Scene 1
The radio went on this morning and a commercial about some guy who could fix cars immediately popped on the radio with something along the lines of:
"You are good with cars. You fixed your mom's car - the neighbor's car - your girlfriend's car - your wife's car.
And pretty soon you have a business fixing 4 cylinder engines.
We are _@#$@#$@$@_ Insurance know that you need to be working on cars and not worrying about your employee's healthcare."
Scene 2
Took my 16 year old daughter to an introductory to Day Trading class. Just to see what it is and to get her thinking about the stock market and financial tools. One of the slides during the presentation talked about the amount of money the Big 3 car makers produce. On the last column of the table was about $385,000,000 the car companies had tied up in health benefits.
What both of these scenes are telling me is that our economy is being hampered by the stress of Healthcare. Yes, I know that is a battle fought 2 years ago.
But what if Medicare for All was proposed this week in Congress?
We now know that the GOP was going to obstruct ANYTHING this president attempted. The GOP wasn't going to give us anything anyway. Elections had no meaning to them, especially in 2008.
A lot of us complained Healthcare Reform did not go far enough. It never got a fair hearing in the first place.
The GOP only got their mojo back when they attacked this plan in 2009. Remember the Death Panelists? Remember pulling the plug on grandma? They turned it into a Town Hall fiasco that now results in pay-per-view congresspeople.
The 2010 GOP victories came at the price of our nation's health.
Put it back on the table.
I'd love to see the President yell "CLEAR", put the paddles to the chest and restart the heart of the economy. You want to stimulate the economy and lower taxes - this is perfect.
At the core root of this - American Corporations are paying a huge business tax. It is the tax that is maintaining our Healthcare System.
Are we as citizen consumers happy with this product? Who was it that stopped a better replacement from being implemented?
Imagine the amount of economic power released by market forces that are stored in a private healthcare system that is barely working anyway.
If that small business guy knew that government was handling his healthcare issues - could he hire an employee or two?
If the megacorp stockholders were be looking for a HCR dividend - we could turn this economy on a dime.
If President Obama wants to go down swinging - this is the Louisville Slugger I want him walking to the plate with. This may be the one thing that can really energize his base and the country against the GOP and the Tea Party.