Yes, work has been busy, but I'm getting tired of the political bullshit that is going on. The Obama diehards want to believe that he is engaging in 11th dimensional chess and that somehow he is going to pull a strong health care reform bill with a really good public option out of his ass. Somehow they have ignored the agreement his team reached with big pharm to cut prices (or is that profits?) a little bit in exchange for more of the same. But still they dream. No doubt his speech tomorrow will leave them enough wiggle room to continue dreaming.
But one day something will have to pass, and my gut says it is going to be a shitty bill that Obama and congressional democrats will ultimately regret. Not the progressives in the house, mind you (and Bernie Sanders), because their districts are very blue and the voters there will likely that they were the only members of congress who give a damn (at least the ones who don't cave). Personally, I will not gloat when a crappy bill is passed. The true believers, after all, want to believe. Their hearts are in the right place, but their minds refuse to process the information that is being trotted out before them. Do they really think that Obama wants a strong health care reform bill when he seemingly is licking Max Baucus' and Chuck Grassley's asses? I mean, really.
Long and short, I feel like I have wasted too much time giving a damn about something that was a fait accompli a long time ago. I have a job and health insurance, so I am not immediately at risk if a crappy bill passes. The problem is that the numbers of uninsured are growing each day as more and more people lose their jobs. And something important is also being ignored in the teeth gnashing that passes for debate. Most people think that the only players who have a stake in killing real reform are the insurance companies and big pharm. No. Most large corporations have a stake in killing it too. After all, if they were truly concerned with keeping health insurance costs under control (which could happen with single payer, but not many of the other options), they would have flexed some real muscle in this debate. But they haven't, have they?
My theory is that the large corporations need the bill to fail so that workers continue to feel insecure and will accept shitty raises (if any) and increasingly disappearing perks in exchange for longer hours, more work and even less job security. If a truly good bill were passed--say, single payer universal coverage--the well of cheap, compliant and fearful labor would get a little smaller. And if there is a job recovery (one hopes there will be, but who really knows?), well competition for labor might actually force corporations to pay their employees more. This whole dance is to confuse us, but ultimately it's about making sure the upper middle class, middle class and poor stay in their places or slide a few steps down. Change we can believe in, my ass.
