Democrats Privatizing Healthcare

Three words Lefties never thought they would see in a tag line.

From Jacob Weisberg at Slate Magazine:

Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon . . . told me he had read The System, David Broder and Haynes Johnson's massive tome on the failure of the Clinton health-care reform plan, no less than five times . . . Wyden's bill is 166 pages against Hillary's 1364, and he thinks he can pare it further. When he was getting started, Wyden drew a grid of the major interest groups and made sure there were plusses as well as minuses for each in his bill . . . instead of trying to flatten the opposition, as the Clintons did in 1994, Wyden is courting Republicans.

Under Wyden's plan, employers would no longer provide health coverage, as they have since World War II. Instead, they'd convert the current cost of coverage into additional salary for employees. Individuals would use this money to buy insurance, which they would be required to have. Private insurance plans would compete on features and price but would have to offer benefits at least equivalent to the Blue Cross "standard" option.

Eliminating employers as an additional payer would encourage consumers to use health care more efficiently. Getting rid of the employer tax deduction, which costs a whopping $200 billion a year, would free up funds to subsidize insurance up to 400 percent of the poverty line, which is $82,000 for a family of four . . . Wyden's plan would reduce overall national spending on health care by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years and that it would save the government money through great administrative efficiency and competition.

Buy your plane tickets to India. Does JetBlue fly there?

I plan on avoiding disease altogether. I have moved to a little compound in the southern end of the Genesee Valley. I have laid out a strict regimen of Leinenkugel's beer, indica and various smoked meats.

I have hired a personal physician to attend to any medical conditions which may arise. He immediately posted Maggie Brooks' tips on surviving a flu pandemic at various places around my home.

We have duct taped the windows. We have thrown out my spinach, romaine lettuce, radicchio, mustard greens and kale. He tossed my Peter Pan, Skippy and Jif. We have so many batteries . . .

We have stockpiled three different ages of scotch and paired each one with a Black Keys album. We hung up a picture of Charlton Heston and then used for it for target practice with my .44 Magnum MarkVII.

The politics are strange here, eerily similar to the place I left; no one can make up his or her mind.

The good Dr. is telling me it is time for sweat lodge now. I must tell him that his thong is a little extraneous.