Health Care Reform Bill: David Loftus

I’m an outright socialist. We have to pass this health care reform bill into law -- whatever form it takes, through integration of the House and Senate versions -- and then we have to go back to reviving a public option and everything else that was surgically removed by various craven interests in service to the bloated private insurance and health care industry.

It’s never failed to astonish me how many people believe that government suffers from unprecedented waste. There’s waste everywhere: I have yet to work for an organization, public or private, that doesn’t have waste. The difference is that businesses can close up shop and quit the field; they can declare bankruptcy and duck their debts. Government isn’t allowed to do that -- the job still has to get done. Plus, nobody seems to have counted up how many companies regularly pay government fines and private settlements to avoid getting called on the carpet in court, and how many former CEOs have been going to prison of late. Businesses have a multitude of ways to hide their sins; public agencies have to answer news media questions and open their books. Run government more like a business? Why would we want to do that? Government actually does good things for us, rather than obsessing about profits and how to sneak past regulations and taxes.

So people worry that a public option will be more costly? Maybe it’ll cost us a lot less! You won’t have millions, even billions, going into advertising friendly, homey HMOs, toward gigantic CEO salaries and monstrous skyscrapers, toward multiple and unnecessary medical tests for CYA protection from lawsuits. Instead, all that money sucked up by corporations today might just go to … what? … health care! In the end, who cares what it costs? It’s the right thing to do. Any conservative crybaby who’s screaming about “socialism” right now will scream a lot louder, believe me, the minute a private insurance company denies him, her, or a loved one coverage on some silly, profit-draining pretext.