The Time Is NOW!

The Health Care Summit: Monsters Under The Bed

By Susie Madrak Friday Feb 26, 2010 7:00pm

I can't say it's a surprise that congressional Republicans think it would be great to start over with health care, or that they're in favor of "incremental" changes. (I'd love to see them get "incremental" health surgery.)

And I can't say it's a surprise that they had virtually nothing useful to offer.

What I realized, though (and maybe this is the driving force behind Obama's puzzling, sometimes infuriating compromises) is that to many Republicans, their illogical fantasies are akin to a child's night terrors. We know there aren't any monsters under the bed, but your child doesn't. So you go through the motions of shooing the monsters away so your child can sleep.

We know that tort reform has such small influence on malpractice premiums that it's virtually meaningless. Any rational person who looks at the research knows this. What you have are a lot of people making what they claim are factual assertions that are nothing more than an intellectual construct to support their emotion-driven conclusion.

We know that selling insurance across state lines doesn't solve the health care crisis, either.
We know that the fastest increases in costly diseases are being driven by environmental pollutants and contaminants, so eating right and exercising doesn't solve the health care crisis, either.

But we're left with a Congress where roughly half of them believe their fairy tales. And since the ideological wars are driven by true believers, we simply don't have the time to convert each of them, one by one, to the realities we face.

Which is simply my long-winded way of saying that Harry Reid needs to shove good healthcare legislation through using reconciliation, right now. No more waiting.

People are dying, every single day. President Obama, we don't need any more to die while you patiently reassure the Republicans about the monsters under the bed.

Get. It. Done. NOW.