Month: March 2010

I stayed up late to catch the vote on HR 3590.  The vote itself was possibly the most agonizing fifteen minutes of political television I’ve watched in a great while, but what irked me more than anything was the shenanigans and nonsense that preceded it.

Two hours of back patting and prattling about like fools putting on a performance.  Votes were secured months ago, or at the latest 24 hours ago.  There was no need for the chatter, the ramblings on fist thumping speeches.  All the blowhards on either side of the aisle can claim victory.  Yes, even in defeat the Republicans can claim victory.  This is big government.  Big brother now telling you what you must do.  This is the first step, they’ll say, in the great war on freedom.  Glenn Beck will froth at the mouth.  More Crossed hammers and scythes will adorn the pedestal of verbal villainy as he takes to the stage to rage on about the imposition of Tyranny upon our fair Democracy.  In part, he’s right.

Seventeen months, not including the 2008 campaigns, we have waged a verbal war over this topic, and without end have we met with contention, anger, and in some cases, slammed doors.  The five vote victory last night proves only that votes can be bought, that, in the end, despite poll numbers, public outcry, and CBO estimates that don’t add up, there is a pressing need to impose upon a nation the requirement to purchase a commodity.

There is a word you won’t find in the Constitution.  A commodity.  An exchange of dollars for a service, a cover for sky-high costs based on the pre-existing notion that their very creation encourages such inflation.  Without insurance, without the financial guarantee of coverage at $100, who would charge those that cannot afford $100.  The value of a service is based almost entirely on what others are willing to pay for it.  If there is a service that ‘covers the difference’, prices can soar because the users see $10, but the collective is paying the other $90.  Hence the deluge to come.  Basic math and rudimentary economics would indicate that there is a pool of money upon which individuals companies are willing to give up for said procedures.  We as a nation, in accordance with our elected representatives, have now said that we are not concerned with the financial well being of an industry that speculates on the health and well being of individuals.  Is it wrong?  No more than gambling in Las Vegas, playing the odds that an x number of patients will never get ill, hence paying for the y number of patients that do, or at least cover that last $90.

We’ve infringed upon the concept of choice, the validity of free will and the capacity to make a bad decision have been taken away from us.  Individuals should be able to afford healthcare without insurance.  That should have been the goal all along.  Rather, it has become a waddling monstrosity, bloated on the incessant need for insurance to pay exorbitant rates for basic visits.  A trip to the optometrist for a check up on the peepers?  Something to the tune of $400.  How is it I have managed to take up $400 of the nurse’s time?  I didn’t even see a optometrist until the last 20 minutes when they had me look at a chart through a device that can give them a baseline for my prescription.  A quick look online and it turns out that a full setup in an office goes for around 10K (on the low end).  Figure in salaries for the nurse and doctor who spent 20 minutes on me, and I am paying a hideous amount of money to be told that my prescription hasn’t changed all that much from last year, and that my glasses will be satisfactory for another year.  My contacts, those are good too.  Insurance will cover about $300 of it, but it makes me wonder.  Is it really $400 worth of service, or is $400 what they can get away with?  Is that the baseline cost set by insurance coverage, a sort of ‘this is the most we can charge without problems’.

The passage of the healthcare bill is music to the  constituents ears.  Those desperately pining and begging to see this president produce a single product of campaign promise has been long in waiting, so elation is expected.  To early 2o’s bloc of voters, it shores up a demographic that is quickly growing tired of the lack of action.  There was doubt and now a renewed vigor.  A sense that a right had been made, that a wrong has been corrected, and that the ledgers will balance out in the end long, long after this president has passed the mantel unto the poor schmuck who is going to deal with an over priced, over loaded system about to buckle under its own considerable weight.  Foresight of future difficulties has been sacrificed on the altar of short-term gains.  The Democrats have their 9th hour victory.  There was time to spare, still a chance for negotiation and true reform.   Instead, we were handed a party hammering through policy even when a tenth of their party did not agree with them.  The words ‘epic’ and ‘historic’ were tossed about often regarding this bill.  I fear they failed to see the remainder of those sentences, and we shall all pay, literally, the consequences for a shallow victory.

The political debate surrounding the healthcare legislation has gone on for well over a year and a half now.  Those lacking coverage remain so while jobless numbers continue to rise and family budgets tighten across the nation.  Meanwhile the elected body of our government continues to grind away at each other like two angry millstones with the sole intent of seeing who breaks first rather than who will see the day through with a viable product at the end.

Those unfamiliar with millstones should know that the friction and pressure created between the lands and furrows in the two stones are what, with the liberal application of a millable product, created milled goods like flour, meal, etc.  Much like those divots and rises, the differences in the two make the entire process possible.  There is the natural progression of the water driving the wheels in their purpose, the raw components of grain that would become new foodstuff, etc.  Seeing the parallels yet?

The friction of a political debate between two unique and opposing ideologies can create an outcome that is not only a good, but usable in multiple applications.  These ideas can be legislation, regulation, and even law.  So, where in the great mill of our political system is the problem?  Is there no grain upon which to spin the wheels?  Hardly.  If anything there is an excess, but that is addressed by the miller.  His guiding hand directs the flow of grain, steering the creation of through various levers of political discourse and direction.  He directs, he observers, and he makes tweaks based on information that his honed political senses detect.

An errant scraping requires the balancing of the wheels, a burnt odor demands less pressure and inspection of the equipment.  What we have is neither oversight nor inspection.  Rather we have a miller who has either stuck his hand in the mill while it was operating, and has seen the results thus far, or he has forgone the mill entirely, and is attempting to pass off a milled substitute for which we are unsure of the constitution or form, we just know that one stone was used in the process.

This isn’t how flour is made, or how legislation is done.  Opposing ideas should be brought to the floor of the congress and debated.  Concerns regarding filibusters and perpetual debates are a farce.  Endless debate is not possible.  A filibuster is good only as long as forty senators are willing to fight a piece of legislation in its whole.

So, what of a piecemeal debate?  If the wheels are choked with a dearth of grain, remove some of the grain.  Where are the cool heads and calm hands of leadership that should have dictated months ago that a line by line address of issues would be preferable to having generic prescriptions, universal healthcare coverage for children, and tort reform held up by a dozen or so representatives having an issue with abortion?

Take them to task on individual motions.  Hold the representatives to the fire issue by issue.

No longer would they be able to simply argue that they battled a behemoth of corruption, graft, and ‘liberty stealing government expansion’ if they are taking aim at a smaller, specialized piece of legislation.  If they wish to continue with the multi-thousand page bills, they can cite specific legislative hang-ups, like those mentioned above, while foregoing all the good that could have been accomplished.

Here we stand a year and change later, with no movement made on the topic, and with the specter of more of the same to come.  Mayhap another direction is advisable.  Instead of cramming handfuls of grain into equipment so obviously determined to destroy its counterpart, we should focus on smaller amounts.  What if we mill a handful rather than a sack full?  Then, and maybe then, we can see the creation of successful legislation.  An eking out of enough to sustain us, to give some validity to the effort presented, and to show progress.  What do we have to lose least we lose the nothing we have now?