What we did on our summer vacation

Normally, we’d apologize for going so heavy on a particular subject but we won’t with respect to our bias towards healthcare coverage because it has been so enlightening.

Enlightening on a couple of different fronts. First, it’s forced us to do our homework. Yes, we’ve actually read portions of this bill… and it confuses the living daylights out of us. And through this homework, we honestly hope that our presentation of the debate has been forthright and absent any demagouging of the issue. And don’t confuse being adamantly opposed to the current version of healthcare reform with demagougery.

We were talking healthcare with B-Daddy over the weekend and we came to the conclusion that much like the alternative energy debate, we’ve become all-of-the-above types with respect to healthcare. Health savings account? Sounds good to us. Med mal reform? Gotta have some sort to keep costs down. Allow health plans to cross state lines? Why not? Loosen regulatory restrictions so that individuals can customize their health plan which will reduce premiums? Absolutely.

That is why it so discouraging that the current plan is of the none-of-the-above variety. It’s like Congress went into the Stink Store and cleared the shelves of ideas and threw it all into the healthcare bill. We cannot come up with a single redeeming quality to this piece of legislation. How does that happen? How can these allegedly smart people sit down to hammer out legislation that is simply so atrocious? That takes a special sort of talent, though not any which we would wish upon friends or family.

Perhaps the reason is because of the second elightening thing that has emerged from our studying, observing and commenting on the current healthcare debate and that is, you are not thought very highly of. Yep, this whole process has lifted the veil on how our elected leaders feel about all of us and it’s not pretty. In fact, the level of condescension, contempt and presumptuousness that has been displayed by members of Congress and the White House over the past few months has been jaw-dropping and helps to explain the passionate if less-than-constructive behavior we have seen at townhall meetings in this, the summer of ass-kickings.

And through structural imbalances such as congressional districting, franking privileges and campaign regulations that favor the incumbents, the huge gulf that now exists between elected officials and the electorate will continue to widen and which will result in an increasingly acrimonious relationship between the two groups.

P.S. The Democrats made a huge tactical mistake by pushing healthcare through committee before the summer break. Instead of plausible deniability that Democratic congressmen could legitimately claim at the townhalls if the legislation was held back in committee, it is now public record and can be picked apart, piece by crappy piece, as it is being done right now and which allows for the true bipartisan exchange the President promised us all in the first place.