Health Care Reform

We listened to the state of the union address on Tuesday, and while I did pay fairly close attention to the health care bits, I just couldn't summon the interest to actively listen to the whole thing.  DH seemed to be doing a much better job of following along.

So, the Republicans want to give us a tax credit for health insurance.  The way I understand it, this is just an across-the-board flat credit to be issued to everyone based on the size of their household or their filing status.  You don't have to actually be paying insurance premiums to receive the credit, but the credit should make it easier to pay any premiums you sign up for.  There's other stuff to - the fed could promote universal health care in the states by giving them more money to run those kinds of programs, but that's sort of a trickle-down theory and I haven't thought about it much.  I have thought about the tax credit though, and honestly, I don't think much of it.

( it won't work )

Good grief!  The ideas that keep coming out of Washington are less than useless. 

( let's try something different )

There has got to be a way to bring the power, reach and promise of the information highway into play here.  It's become a huge commercial (commerce) success, but it was designed to be informative.  The information should be able to travel both ways, and be readily discernible.  What if we had a national listening database?  Everyone sends their ideas, like ideas get grouped together, discussion and refining occur, and what finally shakes out is something worthwhile for congress to take up and consider.  Since it came from us, they'll know where we stand on it.  There is nothing to stop them from putting their pet ideas out there too - the whole point is to increase involvement with the governing process and increase ownership of the government so that we don't have to listen to any more bad ideas and console ourselves with "at least they're thinking about it" ever again.