Inner City Pressure

It is good to be home. I decided to head home for a couple of nights and see some MN friends and family. The weather is beautiful but I am stuck inside doing my civic duty. All I have heard for the past few weeks is about the health care plan that congress is debating about. Obama two days ago even told Representative Leonard Boswell (D-IA) that he would gladly be a one term president if that means health care reform. Okay... what the heck does that mean? With the help of the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and CNN, I think I have figured out what the plans are. There is no doubt Obama is taking enormous political risks by tackling health care above everything else right now. In early 1994, President Clinton tried this and it resulted with the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, throwing out the Democrats in the mid-term elections. Surely, Obama is aware of the risk. At its most basic level, Obama is proposing a plan that is similar to Medicare and would allow a government plan to compete with private insurance plans. Republicans have so far opposed the plan. They fear that the majority of employers will stop providing any insurance plans for their employees and force the government to pick up the tab. To me, it is a question of morality. How can we as a country justify being the only Westernised country to not have universal health coverage. There are currently almost 50 million Americans who have no health care. Does congress have a moral obligation to insure them? Keep in mind that already hospitals are mandated to treat everyone in the case of an emergency, regardless if they have insurance or not. Congress is currently debating a variety of plans. Some of them would require mandatory insurance, some would not. Then of course there is the idea of just expanding the programs like medicaid, and medicare and imposing tighter regulation on the private health insurance. One plan being debated in Senate is to expand medicaid to everyone at the poverty line and 150% above it. I think everyone would agree that the current system is failing. The question is how can we afford to fix it. The plans being debated in congress all cost about $100 billion a year. Yikes! Naturally, the Democrats being completely uncreative as usual have suggested taxing the wealthy (in this case, families making more than $350,000 a year). Naturally, every single Republican and many blue dog Democrats oppose this. The bottom line is we are months away from coming up with a final plan that will be put on Obama's desk. I sure hope Obama knows what he is doing. Obama's approval rating keeps waning. He is now at about 48% nationally. However, the approval rating of Congress... 19%!!

1. One of my favorite songs of all time is the Tears For Fears cover of "Mad World" by Gary Jules. Yesterday, I searched for it on Youtube and I stumbled upon American Idol contestant Adam Lambert. I do not watch AI, and I was unfamiliar with him. I love his version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emh6ceA6zIg&feature=related

2. Apparently Dick Cheney is writing his memoirs and word is he is going to be hyper critical of President Bush. Little in life gives me more joy than bickering amongst GOP leaders.

3. Only twenty more days until the kick-off the college football season. Who's counting?

4. Yesterday I saw the movie Funny People with my sister and a family friend. I give it like a B-. My sister gave it a D. It is pretty funny but it is outrageously sexist and basically 160 minutes of genitalia jokes. I don't know why Judd Apatow has to be obscenely lewd in all of his movies.