Russell's Blog

The calculus on the health care bill is very simple. If Democrats create a law that forces people to give their money to private insurance companies, and fails to create any sort of publicly administered alternative, the American people will hate it.

Conservatives and libertarians will hate it because it tramples on their freedom of choice and because it costs more than it ought to. Liberals and progressives will hate it because its a giveaway to companies that are widely agreed to be Evil Incarnate. Centrists will hate it because it won't work.

This isn't a "starting point" that can be refined as time goes on. It is a step in the wrong direction -- awarding even greater power and money to the already too-powerful insurance industry. It will give the industry the ability to raise premiums even higher and faster because people will legally have no choice but to pay them.

All major pieces of legislation evolve over time. They tend to do a better job of doing what they were designed to do in the first place. This was true for Social Security, Medicare, and many other social programs. It would be true for this healthcare bill too. The problem is that this healthcare bill doesn't do much of anything for citizens. It simply makes a gift of our freedom and livelihoods to the insurance industry, pure and simple. The bill will indeed evolve over time; the wussy regulations it creates to protect patients will get stripped out the instant the Republican party controls the government again.

I can swallow the idea of paying taxes to support a public service -- if the public service actually works. I cannot swallow the idea of being legally obligated to buy a product from a private party.

It's amazing. The Democrats in the Senate have actually managed to find an arrangement of circumstances that would actually be worse than the status quo. That's quite an accomplishment, given the breathtaking moral bankruptcy of our health insurance system.

Kill the bill. It will sink us.