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Monday, November 16, 2020

Hurry Up and Wait

 We used to do a lot of that in the army.  They would tell us to hurry up to get somewhere and get ready for something that often times happened much later, or not at all.  During one of those long waits, somebody shouted out in frustration, "Let's do something even if it's wrong!"  It was a good joke, but that's all it was, a joke.  Doing a wrong thing instead of nothing at all is no way to win a battle or to accomplish anything worthwhile even in the real world.  I think that's what Obamacare was all about, doing something even if it's wrong.  Obama was so intent on doing something about healthcare that he was willing to accept any compromise, even if it ran contrary to his original purpose, which allegedly was top make healthcare more affordable.

Trump's plan was no better.  He was working with a Congress dominated by Republicans who were elected on the promise of repealing Obamacare but, instead of repealing it, he tried to patch it up and re-brand it as Trumpcare.  No wonder he couldn't get Congress to go along with it.  The only good thing that came out of it was the repeal of the individual mandate, or so I thought.  Now I find out that the mandate was not repealed, the penalty for violating it was just reduced to zero.  So now we have a law with no teeth in it, subject to being restored with dental implants by the next administration.  They might have been better off leaving the mandate in place, since it was the most unpopular part of Obamacare, which might eventually have motivated a future Congress to repeal the whole package.  

I've said it before and I'll say it again, insurance is not part of the solution, it's a big part of the problem.  



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