It now appears the Obama health care proposal is being watered down even as you and I sit in front of our computers. It appears Congress will exempt about 83% of small businesses from compliance with the new law. I’m sure those 83% of small businesses will, in the spirit of true altruism, offer health coverage to their employees anyway, aren’t you?
In the end, the new law may not offer much reform....but maybe that's what Americans think they want right now. It seems government can't get our attention until disaster strikes us and then government has 15 minutes to straighten out the problem or we dump 'em.
Is this a great country or what!
The NYTimes/CBS poll soon to be released, perhaps today, will say:
"Most Americans continue to want the federal government to focus on reducing the budget deficit rather than spending money to stimulate the national economy... Yet at the same time, most oppose some proposed solution for decreasing it."
"Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they were not willing to pay more in taxes in order to reduce the deficit, and nearly as many said they were not willing for the government to provide fewer services in areas such as health care, education and defense spending."
Think about our recent history on health care reform. When the Clinton team proposed it, all the stakeholders opposed it and it went down in quick defeat. If the Obama effort at true reform goes down with a watered down version of virtually no changes, that will be another setback. And the Republicans want nothing but the status quo because the “free market will solve everything.”
In the meantime, the American people are seeing their health insurance premiums increase in double digits every year while inflation is an anemic 1.5% to 3%. What sort of civic mindedness thinks that’s a better state of affairs than we would get with the Obama plan?
I don’t know about you but I would gladly pay more in taxes if it would result in bringing my insurance increases down to ….oh, say….8-9% annually (which is itself outrageous).
I fear we are reaching a state of national mindset that will not allow anyone or any institution to govern effectively. It was a great republic at one time. Now it's just overweight and selfish...and demanding more and more for less and less.
1 comment:
How many symptoms must we see before we realize that this country is, as you say, "overweight and selfish" and change our ways? The reaction you describe to health care reform is a cousin of the spoiled attitudes that led Americans to buy houses they can't afford, fail to save, and so on.
Someone needs to get on a rooftop and yell "We are NOT entitled to a life of luxury - we can only have what we can afford!"
Likewise, how many symptoms must we see before we take action on the fact that we are governing ourselves out of our greed, not out of our humanity and common sense? Could there be a more blatant example than to see members of Congress speaking on the floor of what should be one of our most respected institutions and telling us that there is no need to fix health care? No, not for them and not for many other privileged members of our society. But for the vast majority of us, health care doesn't work. Sadly, people are dying as proof of that.
This country IS great when it wants to be and acts on the values we all claim to believe in. We CAN change something, even as monumentally huge and well established as the complex health care system we have now. We need to put the well-being of our fellow Americans above all else -- if it's good enough to campaign on and trick people into voting for you, isn't it good enough to follow through on?
By the way and anecdotally, for the last several years my wife has asked every single doctor and health care worker she has met if they think the US has a good health care system. She asked it neutrally, and every single one has said emphatically "No!" These are the average working people in the system, not the CEOs and influence peddlers who have a profit to maintain by claiming otherwise.
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