Talkin' health care....

Don't you wish I wasn't?

Sunday, as we all are painfully aware, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a big bill purporting to reform the country's health care crisis. I am not well-versed on every word of this bill, and I will not pretend to be. I know that it seeks to cover more people than the current "system" that existed prior to its' passing. I know it raises taxes on people earning more money than I make (USA Today said yesterday that a single wage-earner who made $200,000 would see his taxes increase $450 annually).

More than anything, I know alot of my fellow citizens are unhappy about it. Some wanted NONE of this, others wanted MORE than this.

My position is this: we all need to take a moment to catch our collective breath.

Seriously. People talk at me about what we can't do. We can't fix healthcare. We can't do this, we can't do that. What country are we talking about, here?

Are we the U.S.S.R? Are we France? Luxembourg? Vietnam?

Who defeated the Kaiser in 1918?

Who stomped the f&%*ing Nazis, Japanese, and (OK, laugh) Italians by 1945?

Who beat the Soviets at their little world domination game?

Who saved Kuwait from invasion, death, and subjugation?

Quit telling us what we can't do.

When business practices were viewed by President Theodore Roosevelt as ethically wrong and damaging, we found the will to change those practices. When his cousin proposed the New Deal legislation, we found the will to change. When LBJ and Congress passed the Great Society legislation, we found a way. This was not done without pain, and (as now) several states filed suit in Court to try and opt out. Good luck with that, by the way, history is not on your side, there.

Turning back the clock, now, is not an option. Changes to civil rights have - very slowly - shown that some of us were on the wrong side of history in 1965. Right now, there's no way to tell if this will indeed work or not.

Take a deep breath. This, too, can be figured out. This is not to suggest that the changes will be easy, or painless. Some of our countrymen will benefit and some will feel the pinch. But, dammit, we're the United States of America - we should be able to do anything better than anywhere else in the world, including the operation of a healthcare system.

Yes, I lean left. I won't apologize for that but I am no partisan. I am by no means certain that this "fix" is affordable or that it does what it purports to do in the best way possible. More likely than not, it will need to be experimented with, tweaked and "fixed" as we go along. As the politicians keep telling us, we're innovative and experimental. Things get changed as we go along - which is the point of being able to amend our governing Constitution.

I hope this scheme works to benefit people and does what those who passed it say it will. I know, however, that our politicians are salesmen at heart and are interested in forwarding themselves and their accomplishments more than they're interested in helping people. They sell us themselves, every day it seems, on an endless number of television news programs. In fairness to historical facts, though, I don't recall any Republican bill being proffered as a fix. They had the presidency from 1980 to 1994 and 2000 to 2008, as well as Congress from 1994 to 2006. I recall no proposed healthcare fix, and can infer from this that the Republicans were not interested in the issue.

Our family pays plenty in taxes, I see just how much every two weeks. And yes, I'd love to have that money in my wallet instead of in our government's coffers. Feeding these growing kids would be easier; vacationing would be easier; hell - things might be more fun. But I don't mind so much if the money they take out of that paycheck really does help people.

Let's hope they haven't sold us junk, this time. If they have, remain optimistic. We're the friggin' USA.

We'll figure it out.