I’m getting frustrated as I read reports that Obama’s health plan “has gone astray.” I don’t understand why Americans are afraid of increased government involvement in healthcare. It’s working well for the VA and Medicare – and isn’t the profit motive misplaced in healthcare anyhow?
In his column this morning, Nicholas Kristof writes:
…we have a single-payer system of public fire departments. We have the same for policing. If the security guard business were as powerful as the health insurance industry, then it would be denouncing “government takeovers” and “socialized police work.”
I just don’t understand why we may be about to reject health reform and stick with a dysfunctional system that takes away the health coverage of hard-working Americans when they become too sick with cancer to work.
You’ve got to read Joe Klein’s piece in Time:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1920050,00.html
It starts as follows:
Well, we survived August, which is good news. It was not a month that will be recorded in the Enlightened Discourse Hall of Fame. In fact, it was a national embarrassment — not just the steady stream of misinformation about the nature of President Obama’s health-care proposals, but the racism — both overt and opaque — the death threats, the imprecations (calling someone a Nazi is evidence of the evil of banality), the idiots bearing assault rifles at presidential events. As the lunatics took over the asylum, the President’s poll ratings dropped, and the chances for a truly bipartisan health-care-reform effort vanished, if they existed in the first place. Consequently, we have had a back-to-school fusillade of advice for the President from my columnizing peers — and an effusion of premature crowing from conservatives about the collapse of the Obama presidency.