My marker for Obama was whether he'd get a health care bill with a public option. He didn't. A year ago passage of some sort of health care reform seemed inevitable, and not a tremendous challenge. Only a year of dithering and bipartisaning and gangs of wankers and pre-compromising and, frankly, failure to put forward something simple and popular jeopardized it.
The bill's more good than bad, but it isn't what we should have gotten. It isn't what we voted for.
U. Utah Phillips related one iteration of the situation:
After half a dozen attempts at providing such health care as we are able to give evenly throughout the community, our most recent attempt began feebly and was negotiated sillier and sillier. The sausage machine is not done with it yet. The final bill -- the one that gets signed into law -- if it is passed will be different. Not much better most likely. Hopefully not too much worse.
Some will call it inadequate. Some will call it the best we can do to start now. And that's just the ones who want a bill.
The samurai in the kabuki will stamp their feet on the most resonant part of the stage they can find. The choice before us will be viewed with alarm. Called: Very grave.
The signing, if it happens, will be lauded as a major historic achievement.
In every possible outcome, people will continue to die prematurely because someone whose life was not threatened demanded cash to serve. The difference is how many die. The difference is how many bankruptcies. The difference is how many divorces, how many abandonments. The difference is how much avoidable pain we accept.
The choice is truly simple. Pass this bill and -- without remit -- work to make it better. Or kill the bill and watch another generation pass before congress critturs muster enough intestinal fortitude to make another try.
Let's eat our shit sandwich now and then roll up our sleeves to replace the cooks.
--ml
The Republicans were always going to oppose whatever the Democrats came up with, I just didn't know the Dems would let them do that while also letting them work to make sure anything they came up with is really unpopular.
--atrios
This thought only surprises if one thinks that the politicians elected support the central aspirations of the health care plank of the Democratic Party. Attempts to achieve universal health care have been attempted in just about every decade since the thirties. Each attempt has been repulsed by cries of "Socialism! Booga-booga-booga!" The nature of the political election process tends (not 100%) to eliminate the stoopid and poorly advised. No matter how idiotical a pol may appear -- and most are superb actors -- it is a fatal error to believe that they are indeed idiots. Consider the results of (in)actions by a dem majority congress 2006-2008. Any thing Mr. Bush wanted passed. Dem proposals -- not so much. Our congress critturs are not too inarticulate to answer the charge of socialism with a well framed justification of single payer; maybe "get the greed out of our health care!" or another simple phrase that resonates. That they don't do so indicates that they are paid not to. --ml
