Is Mutiny Coming?

-
Interestingly enough, the shine on our new President's new suit is starting to fade... and now as the work starts to get hard, and expectations don't necessarily match with reality, the mutinies are starting to occur.

This time, it's on Health Care.

(story below)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/10/house.health.care/index.html

Of course, Obama ran in 2008 on making healthcare more accessible, affordable, etc. for all Americans. So, it should come as no surprise that a bill is making its way down the halls of Congress aligning with his agenda. It's caused a lot of debate as of late - partly because it is a fairly agreesive move to get the government more involved with (and potentially take over) the system.

Interestingly enough, the latest pushback is coming from fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats. They're saying it's too extreme, and it appears that they are going to use their voting block to negotiate some of the socialistic aspects of this plan down (or hopefully out).

I'm all for this... while I do think that health care needs to be available and effective, it can't be free. I mean, people go to medical school and study like madmen for many, many years and spend thousands in tuition to be qualified to do what they do. It's crazy that we would actually make their skills, especially those that are highly specialized, into a commodity with a simple vote. It just defies logic. There are definitely ways to take unnecessary costs out of the system, but I don't believe that orchestrating a government run system akin to Canada is necessarily the answer.

I was talking to a friend of mine last weekend about Obama, and how he as a conservative voted for him because we did need a change in the direction and tone we saw in our government. While I voted for McCain, I do agree that the tone of our government left a lot to be desired, and I do think the new President has brought a little more civility to our debate. This, I commend him on. However, I do not believe that those of us that are conservative voted for him to see many of our economic (banks, car companies) and social systems (health care) taken over by the Federal government.

I think that Obama's taking a huge risk in enacting this change, when the change that he promised that we bought into was the change of direction and tone on the world stage (which I believe that he's done a decent job with so far... esp. with Robert Gates at the helm). What I think (and hope) will happen is that in 2010 the voters will once again move the government to the center by taking away some (or all) of Obama's congressional support and we the voters force him (like we forced Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2006) to bargain and build coalitions with the opposition. All this, of course, will be played out in next year's versions of the nasty campaign ad :-). Good times.

Until then, I'm going to enjoy having a private health plan... until otherwise notified :-)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it time to drop the "Jesus" of the Chosen?

-
  Back in 2020 (Yes, THAT 2020), with all of the negative that came out of that year (and we lived in Colorado and experienced much of it), one seemingly bright light that came into our lives was this crowdsource-funded streaming digital series about the life of Jesus that was starting to gain attention on social media.  It was (and still is) called "The Chosen."   I'm not sure if it was out of curiosity, boredom, or out of the hope that something good would come out of the year we were living in, but we started to watch the first season that streamed on YouTube.  This program, which is the brainchild of Dallas Jenkins (whose dad Jerry Jenkins was the author of the Left Behind series books), was a creative project aimed at expressing the stories of Jesus in the Bible (and we find that much was made up... more on that later) in a modern format mimicking a "bingeable" Netflix series.  The production value was excellent.  The Chosen, especially given the limited bu
Read more

After the Red Sea: A redeemed people that didn't trust (or love) their God (Exodus 16-17)

-
The newly freed Israelites, after having seen God's mighty works in Egypt in rescuing them from slavery and delivering them through the Red Sea... You would have thought that they would be full of worship, praise, and love for God who did this deliverance on their behalf. Well, they did, for a hot second (Exodus 15). Immediately after being delivered, they break out in song on the other side of the Red Sea and sing praises to God. But it's not soon after, that they start complaining. I mean, they complain (or "grumble") a lot. "And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” - Exodus 16:2-3 "Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us
Read more

Issac, the Patriarch of Peace

-
  Devotional thoughts for today. "If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." - Romans 12:18 A little about my morning methodology. I typically choose a section of the Bible to meditate on during each year, and this year I'm reading through the "Torah" (or the first five books of the Bible, which are foundational not only to Jews but also to our Christian faith). Today, I was reading in Genesis 26. Genesis 26 mostly covers the life details of the life of Isaac. Isaac doesn't get much press, being sandwiched in between Abraham and Jacob in the Patriarch line, but he is significant nonetheless. More is written about what is done TO Isaac vs. what Isaac himself has done. However, Genesis 26 gives a glimpse into it. Perhaps the reason for the lack of press (if I can speculate) is that Isaac's life was pretty non-dramatic. Other than the circumstances of his birth, the fateful trip to Mount Moriah, and Jacob's act of deceptio
Read more