The night of breaking glass.

After fifty, the epiphanies tend to come a bit slower. It takes me a good week or two to muster up a mere profundity, not to mention a full blown epiphany. But I think that I have figured something out. I would rather talk about what constitutes a good veal chop or remoulade than debate the pros and cons of health care in this country. I am sick of the overheated rhetoric on both sides of the equation.

I spent the last week sharing a room with my heartland conservative friend Steve, whom I honestly love and respect but rarely agree with. We have gone  through all of the ins and outs of this thing until we were both blue in the face and are honestly no closer to any middle ground.

Rather than go item by item through a laundry list, let me start off by making a few points that I hope that we can agree on as reasonable people.

1. Insurance premiums are going up in this country as we speak, because with unemployment, we have less and less of the prime candidates in the insurance pool, making it more expensive for the insurance companies to cover the marginal candidates.


2. Illegal aliens should not be entitled to free coverage on the american dime. Sorry. I have first hand knowledge of them gaming the system. It is not my responsibility to fix the entire free world.


3. It is an inopportune time to be starting a massive new entitlement program, since we are already saddled with huge debt.


4. We have to get a hold of the huge escalating fees in medicine, and have some semblance of tort reform, to put a cap on ridiculous jury awards.


5. Doctors are already pissed off and this will not make them happier, since they are having a tough time getting compensated from the government as it is.


6. The elderly may be shunted into less favorable policies as they get dropped from medicaire plus and into less comprehensive coverage and we need to lessen the impacts.


7. Small business people should not bear the burden for health care on their backs.

Having said all that, off the cuff and without the benefits of any research or fact finding this morning, I applaud the efforts of the administration. It will be expensive, but the war in Iraq was expensive, and we threw enough money at that, against my own wishes, and it is gone forever. The mark of a good society is how it treats the most fragile. If we can find 700 billion dollars so that Goldman can get full price from AIG and the banks can gobble up their competition, surely we can cure grandma's goiter.

I don't think that health care will be the advent of a time where bushy bearded bolsheviks will be bashing in the door of American society in order to implement a new stalinist system. Hopefully it will help fine tune a few things, like not allowing insurance companies to drop coverage, or penalize people for pre existing conditions. Or drop your children when they go to college.

I think that it is a bit strange that health care has become such a galvanizing issue, and one that has led to threats of violence from the right. I think this debate shows the conservatives as nutty obstructionists, not wanting to do anything to upset their status quo corporate masters. Yesterday there was a clarion call to start breaking windows at democratic headquarters, an event that is oh so naziesque and unfortunately actually took place across the land. Can you imagine if liberals had threatened revolution when we started our unprovoked war on Iraq, and the subsequent condemnation from the right?

You judge people by the company they keep. The shouts of nigger and faggot, the inherent racism in the birther movement. You lie, Baby Killer.  I never agreed with the Bush Administration on pretty much anything, from faith based education to WMD to the bank deregulation that led to our current economic crisis, but we never talked about taking up arms and watering the tree of liberty with our enemies' blood.

My friend Steve says that the democrats are behaving badly because a majority of americans are against health care reform. I don't know if they are or are not, after all the fear mongering and demagoguery, they seem to be in favor of the individual components. But for the sake of conversation, how is it different from Bush? We are a divided people and I didn't agree with any of his policies. But elections have consequences. Not long ago, I sucked it up and prayed for a day when the country could be led by someone I agreed with.

Steve says that Obama hid the facts of his agenda and that the young people weren't aware of the ramifications of his policies when they voted. Isn't that the way it always is? People rarely are informed about  issues, it is less important to them than electing a pretty face with nice hair. Reconciliation was used throughout Bush's term, on issues like a major tax cut. This is not new. I am perfectly fine using the democratic majority to pound through every issue, without a single Republican vote if need be, especially since that is what we were subjected to on the last go round. If you guys get the votes, we can play tit for tat later. That's the way we roll in America.

Republicans and conservatives are very sore losers.