Have you heard the one about the origin of the word, “politics?” It comes from “poly,” which means many, and “tics,” those blood-sucking parasites…..
I tell you, I get back from a trip overseas for a couple weeks and when I get back it seems like the crazies have taken over the political scene. We have 47 million people without health insurance in this country and all some people seem to care about is old, tired baggage about “socialized medicine” and using any scare tactics necessary to make President Obama and the Democrats look bad. It’s really just disgusting. I’m personally ok with my health insurance, but I think it’s immoral for a rich country like the U.S. to not provide coverage for everyone. As usual, it’s the poor – and in this case uninsured – who don’t have a seat at the table and are thus left out of the equation.
One of the few sane voices I heard on the radio today was that of Wendell Potter, formerly a communications executive at two major health insurance companies and now a repentant advocate for health care reform (talk about a conversion experience). Check out the interviews with him and testimony he’s given before congress.
Bill Pitkin 
Doesn’t California already provide government-sponsored health care? And how’s that working out?
Due to the brevity of your comment, I can only guess you are insinuating that California’s current budget crisis is somehow due to provision of “government-sponsored health care.” If by that last phrase you mean, government-sponsored health insurance , then you are correct, as California provides Medi-Cal (i.e. Medicaid, a federal program) and has provided Healthy Families (for uninsured children who don’t qualify for Medi-Cal; unfortunately, Healthy Families isn’t enrolling new clients due to the state budget problems). The causes of the state’s budget problems are much more complicated than just the providing of health insurance, they are, well, political…which was the point of my post. When the end game is just about which political party scores more points, the real losers will be the poor and vulnerable.
My insinuation is that you can’t just blindly provide government services without paying for them — that’s why CA is in trouble with its budget. You have four choices: (a) raise taxes; (b) cut benefits; (c) do both; or (d) do neither (and run a deficit).