Oh, Paul

Krugman lavishes great praise on Edwards for his health care proposal but I can't say I concur. While his plan may be an improvement over others put forward thus far (and as I haven't examined this year's proposals in detail, I'll have to trust that he is right - not exactly a difficult thing given it's Krugman) it still has the major flaw in common with the others ... insurance. Politician's talk of health care insurance but people want and deserve health care. How ridiculous is it that we basically take bets with our health care in this country. Until we eliminate the insurance lobby from the equation our costs will remain grossly bloated owing to their profit margin as well as the additional bogus administrative costs as a result of their inclusion.

In every session of Congress large omnibus bills are passed that contain completely incongruous parts- how about tackling things simultaneously that are intertwined and would deal with the inequalities of our tax system, our social insurance and our health care? Take a big bite, toss out our current tax system, remove one cap from Social Security (for its deduction) and add another (for it's collection) provide health care and higher education with the tax dollars already provided by we the people - the money's there it always has been. It just has not been put to good use for the majority of our citizens.

More on this later because these are things that really piss me off and thus far the only thing you can say about the crop of presidential candidates is that they are all accomplished ... politicians - in the worst sense of the word and none will implement the necessary reforms to get us back on track to return our social and economic strengths.