The problem is not the system. It's us -- our "got mine" culture of entitlement. Politicians, never known for their bravery, precisely represent the people. Our leaders are paralyzed by the very thought of asking their constituents to make short-term sacrifices for long-term rewards. They cannot bring themselves to raise taxes on the middle class or cut Social Security and medical benefits for the elderly. They'd get clobbered at the polls. So any day of reckoning gets put off, and put off again, and the debts pile up.
What a Drama Queen and what an uneducated fool. The political process in the US was not intended to move quickly or smoothly. Caution and deliberation are built into the system.
But Evan woke up from a scary wet dream with his brain stuck to the sheets and his mouth moaning "Barack" and he just knew something had to be a foot to keep Obama's BigBusinessGiveAway from being rushed through. And when you spend the bulk of your time tolling below the Beltway's belt, you always call out the people and ignore the powerful.
Last week, Terry Gross (NPR's Fresh Air) interviewed Paul Blumenthal about the health care plan Evan is so in love with.
GROSS: So let's look - before we get into the actual meetings, like who met and what kind of dealings they had, let's just talk about the agreement that the Obama administration reached with the pharmaceutical industry. What did the Obama administration get out of it? And then we'll talk about what the pharmaceutical industry got out of it.
Mr.�BLUMENTHAL: Well, what the Obama administration got out of it was taking the biggest lobby in Washington and putting them onto the side of health care reform, as opposed to having them oppose the legislation. They received around $100 million in advertising to support the legislation, spent by PhRMA, the industry trade group. That certainly is a big deal if you're trying to push a kind of bill like this.
GROSS: And what did the pharmaceutical industry get out of this deal with the Obama administration?
Mr.�BLUMENTHAL: Basically, what they got was that Congress would not legislate any kind of cost-cutting that would make a serious dent in industry profits, and that includes taking things off the table like re-importation of drugs from first-world countries or...
GROSS: In other words, buying drugs at cheaper prices from other countries, like Canada.
Mr.�BLUMENTHAL: Yes. Yes.
GROSS: Yeah. What else?
Mr.�BLUMENTHAL: Allowing Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drugs, just as the Veterans Administration does in their health care program. These were pretty big Democratic policies that had been supported by the Democrats since 2003 and by then-candidate Obama in the 2008 elections, and the administration allowed these kind of policies to be pushed off to the side so that they could support of the pharmaceutical industry.
It was very informative. Barack's back door deals with Big Pharma meant that Big Pharma would spend "up to $150 million on advertising" to sell Barack's plan. No word on whether a few pennies were tucked inside Evan's g-string.
Bad proposals that weren't what the left or right wanted proved to be unpopular with the American people. Back door deals usually are. If they weren't, they wouldn't need to be "back door."
At its most basic the proposal is offensive because you don't want the government telling you to do something. Nobody wants to be bossed around. The proposals all insist that Americans will be covered . . . by forcing them to buy insurance or face a fine.
Here's reality, if all Americans wanted to buy insurance and had the money to do so, they would. They don't. They don't because they don't have the money or they don't want the insurance or some combination of the two. It is one thing to give health care (that would be universal health care), it's another to pass a law bossing around the citizens of the United States of America.
The process didn't fail, it's been working. Americans, as poll after poll demonstrates, are leery of and troubled by Barack's proposal. Instead of lashing out at the American people, maybe Newsweek should try learning about the way the federal government was set up and why it was set up that way to begin with?
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Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Barack, Corporate, Tauzin and Baucus"
