maybe all this is a good thing. i think the last thing we need in a national healthcare system is one in which (healthy) Republicans get to hold every single story of system missteps and shortcomings over (nauseous) Democrats' heads. I can already see Glenn and Rush and Sarah P. digging into it, and it makes me a little sick. So, you know, that would be a shortcoming in the healthcare system right there.
And, being a true Unaffiliated, i really think that something as broad as healthcare needs to be legislated on common ground. (I realize that there is none of that right now.)
But, being a true Unaffiliated introduces problems of its own. because i like this take on things - I like to think that everything can be debated and reduced (yes, like a balsamic reduction) to a common ground - that a common ground must always exist, and it's just a matter of finding it. However, i have come to realize that i occasionally agree with one side and truly do not agree with the other. For instance, i really, really believe that gay marriage should be legal. If you think i'm going to go into all the reasons why right here, then you're wrong. but let's just say that there's no reason it shouldn't be legal
. Period. Bam!
So... i don't know where that leaves me in my quest for diplomacy and bipartisanship, including when it relates to healthcare. I guess it comes back to: Argh. Because if you agree that insurance cos. shouldn't turn ppl away because of pre-existing conditions, and you wrote legislation to prevent it, then you'd have to account for all the schemers who wouldn't get insurance until they were sick. So you'd have to make having insurance mandatory. So then you'd have to subsidize those who couldn't afford it. Then you'd have to define who couldn't afford it. Then you'd have people right above that definition line who also probably couldn't really afford it. Then... you'd have government healthcare.
I mean, governing is like trying to raise teenagers. effing impossible. no wonder it doesn't work very well.
I will say that this graph from National Geographic was a bit... disconcerting (Click on graph to enlarge, i.e., to see U.S. costs).
finally, i hope there are people in Washington paying attn to this (does anyone else think the hyperlink icon in Blogger looks like a bull? ...??).
Excerpt:
"The conventional wisdom is you can't have back-to-back major financial crises. I think we're going to push that, we're going to have a look and see whether that's true. And the next 12 months could really be exciting. People could be very positive, but we are setting ourselves up for an enormous catastrophe."
ha ha! isn't that funny?? An enormous catastrophe. That's funny. Funny enough for me to stop thinking about healthcare while I laugh.
3 comments:
amen to all of that. the problem with this round of healthcare "legislation" is that the Republicans have outright refused to participate in anything even on the outskirts of a real dialogue, which makes it functionally impossible to craft anything that had a chance at being a full positive for the country.
but you're also right on about the undeniably lefty chain of events that said legislation would have to follow in order to be successful
I guess we're just fucked, then
yeah ... whoopee! ... i guess it's just a matter of how we're going to take it. hopefully not from behind.. ha. ha.
this just out: http://tax.cchgroup.com/news/headlines/2010/nws12610.htm#1
proposed middle-class tax relief and deficit-reduction commission. so at least we know that both are on obama's radar (though i'm not sure how he plans on paying for the former. also, skimming over the child and dependent tax credit, i am confused about the actual credit increase, which seems to be already incremental for incomes between 15k and 43k. yes, huge dork.).
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