The silence of this website is the sad confirmation that as predicted, the health care bill became a politician's game of numbers, number of votes for, number of votes against, how to bolster the numbers of "insured", by hook or by crook. Of course, this is where it was going to go because the battling between the special interests and the government representatives was largely handled and predictably, the consumer was largely shut out.
It's a shame really, but the squandered opportunities that were available yielded to the momentum of getting something passed, by hook or by crook, perhaps emphasis on the, well never mind that for now.
It is an amazing thing that consumers remain the annoyed and the angered and the largely unrepresented objects that are acted upon in this formula. We've been successfully turned against one another so that a fat person can point at a smoker who can point at a person with high blood pressure who can point at....and meanwhile, the insurance companies and their stocks have gone up, doctors remain immune from any wage controls, the government paraders can scream, "Success," and we will have a new bad system that still fails to recognize the right of citizens to receive health care instead of the demand that citizens purchase health insurance, a system that denotes special groups who cannot be dropped from coverage but whose cost for such coverage is unlimited, civilian governmental employees who receive affordable insurance with superior coverage at the expense of taxpayers and the list goes on.
Perhaps now the media harpies and hysterics can notice that both sides of the consumer issue, those supporting the status quo and those seeking recognition of health care as a right with a public option which REALLY was the only feature that could ensure controlling the endless greed of providers and insurers. Both views were self-centered, those who like their insurance wanted to preserve it, those who can't afford insurance for their children and themselves sought alternatives.
So what will the angry, divisive and sarcastic entertainers talk about next? Well, the Republicans will continue to catastrophically cut into their own credibility by screaming the sky is falling like an insane Chicken Little and the Democrats will continue to point out that the Republicans are nuts. In the meantime, it is amazing to watch as Sarah Palin is resurrected like some embarrassing clown to rally people around John McCain and Nancy Pelosi continues to behave like the worst of the gentrified liberals in this country so disconnected from the hardship of the middle class while they use the middle class to protect the poor that they've created a mean-spirited approach that promises to further solidify our society as one of rich and poor, completely wiping out the middle class.
And still I wait for one of these people to denounce their civilian government employee benefits. And still I wait for the talking heads who can easily afford health care to do the banal work of researching and presenting facts instead of hype.
What happens next? Next we will see statewide bickering and promulgation of policy to comply with the new health care bill off the public dime at more local levels. In the blue states these policies are likely to be enacted quickly and therefore will have more loopholes for fraud and monetary waste as they rush to prove they're behind the new health bill. In the red states, the promulgation of such policy will be hammered away at until it is a bare minimum to comply with the rules and will become the latest hotbed of nepotism and croneyism in their governments.
What should we be addressing? We should as consumers be examining exactly what our own individual options are but with understanding that we are settling each of us who has ever or ever will need medical care.
