Healthcare Reform Rhetoric

I've never met anyone who doesn't want better and less expensive healthcare. Yet we tolerate rhetoric from our political leaders that asserts that anyone opposed to their approach either (1) is against better healthcare or (2)is only interested in being able to continue to exploit the existing system.

I don't know exactly what is in the legislation. Niether do the Congresspersons who seem intent upon passing it. We do know that the Senate version is filled with special deals that we know about. But there are probably hundreds of others that we don't. There are buried in technical cross references and vague phrases. Sure, there are things beneficial to better care. But are they worth the cost of the "deals". Even if the monetary and quality benefits offset the financial corruption, is it worth the legitamization of a disgusting process?

The technical process is simply wrong. "Reconciliation" was not meant to be used this way. Democratic protests that Republicans have done it in the past are as convincing as one 3 three year old complaining that "Johnnie did it too" so I shouldn't be told not to misbehave. Do we have any adults in Washington?

We just had the "numbers" released this morning. It is now widely known that the CBO has been asked to tally up 10 years of revenues against 6 years of expense and opine that it will reduce the deficit. No kidding. It does not, however, balance year to year. There is a cost - a very large one. Let's just come clean. Mature adults know there is no free lunch. It's embarrassing (and insulting to our intelligence) to watch our leaders claim otherwise.

The only thing that would convince me not to vote against every incumbent would be a bi-partisan effort to start over accompanied by a committment to a reasonably open process with no "deals". This is too important. This is too big. How about some adult behavior from the President, the Congress and the Senate? Go play politics with other and lesser things.

If you all can't manage to do this for a little while, then I'm voting in November for every one of you to go home.

JTC of MD 1:46PM March 18, 2010