Tuesday, October 07, 2008
(Tap) Dancing with the Stars
OK, I admit it, I'm a fan of Dancing with the Stars (this season pretty much sucks, but that's another story). The performances that they produce out of the "stars" (a term used very loosely in this context) at dances like the Viennese Waltz, the rumba, the paso doble, the jive, and so on, can be truly remarkable.
Tap dance isn't one of the categories. But if it were, the duo of Obama and McCain would have scored three "10s" tonight when asked a very simple question by an audience member - "should health care be a marketable commodity?" Because they danced and wiggled and tapped and hemmed and hawed, but always dancing as far away from that question as possible, as if were composed of toxic waste.
We do not need "improvements" in the health insurance system. What we need, as I'm sure the questioner was getting at, is improvements in the health care system. And the prospects of getting that under either McCain or Obama appear fairly slim.
At the very end, Obama did claim that he viewed health care as a right. But the only "right" his actual plan protects is the right of insurance companies to keep making a profit at the expense of our health.
