Nice Try. Now A Solution.

Mark Schmitt is executive editor of the liberal American Prospect. Schmitt tells us that from the very beginning, "the public option was part of a carefully thought out and deliberately funded effort to put all the pieces in place for health reform before the 2008 election." The left convinced candidate Edwards, who told ‘Meet The Press’ that this would be the key to his program. "The rest is history," says Schmitt. "Following Edwards’ lead, Obama and Clinton picked up on the public option compromise. … It was a real high-wire act — to convince the single-payer advocates, who were the only engaged health care constituency on the left, that they could live with the public option as a kind of stealth single-payer, thus transferring their energy and enthusiasm to this alternative."

Too much. The fact that Schmitt admits that the public option was always "a kind of stealth single-payer" should come as no shock to our lefty friends. (But we’re upset they stole our byline, recent sketch). All of us know that Barney Frank, Jan Schakowsky, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and Paul Kurgman have all been caught on video telling single-payer advocates that the public option is nothing but a stepping stone to the Real McCoy.

Nice Try. Didn’t fly with most Americans did it BO?

Now what? How about fine-tuning that which works?

Reform what we have - the very best health care system in the world. Expensive? Fine, start with the Democrats, who have blocked tort reform without fail. Why? Because of the incestuous relationship between this party and trial lawyers. What fool doesn’t know that? Trial lawyers helped create a medical crisis through malpractice suits that raise costs while driving doctors from their practices. The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers says about 10% of the cost of medical service is attributable to medical malpractice lawsuits. Roughly 2% is caused by direct costs of the lawsuits; an additional 5% to 9% is due to expenses run up by defensive medicine. Too much. Such an irony that our lefty friends here in Marin whine about health costs.

Availability a problem? Fine, you could fix that by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden. Instead, the fruitcake left thinks it can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. You know - "single payer." Stop regulating insurance companies for goodness sake. Make them compete.

That was easy.

Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday's NYT’s saying: "A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn't known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died." (Well, might have had something to do with the cancer.) Anyway, in a free market such an insurance company couldn't stay in business.

Are we launching a satellite? How tough is this?

Robert Craven