It's a crazy, mixed-up world.

In the Politico Monday, an article entitled "why we will win back healthcare this time" was published with what may presumably have been a straight face. The article breathlessly touts reform of the American healthcare system to provide affordable healthcare for all Americans. I think their idea of affordable healthcare is that a handful of people will tote the note for everyone else. Who is John Gall?

Golden chestnuts from the article:

Progressive eras also rise from a reaction against the excesses of conservatism, which in this case is the national rejection of the overreaching of the Bush administration.

and:

There is also unity on messaging, starting with reassuring Americans that they can keep the insurance they have if they like it. This is the best response to the opposition’s entire message, which is to scare the public about reform. The other weakness that opponents have in their message about “government-run health care” delays and denial of care is that there’s hardly anyone in America, including people with good insurance, who don’t believe that the private insurance industry is delaying and denying people care every day while driving health care costs through the roof.
[emphasis mine]

There was a time when good health insurance was part of the incentive to strive for a good job. These days, however, many people have the idea that health insurance is an entitlement. Rather than preserving our freedom to achieve (or not) as we each choose, lumping every American together in one nationalized healthcare system will cripple caregivers' ability to deliver service and rather than a rising tide which raises all boats, we will be effectively yoked together in a limiting and tragically rationed system.

I'll be honest - I genuinely liked George W. Bush as a person. I found him sincere. However, if his administration was over-reaching in any way, I think it was far too fiscally liberal. For the entirety of his terms as president, I was baffled by the hue and cry from the left, when it seemed to me GWB let slip the doors to the national coffers in the name of compassionate conservatism. Aspects of government which should have shrunk grew instead.

We really need to get a grip on spending. The healthcare industry is already effectively hobbled by our government. I'd like to box the ears of anyone who thinks healthcare will be better and the public better-served by that industry when it has been manacled by the embuggerances which the federal government so masterfully engineers.

As Ambulance Driver said, when our government takes over the health care industry, it will have the efficiency of FEMA with the compassion of the IRS.

We're so screwed.