Sunday, December 13, 2009

Health Care And The Keystone Kops Of The Senate

Max Sennett created the Keystone Kops of silent film fame. The "Kops" were a bumbling group of imbeciles who expended an excessive amount of energy to accomplish seemingly nothing.

Like Max Sennett, our own U.S. Senate has its Keystone Kops. They're the Democrats who are frantically pulling everything off the shelves to try and come up with some kind of health care reform by Christmas. They have arbitrarily imposed this nonsensical deadline on themselves. Because of that, they are throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks. If nothing does, they pick something else off the floor and fling that at the wall, again!

In the last two weeks, they have been on again; off again; with the Public Option. Now, we're down to increasing the size of Medicare and Medicaid -- both public health care systems -- and are now trying to convince America that the Public Option is dead. The struggle with abortion is another in, then out, problem. The latest fiasco is that caps will be put on cancer treatment payouts that are in excess of $100,000 annually. Right now, nobody knows who put that into the legislation; but, its there and many people are not too happy about it.

Yes, watching the senate attempt to pass health care reform is very similar to watching a Keystone Kops movie. It has all the attributes of trying to getting something done; even if it doesn't accomplish any of the original goals. Getting something done has become paramount and is clearly overshadowing doing something that is good. Between the Senate and the House, we have come up with the equivalent of a Rube Goldberg invention with all the flavor of the Winchester House of Mystery: A mansion renowned for its size and built with an utter lack of any master building plan.

So, it appears that we have a bunch of Keystone Kops building another Winchester House that will cost you, I, and the heirs of this country trillions of dollars in waste and inefficiency. It will truly be as historic as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi claim. As historic as the Hindenburg or the Titanic.

Look Daddy! Look at the nice big iceberg coming our way!

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