To recap, here's what ended up happening with health care. First, they gave away single-payer before a single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the individual mandate, which would force millions of people now uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt. The bill won't make drugs cheaper, and it might make paperwork for doctors even more unwieldy and complex than it is now. In fact, the various reform measures suck so badly that PhRMA, the notorious mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry which last year spent more than $20 million lobbying against health care reform, is now gratefully spending more than seven times that much on a marketing campaign to help the president get what he wants.
I was so incensed by the piece that I immediately wrote a blistering note to Obama at the White House Web site promising never ever to support him for a second term. Obama has become a huge disappointment. Even bigger because he held out to much hope for so many of us. We knew Bush as a dick to begin with, so no big deal when he turned out to fulfill our expectations. But Obama promised HOPE and CHANGE. Crap. Very little of it is happening. Obama is a phony.
