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Monday, August 17, 2009

Damn It!

Part of the problem with writing about ongoing current events is that the circumstances upon occasion shoot holes in your posts.

If you're really lucky - that happens before you actually go online with it.

I meant to talk about the so-called public option today in part II of the health care posts.

I spent time yesterday and today writing about it.

Then Congress decided to take the public option off the table and the White House agreed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelious said that a public option wasn't a deal breaker.

Or did she?

See, according to a White House Official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications, apparently Sebelius "misspoke" when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option "is not an essential part" of reform.

Then about an hour later, another White House official said that Sebelius didn't misspeak, instead, "The media misplayed it."

And that was when there began to be serious talk of publicly owned heath "cooperatives" instead of a federally run "public option."

Health cooperatives? Now just a goddamned minute here, where did health cooperatives come from and why does it sound like something I'd find on a Russian collective farm?

Well, crap. Most of my post was about the federally run public option - nowhere in it did I mention health cooperatives. What little reading I've been able to do suggests that these co-ops might not be a bad idea. I need to do some more reading, obviously.

In the meantime you'll forgive me if I hold the post for a couple of days.

6 comments:

  1. Cooperatives?

    As in: I'll work on your trick knee and bunions if you lance this here boil...

    ew.

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  2. We have a few co-ops here in Ohio. My day job currently belongs top one. To belong and get the "best price" we have to participate in "Wellness" programs. Which means giving up your medical information to the co-op (through "Health Fairs", it'll only be shared with the employer in aggregate form, you know, the two things we had a little law to stop the sharing of medical information among people who aren't medical providers). And it basically recreates the "mutualization" that used to be a part of the medical insurance. Only it's another level of administration (see your earlier post about levels of administration).

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  3. Oh, and I forgot to mention the constant calling and "Don't you want to exercise more" nannying.

    "Sure," I reply, "just as soon as my boss increases my pay by $5 and hour so I can stop working the extra jobs, and, oh, BTW, get a gym that's less than a 30 minute drive from my home." Because, you know, splitting wood, hauling dirt, running a chainsaw, that all isn't exercise.

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  4. Heheh. That's why I don't even bother trying to be timely. I'm too slow to write about anything on time...

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  5. Dammit, I want a public option. It should be a deal-breaker.

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  6. I just want you to write the post about insurance executives being shot into space.

    And what Phiala said.

    ReplyDelete

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