To recap, here's what ended up happening
with health care. First, they gave away single-payer before a
single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the
very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the
first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make
it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the
individual mandate, which would force millions of people now
uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either
cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt. The
bill won't make drugs cheaper, and it might make paperwork for
doctors even more unwieldy and complex than it is now. In fact, the
various reform measures suck so badly that PhRMA, the notorious
mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry which last year spent
more than $20 million lobbying against health care reform, is now
gratefully spending more than seven times that much on a marketing
campaign to help the president get what he wants.
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Taibbi's article is well worth reading to get a perspective on how this is really being viewed by the few semi-sentient's on the left. It expands well beyond the Air America clip on the PhRMA deal I had pointed to earlier.
Of course he has a pretty loony leftie worldview not having any clue that there's no chance to get real reform without bringing down the whole fascist edifice. But it is interesting that he brings a certain admirable counter-corruption ethic and unblinking gaze to the lunacy.
His article on
Goldman's serial bubble blowing is well worth reading with an appropriate filter as well. He doesn't quite realize that he's critiquing fascism instead of capitalism but he comes dangerously close to the truth.
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