Health Care Nonsense
Posted on Monday, August 03, 2009
This is not the sort of thing that I’d normally be happy upon reading, but given that our family’s just experienced a doubling of our monthly health care costs due to a job—and therefore, health insurance—switch, I’m in a particularly pissy mood about this:
It's not like the industry has been inert. But the insurers have played the inside game, spending about $40 million on an army of lobbyists and lavishing campaign contributions on Democrats and Republicans to kill the public option. In all, the health industry spent $133 million in the second quarter alone, more than a million bucks a day.
Sure glad I know all that extra money we’re paying these days is going to improved health care.
Of course, things look bleak because the Republicans, as pathetic as they are these days, are winning the message war:
The Republicans have a relatively easy task in fighting health care reform — paint a vision of a post-reform health care apocalypse, rationed services and power-mad government bureaucrats taking away individual choice and even determining the quality of end-of-life care for seniors. The two main Democratic points — that reforms will save money and insure the 47 million uninsured — haven’t taken hold, with only 42 percent of Americans now saying Obama’s blueprint for reform is a bad idea.
In short, the Republicans still “get it”: ignore reality and pick the plan you wish you were running against and then you campaign against that. The Democrats try to sell you on details of a plan, as details are still emerging, and of course sound weak and confused as a result.
I’ve heard two completely unrelated people in the last month state that “Obama’s health care plan means we’ll all have to go to the VA when we get sick.” I have no clue where this particular piece of misinformation has started, but for some reason it’s caught on.