It’s all set up… The conflict that’s been called a health care summit. From a congressional hearing over health insurance rates soaring in California to the carefully-arranged meeting space in the Blair House.
There was supposed to be change, remember. But it’s the same old thing all over again: not just disagreement, not just people trying to do the right thing, but having a few points to iron out. It’s an all-out-brawl. And it’s staged that way.
The very idea of a highly-publicized, televised meeting to work out cooperation on something that’s blocked by un-cooperation is nothing but political staging. And both sides are throwing pitch forks before the show even gets started.
There was a time when congressional leaders would get together behind closed doors and come up with a solution everybody could agree on. Yeh, closed doors are supposed to be bad. But we’re not talking the kinds of closed-door meetings that exclude people who have a different viewpoint. Those were closed to reach consensus. Not to run over people with different ideas.
It’s obvious what will happen. Each side will give on a few window-dressing points in an attempt to publicly embarrass the other side. Then democrats will pass their bill by consensus vote, as they call it, and both sides will say “I told you so.”
But it’s the American People who lose, have lost and will keep losing. The people be damned. Health care will be managed by the feds whether or not we want it that way.
And why anybody could believe the feds would be good at that, in the face of the mismanaged and fraud-ridden Medicare system would have to be beyond any reasonable person who puts America before political advantage.
But it’s obviously like former senator Alan Simpson said recently. “We are at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.”
Seems a lot of people in Washington have definitely forgotten.
