Redux

On October 29, I buried a question deep in the LECR regarding the ongoing debacle known as health care "reform." This is the question, taken from "Check, please:"

"Would the [totality of the] health care industry really lower its prices if the financial base by which it presently operates were to increase from those who pay privately by various means to millions and millions of taxpayers?"

I am damned sick of hearing about this on so many fronts - from misinformation based upon opinion to my own lamentations - and do not mean to incessantly discuss the topic, as though I have been struck with perseveration. However, I do have this New York Times article from two days ago that, in my opinion, answers the question posed above quite definitively. I highly recommend that you read it.

If you actually did read it, you would be aghast upon realizing that the expected amount of money owed to drug companies may exceed $300 billion dollars for this year alone, among some other interesting things. Of course, I know that numbers can be manipulated and that journalism is never objective, despite the best intentions. However, no matter how one works the details of the bottom line, that is a hell of a lot of fucking money to be paid to one industry.

For all of the rhetoric spewing forth from this debate, we never do hear of concrete solutions. Rather, it turns into a hollow argument based on old-as-dirt partisan crap that is fueled solely by the people who hold the purse strings of either party. I am not smart enough to present solutions regarding such a convoluted and greedy behemoth and I am unsure if there are any, for it has spun too far out of control. I am fully aware that politics is business in this country, which is unfortunate, because a part of the definition of the word politic does read "having practical wisdom." There is no practicality present - by any entity involved - and surely wisdom, per its definition, is lacking. To believe there is either would be an egregious and naive error.

Unfortunately, there is a part of the definition of the word that the people doing the negotiating seem to adhere more strictly to: "crafty; unscrupulous."

I find the polar opposites in the definition almost comical. It explains a lot, though, eh?

*definitions taken from Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition
**bracketed words added for this post