Yes, Health “Reform” is a Clusterf*** and those pushing for it are being taken

It’s another example of inside-the-Beltway group-think. Nose-led by health-care industry lobbyists, the Beltway becomes convinced that some idea – deregulation, invading Iraq, mandating insurance and passing off a weak public option as a bone for the masses, whatever – is a great idea. Shortly thereafter, questioning that idea becomes taboo, and anyone who does it identifies themselves as an outsider and not worthy of being taken seriously. When public outcry gets too loud, the Beltway insiders convince themselves that they just aren’t understood by the unwashed, and instead of challenging their own assumptions they begin to look for ways to bamboozle those masses into accepting their Beltway Gospel.

And of course this whole arrogant process is deliberately fed and fueled by corporate money to server corporate goals, and everybody involved is bribed up to their eyeballs.

And I think that the only reason the corporations don’t do away with government altogether and replace it with direct corporate rule is that they need the medium of pseudo-democracy upon which to transmit their fictions. If the Beltway went away, the corporations would have to re-invent something very much like it anyway.

any chance this post will show up at OL?

I agree this bill or any other without health care for all that needs it at the price of $0 IS WHAT’s NEEDED. I guess wars every were are more important. It’s just business as usual inside the beltway of greed. Some day the sleeping tiger will wake up I hope.

Good points. Then there is also the inevitability that costs will continue to rise. By creating a captive market, subsidies etc there is absolutely no incentive within the system for costs to go down since any increase can just be passed on.

I’ve had many conversations with “inside the beltway” democrats in which I’ve pointed out why this “reform” won’t work from a policy perspective. In the end I get tuned out because they think it is more important to pass something than to pass something good. The sad fact is that these people don’t care about the policy implications because they don’t think it will impact them. There has been a bit of collusion in regards to using the uninsured as a convenient scapegoat (since they dont have a constituency and those that support them can be bought off with subsidies) rather than take on the systemic problems (which are seen as inconvenient difficulties).

This is all window dressing and people are supporting it for political not policy reasons. The sad fact is even they know deep in their heads that this “reform” will not work and will probably be unpopular. Why else would they craft “reform” that purposefully doesn’t even start until after the 2012 election?

Of course they’ll then say this couldn’t have been forseen and at least they tried something, just like the financial meltdown and post-iraq invasion. The few lonely souls who stood up and asked questions or pointed out that what was on offer was different than what was being sold will have little solace other then the internal knowledge that they were right. Cassandra never pays.