Go to my new blog at ThePointNews.com.
The following is brought to you by the honorable (?) Senator from Illinois, Roland Burris:
It was the night before Christmas, and all through the Senate
the right held up our health care bill, no matter what was in it.The people had voted a mandated reform
but Republicans blew off the gathering storm. Read the rest of this entry »
With the healthcare debate raging I thought I would address the fundamental flaw that I see in the right’s approach to reform. The argument is that choice will solve all of our problems. If consumers just have the choice of what procedure or medicine to get or what doctor to see, then all will be fixed. For the consumer choice model to bring down costs and ensure quality, healthcare has to be a market commodity.
If your like me and like to spend time reading the nonsense the gets posted under the #tcot hashtag on Twitter by neo cons whose pictures are typically some combination of Obama, Soviet symbols and Hitler, you have probably wanted to respond. So, I thought I would take the time and craft a few 140 for character responses to some of the most outragous and, sadly, common Tweets out there.
Here is an editorial I wrote for The Point News. Enjoy!
After a summer of brutal town halls, lunatic TV/Radio hosts and angry protesters, it’s hard to say that President Obama’s health care reform effort is where he, or the millions of Americans supporting him, hoped it would be. With three bills, two from the Senate and one from the House, floating around, it looks like the final bill will bring little more than further tweaks to the system, not the broad and comprehensive reform that is desired.
The Federalist system in place in the United States has worked well for the past 230 years. However, in the age of globalization, instant communications and supra national organizations, the Federal government must be granted far more power then the state governments.
I am certainly not a proponent of abolishing State governments and I firmly believe that there are certain issues that should be left to the States, however, there are an increasing number of issues that certain States have ignored or legislated unfairly on that lead me to believe that there are simply some issues that the States cannot handle.
Tonight, President Obama held a town hall to answer some of the question that people submitted through the White House website over the past few days. Now, as I shared yesterday, there certainly were some rather silly and dumb questions but the President only answered the top rated ones.
My beloved Senator, Ted Kennedy, made a surprise visit to Obama’s summit on health care. Kennedy has spent the last few months at his home on Cape Cod (CC Represent!) after he was diagnosed with brain cancer last Spring. He wasn’t even well enough to make it to DC for the incredibly close and vital vote on the stimulus package.
But health care has been Ted’s pet project since he was elected to the Senate back in the day. “Now is the time for action” was Kennedy’s message at the summit.
Former Senator Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services earlier today. The question on my mind is what will this do to Obama’s bold plans for providing universal health care.
Daschle’s long time in the Senate, including 10 years as Senate Majority Leader, gave him a unique perspective to help guide any health care legislation through the process. You cannot replace the experience of working on the Hill with any other kind of experience.
Sixteen years ago, right after President Clinton was elected he put his wife, Hilary Clinton, in charge of bringing universal health care to the United States. Very few industrialized countries do not guarantee healthcare to it’s citizens.
So, if we accept that we need universial healthcare, how do we do it?
One option is to just required everyone to have health care. Although we tried that in Massachusetts and it has been a complete and utter failure. It’s great to require it but unless you support such legislation with affordable health care options, nothing really changes. Not to mention we put penalties on businesses who have employees without health insurance even if the business offers it and the employee simply refused to take it.
