Toles Rant: Unhealthy politics edition

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By Tom Toles
I simplify it for you, since the rest of the media won’t. The whole debt problem is growing medical costs. Yes, pretty much the WHOLE problem. The cost of health care is going up faster than inflation. That and the fact that the Boomers WILL NOT DIE, but plan to go on sucking up resources, as they falter and enter Phase Two of their drug-taking ways.

It’s not Social Security, which in budget terms is a smallish fix. It’s not Waste Fraud and Abuse, unless you’re talking about politicians who are Wasting your time with Fraudulent claims and Abusing the public trust in the process. It’s medical costs. Check out the numbers. There’s no dispute about it. The choices are pretty straightforward. Find a way to limit the growth in costs, and/or pay for them through insurance (government or private) or let lots of people just go uncovered or untreated. There. I put the whole problem into ONE SENTENCE of less than thirty words, if I counted correctly.

This does not have to be the Titanic Ideological Struggle of the Epoch, but one party has decided to make it into one. Their approach is to insist the solution MUST come through either private insurance or letting people’s coverage wither away, or both. If this is your cup of tea, so to speak, make your case, then make your compromise with the rest of Americans who HAVE A DIFFERENT SET OF PREFERENCES. This is the way American politics works, has always worked, and can only work. If you are unwilling to compromise, then you merely have added one more patient to the very expensive critical list: American democracy.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/friday-rant-unhealthy-politics-edition/2011/11/17/gIQA31EnUN_blog.html