right wing idiocy

I think it's wise to be skeptical about the value of the health care reform law that will end up emerging from the sausage factory and being signed by Obama. First, given that giant health care companies have been for some months bombarding members of congress with hordes of lobbyists and massive amounts of money, it stands to reason that the most likely effect of any new health care legislation will be an almost unprecedented giveaway to the aforementioned giant health care companies. Second, any new government spending that isn't paid for by commensurate savings or tax revenue will only make our increasingly severe deficit/national debt problem even more severe -- possibly even catastrophic. Third, even if new government spending is paid for by tax revenue, this isn't necessarily a good outcome unless the money is well-spent, because any increase in tax revenue will inevitably correspond with less money being available for spending in the private sector, which hurts the overall economy.

Meanwhile, of course, the health care system in this country is broken. Every other western democracy has found a way to provide health care to all of its citizens while spending a lower proportion of its overall resources on health care. Not to mention all of the crazy and stupid problems Americans -- those who actually have health insurance -- encounter in actually getting their health insurers to, you know, pay for their treatments, and the constraints the current employer-based system puts on people who might want to change jobs, start a new business, take a sabbatical, etc.

These are complicated problems with which even very smart, well-informed, well-intentioned people will struggle. But making these problems even more complicated (say, by several orders of magnitude) is that in this country we, on the whole, do not have smart, well-informed, well-intentioned people debating these issues. We have bought-and-paid-for politicians, and a bunch of ignorant asshats going around spouting nonsense. For example, people who say that we can't have some third party coming between us and our doctors, dictating what types of treatment we will receive (hint: this third party already exists -- its called your insurance company, PPO, HMO, etc -- and it only makes money to the extent that it can limit its expenditures for your treatments (e.g., deny coverage)), or people (like a senior citizen of my acquaintance) who insist that the government keep its dirty, incompetent hands off of their Medicare. Yes, you read that correctly. But even those senior citizens who do in fact understand that Medicare is a government program overwhelmingly oppose legislation which would provide government-funded universal health care. "For me, but not for thee," I guess.

As I say, I'm skeptical that this situation can be improved. Because not only is our health care system broken, but our government is broken. And not only is our government broken, but a high proportion of our electorate are "informed" by reading and listening to dishonest partisan ideologues whose personal interest in fixing either health care or government is exactly zero. Their sole objective is to endlessly spout nonsense designed to confuse and enrage. Seriously: only 42% of Republicans believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Bonus right wing idiocy: I've spent the last day reading and hearing about prominent right-wingers criticizing Bill Clinton for bringing back those two girls from North Korea. Apparently this was some kind of "appeasement". Or, alternatively, it's being called (without citing any evidence) a "hostage ransom", wherein Clinton Gore and Obama desecrated the honor of our country and endangered its national security by giving those North Korean terrorists something (what? who knows!) in exchange for the return of these hostages. And, as all good right-wingers know, America Does Not Negotiate For Hostages!