So HealthCare reform is almost the law-of-the-land and still most people I know are up in arms about it.

The Liberals wanted more extensive coverage and are unhappy about the anti-abortion language, the Conservatives are unhappy with any entitlement programs so this will only feed their anger and the guys in the middle are wondering how Northern Iowa just ruined their brackets.

This is the interesting thing when it comes to this stuff, somehow Obama which the Right vilifies for being an overly-partisan free spending liberal is seen by the left as having given in too much to the conservatives and not done enough to cover all Americans, so I guess he just can’t win. I watched about 30 minutes of CNN who was doing their best CSPAN impression yesterday and I left being sure of three things

-John Boehner apparently spends a lot of time sitting a beach and not working on issues that real Americans care about because no white-man should be that tanned

-Nancy Pelosi doesn’t make a sensible argument ever but has somehow risen to the most powerful job in the House which can only be attributed to her ability to hypnotize both her constituents and her fellow Democrats with that incessant blinking.

- although this particular debate was carried on MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and FOXNews I wonder if these people go on like this even when they are only getting broadcasted over CSPAN when their own parents probably aren’t even watching or if you would find them making paper-airplanes and spit-balls if you cared to watch..which you don’t.

At the end of the day they passed a bill which will in the best case scenario slow the rising costs of healthcare, cover 30 million uninsured people and kill Mitch McConnell and in the worst case scenario it will not kill Mitch McConnell.



A few provisions TOR would like to have seen added to this already behemoth bill:

-some kind of malpractice reform, the cost of this insurance is crippling doctors

-a sin tax on junk food and soda, if you don’t give a crap about your own health and you want us to cover your obese ass than you will pay a higher tax for this. I don’t care that this disproportionally affects the poor or the fat because obesity related health problems including heart-disease and diabetes and high blood pressure can all be put under control if we stop gorging ourselves full of Double Cheeseburger Value Meals.. and if you are going to stuff yourself like a Thanksgiving Turkey than you should be forced to pay a larger portion of the cost of insuring your grotesque ass.

- Something that made sure that people receiving government subsidies for healthcare (and welfare for that matter) was tied to people actually looking for work. If you are going to give away money and healthcare, you may as well put people to work cleaning parks, gutters, subway platforms etc.

- Do something about regulating costs at hospitals and doctors for similar services. I read a report recently about how a particular treatment costs twice as much to an insurance company when done at a hell-hole like St. Vincent’s than it would be at a world-class place like Sloan Kettering or Mount Sinai. The level of service had nothing to do with the cost the insurance company was paying.

- Allow more competition from foreign made drugs. If we can get our Opium from Afghanistan and our Coke from Columbia we can surely get our Viagra from Luxembourg.