Not amused
Mar. 22nd, 2010 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoSo the three ring circus called Congress "passed" a so-called "reform" bill yesterday. I'm not impressed.
Mind, I'm no teabagger. I'm 100% in support of reform to the way health care is financed and managed in this country. The problem is, I just can't see this legislation as a reform of any sort. The controls are not stringent enough, the reforms are not large enough. It leaves health coverage in the hands of profit-making insurance carriers who bear a high degree of responsibility for the very problems this was supposed to address. Mark my words, they'll find a way to keep raking off large profits to the detriment of everyone who needs health care. With no public option to compete on price point, they will continue to set whatever prices they can get away with. After all, why not? Now the government will just have to pay the extra when the rates go up, since an individual's share of cost is fixed. This legislation is a sham, a joke, a crock of bull shit. We are still going to have to do it all over again, and this just puts that off by perhaps a few years, making it even harder and more expensive to fix the real problems.
Meanwhile, the right wingers who've been mouthing off continue to shriek about "death panels" and "socialism." Limbaugh swore he'd leave the country if it passed. Well, Rush, it passed. Now get out and shut up. I for one will NOT miss you. Sarah Palin, who has proven herself worthy of the title "shrill mouthed empty headed bitch" repeatedly since the elections two years ago, is still mouthing off. Believe me folks, there is NO promise in that woman. She stands for a return to the cold war, every woman (except herself of course) in her proper place as a Suzy Homemaker, and all thought sanitized of anything that might shake up her narrow-minded little world.
My own Congress-critter voted against the bill, of course, but for the wrong reasons. He's a Republican, that's the only reason he needed. He has contributed nothing constructive or useful to any discussion in all the years he has held office. All he does is vote the party line and refuse to listen to any constituent who disagrees with him.
I have seen nothing that says Congress will have to participate in this half-baked scheme. Oh no, they will keep their own luxurious health plans. Someone ought to challenge THAT in court, rather than trying to challenge the constitutionality of the reform package. Hint to those state governors: It's constitutional, just like Social Security and Medicare. You won't win.
Why Americans cling so desperately to their "freedom to be idiots" is really, truly hard for me to understand.
Mind, I'm no teabagger. I'm 100% in support of reform to the way health care is financed and managed in this country. The problem is, I just can't see this legislation as a reform of any sort. The controls are not stringent enough, the reforms are not large enough. It leaves health coverage in the hands of profit-making insurance carriers who bear a high degree of responsibility for the very problems this was supposed to address. Mark my words, they'll find a way to keep raking off large profits to the detriment of everyone who needs health care. With no public option to compete on price point, they will continue to set whatever prices they can get away with. After all, why not? Now the government will just have to pay the extra when the rates go up, since an individual's share of cost is fixed. This legislation is a sham, a joke, a crock of bull shit. We are still going to have to do it all over again, and this just puts that off by perhaps a few years, making it even harder and more expensive to fix the real problems.
Meanwhile, the right wingers who've been mouthing off continue to shriek about "death panels" and "socialism." Limbaugh swore he'd leave the country if it passed. Well, Rush, it passed. Now get out and shut up. I for one will NOT miss you. Sarah Palin, who has proven herself worthy of the title "shrill mouthed empty headed bitch" repeatedly since the elections two years ago, is still mouthing off. Believe me folks, there is NO promise in that woman. She stands for a return to the cold war, every woman (except herself of course) in her proper place as a Suzy Homemaker, and all thought sanitized of anything that might shake up her narrow-minded little world.
My own Congress-critter voted against the bill, of course, but for the wrong reasons. He's a Republican, that's the only reason he needed. He has contributed nothing constructive or useful to any discussion in all the years he has held office. All he does is vote the party line and refuse to listen to any constituent who disagrees with him.
I have seen nothing that says Congress will have to participate in this half-baked scheme. Oh no, they will keep their own luxurious health plans. Someone ought to challenge THAT in court, rather than trying to challenge the constitutionality of the reform package. Hint to those state governors: It's constitutional, just like Social Security and Medicare. You won't win.
Why Americans cling so desperately to their "freedom to be idiots" is really, truly hard for me to understand.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 05:26 pm (UTC)Step 1: Cut Medicare, and make health insurance mandatory
Step 2: ???
Step 3: PROFIT!
But seriously, it's like the parts about banning both the proactive and retroactive denial of coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions, getting sick, or loss of income were just thrown in there to make people think that at least they were getting something out of it. And doing just that would not have costed a dime, nor met as much political resistance. All the rest of the overhaul does not serve any identifiable purpose except to cost somebody more money.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 06:07 pm (UTC)Hint to those state governors: It's constitutional, just like Social Security and Medicare. You won't win.
Given the current membership of the Supreme Court and the evidence they've already given for throwing out decades of precedent, I'm willing to bet they'll rule 5-4 that it's unconstitutional. Regardless of whether it truly is or not. IMHO, the Judicial branch of the federal government is now just as broken and corrupt as the Executive and Legislative branches.
Why Americans cling so desperately to their "freedom to be idiots" is really, truly hard for me to understand.
I've thought about this before, and I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that most Americans want to be led. They want someone to tell them what to think and how to think so that they can be absolved of the stresses and moral dilemmas of coming up with their own thoughts. And now politicians/political talking heads have taken that role away from religion. Or, in the case of Republicans, politics and religion are becoming indistinguishably intertwined. So when Rush Limbaugh comes out and says the sun rises in the west, his followers smile and nod, argue vociferously against anyone who dares suggest Rush might be wrong even though the sun's risen in the East for billions of years, then get back to doing more important things like watching American Idol and wondering what the latest revelation in the Tiger Woods scandal is going to be.
While people say "it can never happen here", I'm seeing a lot of uncomfortable parallels between the US today and the final days of the Weimar Republic. All we need is one really charismatic politician and a Reichstag Fire to cement their power, and we're doomed. Bush had the crisis but not the charisma, Obama has the charisma but not the crisis...
no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 10:10 pm (UTC)Lest I made the wrong impression here, yes, I know that history later showed that the Reichstag Fire was almost certainly an inside job. I am not a conspiracy theorist who believes 9/11 was an inside job, too. I'm merely pointing out that any sufficiently large and dramatic crisis, if handled in the "correct" manner, could be used to solidify one's base of power in a manner similar to that of the aftermath of the Reichstag Fire.
Of course, given the "Patriot Act", the sudden attention to security of the "Homeland" and other mysterious things cloaked and concealed behind claims of national security and executive privilege, along with a Congress willing to rubber-stamp just about anything (Republican majority, but with plenty of Democrats following along), I have to wonder what things would be like now if Bush had had any oratorical skills at all with which to rally the sheep-like populace behind what he was doing...
no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 02:54 pm (UTC)