Health Scare: Why The Rush?

Ontological Angst ^ | 25 July 09 | foutsc

[foutsc]

Two Questions:

1) Why must the democrats insist on shoving this giant health care suppository up our hind ends so quickly?

2) Why do they insist on gulping down the entire enchilada all at once as opposed to a piecemeal approach?

The first question is easy to answer. It's now or never. Citizens are getting wise to the Washington game, and they don't like it. Support is going down, not up. They may never get this chance again.

Lefties squealed like stuck pigs when Bush rammed through the Patriot Act and rushed us to war in Iraq. Although I think they were wrong on the issues, I did agree with those on the left who wanted to slow things down, have an honest investigation of the issues, and then debate the issue in light of the material facts.

Rushing things through is never wise. Good ideas get better with time, and bad ideas go rotten.

The second question kind of gets answered by the first. They want it all and they want it now. This is an extremely complex issue. The president doesn't know what's in the bill, congress doesn't know... Who knows? Medicare is going broke, Medicaid is breaking the states, and nothing they do turns out right.

I'm against this solely by virtue of my judgment that anyone so willing to take all of this on, all at once, and right now, is seriously, dangerously deluded. Their delusion therefore renders them incapable of addressing this properly. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, these people don't know what they don't know, and they don't know it. Ignorance is a dangerous thing. Letting politicians monkey with something this complex is like giving an arsonist the materials to make firebombs.

DC needs a dose of Descartes

Rene Descartes, the greatest philosopher since the Greeks, wrote an incomplete work, Rules for the Direction of the Mind. In it he tells us how to solve problems. This is the man who invented analytic geometry and then showed it could not be used to solve the three most famous problems of classical geometry, anticipating the calculus of Newton and Leibniz. Rene knew a thing or two about figuring things out.

Rule 5 is most applicable here. Break it down into simpler pieces:

...first reduce complicated and obscure propositions step by step to simpler ones, and then, starting with the intuition of the simplest ones of all, try to ascend through the same steps to a knowledge of all the rest.

We say "health care," but that is a huge, all-encompassing concept. Let's break it down with an eye to balancing humaneness and efficiency:

Delivery: How do we deliver it to those who need it when and where they need it?

Payment: Who pays and how?

Insurance Reform: Slash the rules and let the companies compete for our business? How do we handle catastrophic cases? How do we protect families from going bankrupt?

Decision-making: Who gets to make those decisions about your heath care and that of your loved ones?

What is the proper role of the federal government? Should it encourage certain practices while proscribing others?

Taxation: Should the federal government be monkeying with this at all? Why not turn it all back over to the states, along with the concomitant chunk of money they tax from us every year to pay for it?

These are still very broad categories. Each could be broken down by experts into perhaps hundreds of sub-categories. And that's another thing. Where are the experts? Where's the congressional testimony, the public debate and the jostle of competing ideas?

Regardless of your politics, can't you agree with me that there has been no debate? Can we also agree that something must be done, but we must first understand what we are undertaking?

WikiSource - Descartes' Rules

Professor Kenneth A. Bryson

Picture courtesy of Chicago Ray

[PressurePoint]

Best line from last week was when Sen. DeMint was on NBC and held up the 1,000+ page bill and said it hasn't been read by anyone. To which Matt Lauer, desperately trying to protect Obama, condescendingly replied, "Well, it's a complicated subject."

DeMint responded, "Exactly, so why are we rushing it through?"

[texas booster]

Maybe our Congress and the crooks in government are smarter and wiser than Descartes?

HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAA!!

[Dilbert San Diego]

I don’t know that I agree that Bush rammed through the Patriot Act and rushed us to war in Iraq. The original Patriot Act passed after Sept. 11th, and the vote was almost unanimous. And the debate about war in Iraq consumed Congress for months in 2002. In the end, large majorities in Congress voted for the Iraq war resolution. Even good liberals like Hillary Clinton voted for it. I have to go back and check, but I think even a majority of Democratic congressmen voted for the war in Iraq.

I guess we’re seeing revisionist history here. Liberals will say Bush did this, Bush did that, Bush rammed throught this and that, when the historic record will show that he had strong support of Democrats.

Whereas with issues such as this health care bill and cap and trade, if they pass, it will be with bare majorities, and almost unanimous Republican opposition.

[Dilbert San Diego]

And, from what I hear, this bill would take effect in 2013. Why the heck is there a rush to pass a bill that won’t take effect until after Obama’s hoped for re-election?

And he says he gets letters from citizens who can’t pay for leukemia treatments and all that. Well, if he’s so moved by these stories, and so determined that things happen quickly, why wouldn’t the bill become law as soon as he signs it?

[PressurePoint]

letters from citizens who can’t pay for leukemia treatments

A good reporter would have stood up and asked, "If the plan doesn't go into effect until 2013, what steps did you take to immediately help the leukemia victim?"

[La Enchiladita]

Why must the democrats insist on shovingRahm-ing this giant health care suppository up our hind ends so quickly?

Fixed it. Ask the Emanuel brothers for the answer to that question.

Otherwise, mentioning Descartes in the presence of Kennedycare is like casting pearls before swine.

[conservative cat]

The two most obvious answers are either they are completely stupid or completely corrupt. We know they are stupid, but I am betting #2 is the reason for the rush. This bill is not about saving a single American. Like Cap and Trade and the Porkulus bills, there are pay-offs and Marxist benefits involved.