Archive for the ‘Anthony Weiner’ Category

What bothers me so much about the senate bill is that it mandates we buy in, with penalty if we don’t, but the public option has been so diluted that it will only cover three to four million Americans.

This really chaps my ass.

The entire impetus of a public option all along has been to supply much needed competition for the Goliath, thereby forcing the whole clusterfuck bureaucracy into some modicum of accountability in terms of quality and affordability.   Well, do the math.  They bray at lung top that 98% will be covered, yet that number is egregiously misleading when it’s laid bare that it will be accomplished by forcing the majority to buy into the hopelessly corrupt monolith that has been selling death and discrimination to us for decades.  These numbers come not even close to establishing meaningful competition. Four million of 350 million living breathing Americans.

I beseech you, do the math.

Various Senators and representatives, including Anthony Weiner have come forward to say that it’s not perfect but a giant leap forward.  I like that guy, but the numbers are leaving my dick in the dirt.  Here’s another number:  The most important components of this bill, like the weak ass public option, are not due to manifest efficacy until 2013 or 2014.  Thus, the giant has five fucking years to mitigate, obfuscate, lobby with a million bucks a day to spend, to ensure that all protections and rights afforded us in the original legislation are stillborn.

This shit is fucked up from hell to breakfast.  Even if this legislation is passed intact, the fight will merely be in it’s infancy.  We get nothing for five long years and at the end of that road, we will be forced to buy insurance and our options might just suck more than they do now.  Forced to buy their product.  Forced.

Why is no one talking about that?

The great unwashed rail and stomp about a government usurping of free enterprise and democracy.  Fuck them in the neck.  Fools.  Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground?

The government takeover of health care will most assuredly be complete because the government is a plutocracy.  Not for, of and by the people but for, of and by the corporations.

I understand that the progressives and liberals are optimistic for momentum.  They are gleeful for potential.  They seek, against impossible odds to set the ball rolling toward the the pins of avarice and corruption.  Hoping that inertia befriends them.  Once in motion it stays in motion and they can coax or accelerate it’s velocity despite it’s initial mass.  I fear that that the ball has a balsa center, it’s being released far too slowly and by the time it reaches those pins, they will be obelisks bolted down.

And thus the idea of public funded health care or even *gasp* single payer health care dies an ugly, painful and protracted death.

There are significant merits in this bill, such as the language that prevents cancellation upon actually becoming ill or the rendering obsolete of denying care for a pre-existing conditions.  Yet realistically, they are euphoric sentimentality in the face of a mandate that we all buy in to whatever is available.  I’m calling bullshit on the whole thing.  We are required to carry auto insurance but it’s barely regulated, so those that can afford it get ripped off while a third go without in some states.

I can’t see how the exact same scenario is avoidable in this instance.  It’s a prescription if you will, pun intended, for the status qou.  With the exception being that the insurance companies bathe deeper in filthy lucre as the fines imposed on those who can’t or won’t participate go directly into their coffers.  That’s right, did you know that?  What kind of shit is that?

Now of course, the procedural vote for cloture, so the bill can actually be debated without filibuster, has yet to even take place.  Word is that it’s scheduled for Saturday night at 5 p.m. West Coast time.  At that point, amendments will be proposed, hard ass Republicans will wail and whine and the outcome is anyone’s guess.  The way I understand this procedure, after cloture is achieved, it tooth pulling time.  The proposed legislation, if it survives, will emerge with less teeth than it entered the arena with.

Picture a Roman Coliseum.

I’m no legal eagle, but I’m no dummy either. At the same time, I’m not an expert when it comes to Senatorial procedural logistics, but it’s worth pointing out that a lot of these guys are obstinate dicks.  I can only imagine that the future of this bill and health care will not be scrambling for sunglasses in anticipation of a bright future and there’s a chance there will be a rush for fresh dirt for the coffin.

Somebody talk me down.

Drinks for my friends