Sooner or later, someone in charge must realize that anytime government tries to “reform” something, it often makes it worse.
Watergate prompted massive “reform” of campaign financing laws which resulted in the system we have today — a system where monied special interests control government and the legislation that affects our lives.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought massive reform of our national security system, bringing us the new Gestapo-like laws that allow warrantless wiretapping of Americans, confinement without due process and the USA Patriot Act, a heinous piece of legislation that robs all Americans of core freedoms and liberties.
So it’s no surprise that the so-called health-care “reform” will bring us an expensive, bureaucracy-laden system that will probably cripple an already staggered economy, drive up health care costs and increase the tax burden on all Americans.
Our government doesn’t look at a problem and say “if it’s broke, fix it.” The approach is more like “if it’s broke, let’s break it some more and make it worse.”
Health care “reform,” even if it passes Congress and becomes the law of the land, will be anything but reform. Any chance of true reform was doomed before it started.
President Obama, who campaigned for office on a promise that lobbyists would not even be a part of his government, caved in early to the health care lobby and gave them most of what they wanted, only to see the health care industry turn on him anyway and bombard Americans with high-price propaganda against any change in a system that makes doctors and health care companies rich.
Republicans played along by pushing their own extremes, turning up the emotional wick on abortion and so-called “death panels.” Democrats chimed in with on-again, off-again “public option” plans where the only real options allows states to “opt out” if doing so gives them a political advantage.
Meanwhile, the cost goes up, the rhetoric heats up and all reason floats out the window, driven skyward by the not air of political doublespeak.
In the end, all we will have left is a flawed plan that makes the situation worse and, as usual, the best solution would have been to leave it alone.
Real reform is not possible in a governmental system where our elected members of Congress work half-days and spend the other half raising campaign cash from the very industries they are claiming to reform.
Real reform is not possible with a President who promises a government free of lobbyists and then packs his government with the very special interests who control the legislation that Congress “creates” and he then signs.
And real reform will never be possible without a fundamental change in the system that controls government and our lives today.
26 thoughts on “The illusion of reform”
Why is the health of the nation a for profit industry ? Examples of not for profit national health care are, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps. None of which are for profit, and we wouldn’t for one second allow them to become that either. We spend billions yearly on every program out of the pentagon, and all can be classified as defending the health of the nation. So in a real sense we already have nationalized health care.
People freak out over the thought of any socialism, but we are surrounded by it daily, and require it’s use. It is not a slippery slope, there is no such thing to a thinking person.
The only thing that is going to save this republic from itself and its corporate masters is publicly financed elections, from the President all the way down to local dog catcher. When politicians are freed from the yoke of having to raise money and be beholden to anyone other than the voters, we will have true public servants. Until then we will only have public self-servants. No matter how much we don’t like it. Until then we are easily led slaves to the corporations. Don’t believe me ? How long was the line at your local Best Buy the other morning ? Before they opened.
There’s a pretty good reason everyone believes that , it’s true .
Somehow Obama is getting us to get along with each other but not with him. We are forgetting we are black and white, rich and poor so no longer as angry and the insurance companies, and rich monopolies, which gives them more power. I agree that the present compromise might end up making health care worse, but elsewhere Russia or China might never have agreed to sanctions against Iran, and the world could have ganged up against the US on economic issues since most everyone believes the US was responsible for the financial meltdown.
RichardKane
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