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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, March 06, 2009

Republican Death Wishes 

...I have to confess that I could beat my head against the wall and never be able to convince myself to - at the very least - plan for, if not express the anticipation of, the death of philosophical opponents to those tenants tenets (h/t to joel hanes for his self-admitted pedancy in pointing out my error) that I hold dear. Events of the last couple of weeks suggest that this, if nothing else, explains why I am not now nor will I ever become a Republican...

A few days ago we had Senator Jim Bunning making plans for the near-term demise of SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Today we see the de facto Boss Hogg of the Republican party almost celebrating the theoretical demise of Ted Kennedy with relation to the impending fight over some sort of comprehensive health benefits plan that would benefit all Americans...

These episodes are perfect demonstrations of the difference between the world all of us little people live in versus the mountaintops on which these anointed few perch. Out here in the real world, there is no particular tolerance for stupid insensitivity and a pretty good chance of ostracization - if not violence - for those who can't pick up on the obvious clues. Up on the mountaintop where punditry lives, apparently, these rules don't exist. The sorts of comments that would get your ample butt thrown off of a PTA committee or city council or county commision are merely ignored if you are an elected legislator that your party would like to see fade away or excused if you are a hero to your party's base despite accusations of behavior that the party's base would consider to be apostasy were it committed by anybody else...

I lived a part of my early adult life in a few small-town cowboy/logger bars in any number of small cowboy/logger towns out here in the intermountain west, and I can guarantee that the sorts of things that these two clowns have said would have started brawls if they had been said in those places. That sort of action doesn't seem to ever happen up there on the Republican side of that mountaintop. Maybe that's why they can't figure out why they are less popular than oil company and banking executives in the eyes of the American people...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:20 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Mitch McConnell Has A Sweet Deal, But He Doesn't Want To Share With YOU 

...today Senator Mitch McConnell made sure to get in the day's first shot at using the word of the day - "bipartisanship" - before quickly getting down to the business of demonstrating that he doesn't really mean it when talk turns to fixing the mess that is health care in the United States.
...McConnell suggested there were areas in which Republicans won't compromise, particularly the creation of a new public insurance program to compete with private insurers.

Now, you've probably heard some version of what I am about to say before, but I'm going to say it again anyway: This is, in large part, the very health insurance system that is available to Mitch McConnell, all of his Republican caucus mates, and every one of the two million Federal employees who some sort of elegible job status. McConnell, along with all those others, have the opportunity to be enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Act program (FEHBA). I say "available" because there is no particular requirement to be enrolled in FEHBA; it is an election that can be made at the time of hiring and changed every year during the so-called 'open season' that rolls around every November...

In fact, FEHBA is a perfect example of what could be done for the public at large. It is a federally managed system to be sure, but individuals actually sign up to be insured by specific private or quasi-private health insurance providers, such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Instead of your health care choices being taken out of the hands of you and your doctors and being placed "in the hands of another Washington bureaucracy", under the FEHBA program your health choices are ripped out of your hands and given to nameless, faceless insurance company employees, just like out in the real world. Clearly this is all win-win...

Mitch could, of course, put his money where his bipartisan proclivities are and drop his FEHBA coverage, which is overseen by a Washington bureaucracy (the Office of Personnel Management, to be exact). He could go out on the open market and buy a personal health insurance plan from some of the same companies that participate in the FEHBA program. He may well pay a great deal more for this policy, of course, and will sacrifice the fixed biweekly Federal premium contribution that helps to defray the cost of FEHBA program insurance. At least, though, he would finally be walking the walk when it comes to steering clear of any sort of health insurance plan tainted by the influence of federal bureaucracy...

Mitch isn't in the mood to share this sweet deal he has, though, for reasons that he claims revolve around for concerns about competition, even though any number of commercial insurance providers complete for his own insurance dollar inside the FEHBA system. The issue isn't competition per se, but rather is the fact that there isn't any sort of bargaining power afforded to the individual over premium prices like the FEHBA program has. People who already are being hammered from all points on the compass by our flailing economy would, in Mitch's world, be forced to pay whatever the commercial market will bear without assistance or support. In Mitch's world, health care decisions for private citizens would be made by insurance bean counters...just like they are right now in Mitch's own real world of FEHBA...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:07 PM 0 comments

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