Heck of a job, Boehner!

I think the same goes for a member of congress in a town hall meeting in August 2009. The people who are disrupting the town halls have had a lot of practice being rowdy at professional wrestling and ultimate fightimg events. I don't think you're going to be able to thwart their efforts.

If Congress didn't want to face this kind of music, lame as it is, then they should have stayed in session and gotten it done.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/correction-of-the-day.html

If it's the former, then you are either naive or you don't want to see health care reform happen. If it is the latter, then I think you misunderstood what Obama was saying when he called for more transparency. If it was something else all together then I don't know what you're talking about and would ask you to explain.

Also, lack of competition does not automatically lead to government services being of low quality. For example, I think the military does just fine without having to compete against mercenaries. When mercenaries have gotten their chance, as they did under Bush in Iraq, they failed miserably.

Also, when quality of services in government does suffer, as did with FEMA and Katrina, there are consequences. These consequences are born by bureaucrats, who get fired, and politicians, who lose elections.

Finally, if private industry is doing such a great job with health care, then why are people clamoring for change? Why did both presidential candidates during the 2008 election call for change? The health care industry hasn’t mended their ways because competition has called them to task for their poor service. They have no competition. They do whatever they want. They operate with a corrupt business model that keeps people sick and sometimes kills them while raking in huge profits and driving up costs for everybody. If I had my druthers, the government would set up a single payer system and run the whole thing, like they do everywhere else in the industrialized world. It would certainly cost less, there would be better health outcomes and even if it’s not all that great, I’m pretty sure they’ll do better than private industry does now.

My hope is that the real deal making is going on behind closed doors and that the pandemonium we've all been hearing is only a distracting sideshow. If that's not the case, then Obama isn't as talented a politician as I thought he was.

Until he fails,though, I'll take him at his word and not bet against him.

The health insurance industry now does all the same things that Republicans warn us that a government run system will do. Ration healthcare? Sure, my health insurance company does a lot of that. Get between me and my doctor? My health insurance company does that too. Health care run by bureaucrats? Got me there, although many of the people I’ve spoken to at my health insurance company would make very fine bureaucrats. My point is that the main difference between a government run system and my insurance company is that government decisions about my health care are not automatically driven by profit motive. To me, that makes a lot of difference.

In other words, the decision tree is like this:

Big pile of crap lands on us in court -> have we had time to review it? No? -> Do whatever Bush was doing until we can sort it out.

I'm willing to cut Obama slack for a bit longer. At a certain point, however, he's gonna own this stuff and I expect him to keep his campaign promises.