The Obama administration has attempted to use the financial crisis as leverage towards tackling health care reform, but it's possible that financial reform should've come first. With the economy improving a lot of the impetus for reform is already waning and a recovery of some kind was not entirely unexpected. Additionally, all the expenditure on bailouts has made the discussion of further public funding of any large initiative more difficult. Health care under the current system is only going to get worse, so time isn't a factor on that score. These factors seem to indicate that regulatory reform should've preceded health care and we're already seeing a considerable retreat on my areas of reform. Perhaps the Obama administration was counting on continued high unemployment (as it's a lagging indicator) to keep up voter outrage and maintain pressure on legislators. Since large deficits and an aversion to spending will persist for some time, it may have been seen that there was no benefit to waiting on health care reform and capitalizing on honeymoon period popularity was the best strategy. I find myself extremely skeptical that their decision was the correct one.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2009
Should Financial Reform Have Come First?
The Obama administration has attempted to use the financial crisis as leverage towards tackling health care reform, but it's possible that financial reform should've come first. With the economy improving a lot of the impetus for reform is already waning and a recovery of some kind was not entirely unexpected. Additionally, all the expenditure on bailouts has made the discussion of further public funding of any large initiative more difficult. Health care under the current system is only going to get worse, so time isn't a factor on that score. These factors seem to indicate that regulatory reform should've preceded health care and we're already seeing a considerable retreat on my areas of reform. Perhaps the Obama administration was counting on continued high unemployment (as it's a lagging indicator) to keep up voter outrage and maintain pressure on legislators. Since large deficits and an aversion to spending will persist for some time, it may have been seen that there was no benefit to waiting on health care reform and capitalizing on honeymoon period popularity was the best strategy. I find myself extremely skeptical that their decision was the correct one.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Birthers and Death Panels Are Pissing Me Off
Lately I've been extremely angry about the continued claims that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii and that any of the proposed health care reform bills contain the concept of "death panels". I stopped to ask myself why these particular idiocies should be aggravating me more than ones in the past and believe I have the answer: because they are so demonstrably ridiculous. Anyone with even a modicum of intellectually ability or honesty can rule them both out definitively in the space of about ten minutes. That leaves me with the inescapable conclusion that people pushing these views are either too stupid and arrogant to realize they are hopelessly incompetent and should keep their mouths shut, or are intentionally trying to spread misinformation to stop any potential improvement in our mediocre social systems. Both of those possibilities are worth getting angry about.
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