Obamacare - Coming to YOUR Doctor's Office

It is always puzzling what it takes to fire up the American people. For about the last year we have been hit with a succession of "crises" that any one of them should have thrown us into a collective seizure. Let's travel down memory lane: First, we had the housing market crater, which led to a panic sell off of stocks, which caused a "collapse" of many financial institutions, followed by a series of Bernie Madoff-like ponzi schemes, followed closely by bailouts of said financial institutions, GM & Chrysler, and auto manufacturers in general. I could have left one out but you get the drift. All of these crises were to a great extent manufactured and resulted in an ungodly amount of borrowing by the government to pump money into the aforementioned segments of the economy.

Now here comes the House with their as-yet-unfinished masterpiece aimed to "fix" our "broken" healthcare system. Everything was going along all cun-by-yah until the unthinkable happened : people started reading the bill as proposed by the house. Let the wailing and knashing of teeth begin!!! Hence followed the rather raucous town hall meetings sponsored by Democrat congressmen and the AMA to explain to us what a wonderful bill it will be. The response was not pretty! Meetings got loud, congressmen became scared, and the attendance at future meetings will be more friendly.

There are several things that resulted from these town hall meetings. First, these liberal congressmen pushing this crappy bill probably realize that passing this bill in its current form has about as much chance of making it to Obama as I do high jumping ten feet. Second, the great unwashed (that's us) really don't want the government screwing up the healthcare system in the same manner they did the post office, General Motors, the Veterans Administration, etc. Therefore the public option is probably dead. Third the liberals in this country are a much smaller group than they thought they were.

Is this the end of this madness? Absolutely not! They will get what they can this time and be back at us next year to finish the job. The only hope we have to stop them is to find and elect conservative congressmen and senators that come with a spine. Reducing or eliminating their majority in 2010 is crucial to the future of our healthcare delivery system. Otherwise we will wake up one morning and some congressional staffer will be prescribing our medications. They are emboldened by their political advantage and are ripe for a fall.