BOSTON - A multiracial group of police officers stood with the white officer who arrested a prominent black Harvard scholar and asked President Barack Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick to apologize for comments union leaders called insulting.

Obama said Wednesday that Cambridge police "acted stupidly" during the disorderly conduct arrest of his friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his own home near Harvard University. Gov. Deval Patrick said Gates' arrest was "every black man's nightmare."

Both Obama and Patrick are black, and the president's comment marked his first foray into a divisive racial issue — a striking departure from his "post-racial" impartiality...

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I know! Maybe Obama can distract us all away from this by, say, uh, maybe proposing health care policy reform.

I missed most of it.

Shitstorm remediation.

LOL!

Cute.

Maybe the President can re-direct American's focus away from this sorry, arcimonious shitstorm, lessee....hmmm...maybe he should propose something like health care policy reform.

'eh?

WTF?

What kind of moral example does THAT set? Particularly for Muslim youth everywhere? Their American Leader BaraBlack Hussein OsamaKenyaMadrassaBama drinking BEER?

The very idea.

Squirm, Repu'ublicists, squirm. I love it.

http://www.bgladd.com/GOPBirtherControl.jpg

Took me maybe 5-10 minutes in Photoshop.

Pay it forward.

http://www.bgladd.com/GOPBirtherControl.jpg

Took me maybe 5-10 minutes in Photoshop.

Pay it forward.

http://www.bgladd.com/GOPBirtherControl.jpg

So, we elect a president for four year terms, but the political warfare culture reality is that he/she has but one -- the initial year -- to accomplish anything substantive, because the legislatively distracting mid-term elections campaign season draws nigh thereupon, and close on the heals of that comes the ever-lengthening acute phase ramp-up for the presidential re-election campaign. Now, either the incumbent gets re-elected, whereupon he/she is increasingly viewed as a "lame duck" who must quickly (i.e., a year or less) "spend" what little "political capital" remains, or a new Prez comes in. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Consequently, we have the problematic rush to get large-scale "reform" passed this year -- with the tactically expedient GOP pushback to delay it long enough to effectively kill it.

So, we really just get presidential policy leadership potential for only one year out of four.

Copy that.

Even with a public option, though, all I really see is more problematic non-clinical intermediary paper-pushing, notwithstanding any legislative "reform" that passes Congress. I've given the issue a lot of study. Link in my name.

If I had to place a bet today, it'd be that nothing beneficial to the public gets done this year. Which probably means another decade or more of bankruptcy as usual.

http://www.bgladd.com/GOPBirtherControl.jpg

You wrote: "The polls say, at least, that a healthy majority of Americans think reform will either improve or do nothing to their coverage or the country at large..."

____

Here's another under-examined implicit political problem:

I pointed out on my blog (link in my name) that, as noted by AHRQ, approximately HALF of Americans spend "little to nothing" on health care in a given year, whereas, on the other hand, roughly only 5% of Americans account for ~49% of total spending. It's a dramatically skewed distribution (and, unsurprisingly, is correlated significantly with age).

You have to persuade that low/no cost cohort that they now have to contribute for the good of all, including themselves eventually. And, the "affordability" thing is still way murky.

Look at my "per capita" tabulations on the blog. Read the stuff I posted about the "affordability credit" provisions in the draft legislation.

I am 63 and a half.

And it is plain English. Sorry if my take on things won't fit on a bumper sticker. Moreover the problem at once complicated and utterly simple. And, yes, I do favor Single Payer, but am realistic enough to know we are not gonna get it. We're not even gonna get a completely honest discussion it the core problems.

Let's obliterate this private vs public "relative quality and efficiency" canard. First, the relative proportions of public vs private NHE (National Healthcare Expenditures) are roughly 55% (private sector) to 45% (publicly funded), percentages that have not changed much since the mid 1990's (data source: HHS). So, we already have -- and have LONG had -- a large proportion of "socialized medicine" (in the form of "single payer" systems), principally Medicare, the VA (payer and provider), and Medicaid -- with the aggregate beneficiary/patient satisfaction levels of the first two of those consistently significantly higher than those of the private sector. And, dissatisfaction with Medicaid owes principally to the fact that it is a penurious means-tested "welfare" structure rather than an entitlement.

So, anyone (like GOP ideologues) saying "when the government gets involved with health care, things go rapidly downhill" is simply full of shit. We've had Medicare for 44 years now. The VA dates back to 1930. Yeah, none of these systems is "perfect." BFD. Neither are the private ones. Moreover, you have to distinguish between actual care delivery systems and payment/reimbursement systems.

Asute.

And, astute as well.

(Gotta be the Pino...)

LOL.

"Dude," no problem. Provided you contribute to my Sarah Palin fund:

http://bgladd.com/SkinGrafts4Sarah.org

Moreover, you are welcome to post comments on my blog (link on name). Unmoderated thus far. I also rant on Open Salon, btw.

http://open.salon.com/blog/bobbyg

I have a health care reform blog post update in the oven right now. Stay tuned.