white male consumer

Looking at the main news stories of the day can make your head spin. Obama’s planned televised pep talk has been churned into a massive indoctrination plot. His adviser on green jobs, Van Jones, resigns for signing a petition, with Congressman Mike Pence saying that, “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Cheney, meanwhile, continues to pardon each new brutality revealed to have occurred during his watch. (Power drills? Condonable? Really?) And on the healthcare front, all indications are to expect major concessionary overtones the next time Obama comes on air.

As the guy on Meet The Press said today: at some point, you just look at some of the headlines of the day and think, “That’s flat out stupid.”

I’d say it’s bizarre, and we’ve been here for awhile. Recent news cycles have been on a rightward spiral since the perceived stall in healthcare reform. It’s the hard right segment of the public that’s framing every debate right now.

On healthcare, I’m feeling more and more ambivalent about said efforts. I had enough concerns about a “robust” public option. But for it to be crippled or completely axed? Expanded Medicare for people deemed unprofitable to insure, operating under the current rules of the game, will result in huge, unsustainable government bloat. So OK – go the incremental route. But make sure to drop the ‘substantial’ from before the Health Insurance Reform banners.

For certain, there would be a much smaller cost of implementing reforms absent any direct gov’t effort to insure more people. Incremental reform for incremental results. The public option fails mostly because it’s an additional cost to the taxpayer, above and beyond their current exorbitant insurance premiums. Place the burden only on the $250k+’ers? Fine, “tax the rich,” but it’s disingenuous way to fund reform. And no plan currently being floated in the mainstream ensures access to everyone. I’ll go ahead and beat the dead horse: a single-payer system paid equitably (based on ability, allowing a progressive curve) would be healthcare paid for by the people using it.

Why can’t we have an honest discussion about the way we already spend our healthcare dollars? Serious reform efforts may mean increased government spending, but hysterically delineating between private and public sidesteps the real issue of out-of-control costs.

Canada’s healthcare expenses under their single-payer system are similarly outpacing inflation – but that’s a worldwide trend, and their’s is to a lesser extent than our private insurance boondoggle. Their government is doing a better job of reigning in costs than our market system. If Americans are so lousy at self-governance that we can’t insure our own citizens, who are we to be dictating terms to Afghans? Hell, we oppose their sole source of real income, poppies.