Saturday, September 19, 2009

Healthcare Napkins All

Borrowed from the other Kit K's Facebook post. I thought this was interesting and easier to follow than all the news rhetoric.

2 comments:

ogre said...

Excellent. Though it misses some important details (IMO!). Asserting that all plans will cover more people is a truth... that sounds neutral... that disguises the fact that the plans don't cover the same (or even a similar) number of more people.

Which means that it skips past the fundamental moral question.

But it does do a fine job of presenting the issue and the conflicts.

Joel said...

Slide 21 alludes to a pretty large elephant in the living room, probably unintentionally.

Two of America's largest industries, banking and auto manufacture, have been brought under government control since January, and this bill would place another, even larger, part of our economy under the authority of the executive branch. With, I might add, no enforceable accountability to anyone but the president himself. This strikes me as an ominous trend. It goes beyond the question of whether we can or should provide healthcare for all citizens (as it happens, I think we probably should), and into a question of private vs. state control of business. Yet I've heard very little discussion of this larger issue.

As for the rest of the slide show, the artist's use of the insurance companies as a scapegoat is troubling. What does he suggest doing about all those people whose jobs are dependent on the insurance industry? The profits he despises the companies for making, go to pay a lot of folks' wages.