in the US by those on both sides of the question of healthcare reform.
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A level playing field for healthcare reform is a myth. A public option is a scam. Or, maybe it’s a sham. It’s probably both.
I was riding in the car, listening to an interview of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius on the local public radio station. Since I was not taking notes, my recitation of that interview isn’t composed of direct quotes – it is based solely on what remains of my memory.
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They are arguing the inarguable. The Regressives in Washington are arguing an issue that should have been settled during the Truman Administration.
Had we instituted a national healthcare system based on a single-payer, we would now be without a national debt. This would be true even if all the wasteful spending on the military and in other areas remained unchanged. This would be true even if the leeches on Wall Street and the prostitutes in Congress had behaved exactly as they have. How does that grab you?
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Obama wants healthcare reform. I believe him. He says that, if he doesn’t get it this year, he will not get it during his first term. I believe that.
Such a situation will inevitably lead to accepting anything that can be portrayed as reform. Put that together with his insistence on bipartisanship and you end up with the recipe for something that falls far short of real reform.
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Yeah. At least as scary a thought of Jack Nicholson being back is my return. Your luck has run out. My little vacation is over.
I did try to write a post while on my trip. I was able to squeeze in a bit of writing but was too busy sampling regional cuisines to complete a post.
A grandson was graduating in Rockford, Michigan. That’s a suburb of Grand Rapids. It’s claim to fame is as the home of Hush Puppies footwear. He missed Summa Cum Laude by something like 6/100 ths of a point but I’m proud of him and his Magna Cum Laude anyway.
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The Air Force and Navy cooperated in landing a C-17 cargo plane on an aircraft carrier. Wonderful. Now they are trying to figure out how to get a C-17 off of an aircraft carrier.
As Jack Paar would have said, “I kid you not.”
The C-17 isn’t just a cargo airplane. It is a payback to a political donor. The Obama administration, following the advice of the Pentagon decided to cancel the C-17. That’s why we get to see the above picture. The backers thought a stunt might help sell it. It probably qualifies for David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks routine.
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Okay. This hits close to home. It isn’t that hard of a hit, so far, but it is aimed at me. No. I’m not that special. It’s also aimed at you.
Did you get the word? There will be no adjustment for inflation on Social Security this year. There is also the expectation that there will be no increases for the next two years.
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