Health-Care Dream Is Fading--Journal for Tuesday

After all of this squabbling and irrational posturing in Washington in an effort to quickly pass a health care bill, apparently ANY health care bill, it is enough to make an interested observer truly ill...and the treatment for this malady, and coverage for it, might be denied, since the sickening effect of the long-term standoffs between idealogues and "parties" might, rightly, be deemed a pre-existing condition.

I hate to give Joe Lieberman space here, but one can hardly avoid his mention, being the high-profile "Independent" (ha) who seems to hold the future of our entire health reform effort in his well-greased palm.

Huffington Post offered a piece yesterday by Jane Hamsher that shed even more light on the cause of Lieberman's odd capitulations and surprising announcements in opposition to public options and medicare buy-ins.  Lieberman's wife has been a paid lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry for a while now. She is also highly involved in the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer organization, which has close ties to the Republican party.  Hamsher calls on celebrities and others who support this charity to speak on behalf of the health issues that are crucial to cancer patients, and some of  these important issues may be lost in a watered-down bill. 

Remember, if only a few Republicans showed some reason, then Mr. Lieberman would not matter as much.  We should be calling to question all members who are acting merely to see the legisation fail. 

Mr. Lieberman must be geting very well-rewarded indeed for allowing himself to be the front-person for irrational Republican opposition to the health-care bill, in this lamentable schoolyard squabble. It's not at all about caring for the sick, and coverage for that care, but power, ideology, and preserving the status quo. We need to be storming the gates, and threatening the livelihoods of those who claim to be "representing" us. The Republicans are in lockstep against the bill no matter what it says, and now Democrats are willing to bargain away the very heart of the bill in order to claim "victory" before the year ends. And what will be left? Nothing much different, I fear.... and all of that positive energy, that "audacious hope", wasted..