Compare and Contrast (healthcare, Rube Goldberg-style)
| Michael Moore (lefty filmmaker) | Ron Wyden (Stupid Party senator) |
|---|---|
|
The doctor/hospital/care facility sends a bill to the state. |
The doctor/hospital/care facility sends a bill to an insurance company. And you get to pay premiums. If you can't afford to pay premiums, the state may subsidize the premiums for you, but you're going to end up dealing with the health insurance company no matter what. To make health insurance more affordable, the state will stop giving a corporate tax deduction for health insurance, so your corporate masters won't provide it as a tax deductable perk. To keep your corporate masters from simply cancelling the health insurance and pocketing the money, a law will be passed forcing them to give you that money as a raise. And, to keep the insurance companies from continuing to be the evil bastards that they currently are, another law will be passed telling those insurance companies that they can't dump sick clients. Aaaaand there will be a government clearinghouse that will help direct people to the least evil insurance company of the week, but you'll still have to make your own decision about which health insurance company will be the least evil bastard after you've signed on the dotted line. |
The advantage of Ron Wyden's idiotic plan is that it ensures that the CEOs of the (loathed, for good reason) health insurance industry will get to retain their collections of gold-filled swimming pools. And it will preserve a lovely payola channel for suitably generous campaign donors. As far as a national health system, it might be better than the ongoing train wreck that is the current US healthcare system, if we're very very lucky.
Mr. Moore's healthplan, on the other hand, is Medicare (the most efficient healthcare in the USA, which isn't particularly surprising because it's run by the government instead of by professionally evil people) for everyone. And if the rest of the world is any indication, it would be simpler, cheaper, and provide better care than what the USA has.
So, of course, the Stupid Party won't support it. After all, why should the Stupid Party do something good for the American people when it can instead do some idiotic triangulating to appease a group of people who wouldn't support the Stupid Party until after the heat death of the universe?