Thursday, July 30, 2009

Health-care reform and the living dead



Zombies take over the streets of Chicago, July 25, 2009

I haven't posted in a while. I've been feeling worse again, and I've been depressed over the way that health-care reform is going. I'm becoming convinced that if anything passes at all, it's going to be so watered down as to be useless, or make matters even worse. And I don't see that any of the plans now being bruited in Congress are going to be any help to me at all.

However, if anyone's still checking in, I wanted to draw your attention to Ellen Beth Gill's post from yesterday. She really said everything I feel about the current political situation.

Basically, health-care reform is pretty much dead, and all that's walking around now is its zombies.

"I am wondering if now we're really off health care and on to political survival. In the last couple of months, the advocates of this plan broke cardinal rule of negotiation #2. (They broke cardinal rule #1 up front when they began negotiations with their base minimum acceptable position.) Cardinal rule #2 is: never fall so in love with the deal so much that you cannot walk away from it. The public option supporters got so invested in it that they either failed to notice or at the very least failed to speak up as their baby lost all the attributes that made it potentially cost saving, a viable alternative to expensive private plans and perhaps a good temporary compromise solution. Now that it's about as far from the original idea as it can get and survive, its advocates might just have to stick with it or go down in a serious defeat, taking many Democrats along with them...."
In a way, I almost wish that McCain and Palin had won. At least then I wouldn't be feeling betrayed, and their administration would have been pretty funny to watch. And you know they say that laughter is the best medicine....

That's a little sick humor for you.

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