The reckoning is coming for health care reform is near, and there’s one group of vocal whack jobs who need to get their minds right in a hurry if anything worthwhile is going to get accomplished: the extreme left. To be precise, those on the left who claim they’d rather have no bill than a bill without a public option.
Frankly, I think a public option would be a good idea. People can opt in if they want, then time will decide whether it’s a viable alternative. (Private insurers and those who think the government can’t run anything should be in favor of it; according to them, it should be bereft of customers in a couple of years.) That doesn’t mean we can’t live without it. What’s needed now is to ensure everyone gets coverage, that no one loses their coverage because they have the bad manners to need it, and that no one lose everything because they got sick and their bills went over an arbitrary insurance cap. That’s what is important.
But no, these left wing loons have decided they’ve been on the outside looking in long enough. Obama won the election! Everything is completely different! Grow up, people. Even if he was some kind of messiah—which he’s not—he can’t rule by fiat. Bills still have to be passed the old-fashioned way. Too many of these vocal lefties forget the object is to do the most good for the most people. They’ve decided they want it all, or nothing. If they’re not careful, nothing is what they’ll get, and 46.5 million people will still be uninsured. Preferring ideological purity to effectiveness is what got the Republicans in their current state; Democrats aren’t immune.
If they want to get into a pissing contest about something, insist on the end-of-life counseling provisions. The “death panels” were pulled back because of brazen cowardice on the left after despicable misrepresentations by the right. You want to stand up for something, here’s your chance.
It’s not like a failure to get a public option now creates a Constitutional amendment against one. (There isn’t a Constitutional amendment against health care, no matter how creatively Michele Bachmann interprets her copy.) You can come back in five years if the current bill doesn’t work well enough. No law is immutable, except for those accounting for stupidity and cupidity on either extreme of the political spectrum.
2 comments:
I feel the only way the public option will work, if if truly becomes a participant and a competitor of the other insurance companies. Speaking to doctors about this issue, it is insurance (namely HMO's) that have made their practice almost unbearable. We will soon start loosing true talent in medicine because of this..
I agree. Let's put a public option out there. If it can't compete with the established companies, it will go away, just as any business would that can't compete. If it is successful and people eventually move from the for-profit companies, then it was a good idea after all. The primary point here is to get better health care; I'm not an ideologue about how they do it.
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