Friday, June 19, 2009

Only the nectar of sweet bipartisanship

could produce a healthcare plan this bad.
Apparently Messrs Dashle Dole and Howard Baker (who knew that old golem still walked the earth?) think that by taxing benefits just a wee bit and then flushing the money down fifty separate-but-equal state run health plans we will finally get health care off the table.
And that is just what this cockamammie plan does, gets health care off the table so that congress can still collect fat contributions from HMO PACs.
As for preserving and improving benefits forget it...the states are singularly unsuited for dispensing health care, they usually have serious revenue limitations and they cannot extend the risk pool as far as the federales can.
I'm honestly shocked Tom Daschle signed off on a plan this ineffective, up until now he was lauded as one of the US Senate's foremost experts on health care policy. Ah but Tom came of age under Bill Clinton's "third way" bushwah and probably thinks that compromise is your first action and not as ought to be the case here, your last.
No one seems to want to grasp the federal nettle here, but pussyfooting around passing the option along to the states with a promise of money is just a formula for disaster in Humble Elias' opinion.

No comments :