AMERICAblog asks “Why are Democrats caving on Health Care?”

Why bother to have elections if you’re not going to use the authority that voters delivered? When a winning campaign is based on the theme of change, then change, dammit. The Democrats want to buckle under to the status quo special interests and win over Republican support. To hell with that folks. Look at the numbers which leave little doubt about which direction Americans want. More on the NYTimes/CBS News poll:

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.

Because our elections have become, by and large, a ball of yarn for the kittens, a useful distraction, an illusion of some say in how this country is run.  Banking interests own the Senate, Health Care interests own the House; we’re never going to see Wall Street CEOs do perp walks and we’re never going to see a reasonable health care system in this country that doesn’t chain the wage-slave to his job.

I literally believe there are businessmen at the top levels of all industries who strongarm our government into getting what they want by threatening to just pull the plug on the economy and bankrupting this nation.  They and their families and friends have enough money to live anywhere in the world in the lap of luxury; why would they care if they had to sink one of their companies and can a whole bunch of workers in Representative Spineless’s district or Senator Blowhard’s state.  The Rep. or Sen. is the one who the people will fire, not CEO Douchebag.

This is the only way I can reconcile the health care issue.  Take my small niche, marijuana.  In 2004, Barack Obama is running for Senate and saying things like our war on drugs is “an utter failure” and that “our marijuana laws need to be decriminalized”.  By 2009, he’s laughing at marijuana law reform even as support for legalization is topping 50% in some polls, decriminalization enjoys 70% support, and medical marijuana enjoys 80% support.  So what changed?  I imagine the pharmaceutical arm of the health care industry, making bank on 20,000%-to-500,000% markup on the top-five best-selling anti-depressants and addicted return customers for the top-three opioid painkillers, doesn’t like the idea of people growing a bush in their backyard for free and cutting demand for those pills by 50%-to-75%.

Whenever you have a question about this country in the form “Why the hell does X happen when the people obviously want Y?” the answer is inevitably “Because wealthy people obviously want X.”  And by “wealthy”, I mean that in the Chris Rock sense (i.e., “not rich, wealthy.  Shaquille O’Neal is rich, the white man who signs Shaq’s checks is wealthy.”)