In his column headed “Health care fear and loathing”, Gil Smart states “Republicans, conservatives—these conservatives—lost last fall’s election. Badly.”
WATCHDOG: The official tally, according to Wikipedia, was Barack Obama with 52.9% and John McCain with 45.7%.
Nevertheless, given the unpopularity of the Iraq War, the plummeting economy, and the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the vote was hardly in itself a mandate for any specific change to the health care system.
Perhaps we need a six month legislative moratorium to enable the public to become acquainted with facts and alternative approaches, rather than be subject to misrepresentations and scare tactics. Then the prospect of public ire and the congressional elections in 2010 may be sufficient to bring about sensible legislation that will widen coverage, eliminate current inefficiencies and waste, and spread the costs more sensibly and equitably.
The worse thing that can happen would be for the Obama administration to settle on legislation that covers more people but, in order to give the sense of having accomplished reform, simply pushes the cost problem into the future and allow the health care system to do business as usual.
From our point of view, for the time being no bill is better than a bad one.
