If you are like me and most rational Americans, you consider the health care crisis to be the fact that over 50 million Americans lack access to health care. Right now, hard-working families lack access to health care for their children. This is a national disgrace that any rational individual can see. Conservatives, however, are not rational individuals. They're the same people who think everything is rosy in Iraq.
When conservatives talk about the health care crisis, it isn't about the 50 million people who don't have health care. They are worried that upper middle-class workers don't get enough choices in their employer-provided health care options. Resident knuckle-dragger John Bambenek writes in his latest steaming pile of excrement, The Health Care Crisis and Why it was Inevitable, that the health care crisis involves high-paid IT workers like himself having to get insurance from Blue Cross Blue Shield when they really want CIGNA. Boo Freaking Hoo.
Right now elderly people are dealing with not being able to pay for their medicine that they need to survive. Blue collar workers are having to decide whether to get treatment for cancer or keeping their homes. The fact that over half of all bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical bills isn't due to not being able to go to the doctor of your choice! Medical bankruptcies have risen over 2200% percent (that isn't a typo) in 25 years. Yet Bambi is trotting out the tired line that "liability insurance" is to blame. Yes, people are dying without health care and it's all the lawyers fault.
This country badly needs a national health care policy and the voters overwhelmingly agree. All conservatives can do is try to change the subject and blame lawyers. It also shows what is really at the heart of conservatism: selfishness. The health care crisis is really about them because they don't get what they want. This kind of foot-stomping childishness demonstrates yet again why America needs good progressive policies. The right no longer has anything to offer, and in 2008 we'll continue to show the whiney brats the door.