Health Care Reform in Brief

For those who have been locked in a closet somewhere for the past year, please allow me to summarize this interminable, exasperating health care reform debate in the fewest words possible.

The Democrats want to take $500 Billion from Medicare and put it into the new health care plan. They say this will make Medicare stronger(!). Then they want to increase taxes on the "rich" by $500 Billion to help pay the rest of its Trillion Dollar-plus cost. "Rich," by the way, I think is anybody who makes more money than you do. Then they want to fine anyone who fails to buy health insurance and any business that chooses not to offer health insurance. Then they want to start collecting the taxes and imposing the fines and fees to fix this "emergency" immediately, but not offer any health coverage until 2014. Think of it as ten years of taxes and fines and fees to cover six years of services. And they say it will reduce the Federal deficit. Let's see now. When you collect scads of money and fail to pay out anything, how could it not? Andrew Ponzi and Bernie Madoff would be proud.

By the way, did you hear that the Prime Minister of Canada flew to Florida last week to get open heart surgery? No? Turns out he couldn't get services at home. He was going to have to wait eight months for the operation in Canada, by which time he'd have been toast. I kind of feel sorry for the Canadians. Once this travesty passes, they'll have nowhere to go. Of course, neither will we...