The International Writers Magazine: Our New York Correspondent

Meltdown On K Street • Dean Borok I am anticipating a huge stock market correction when Obamacare goes online. Remember, you heard it here first, because financial writers are so invested in the old system that they can’t bring themselves to see the light, like hysterical blindness. Other writers may not have the experience or elasticity of imagination to foresee a major realignment of the banking system.

Right now health care represents 17% of the U.S. economy, against 8% in Britain, where there is universal, comprehensive coverage. A lot of Britons complain about their health service, but few of them wish to see it abolished. In this country, despite the huge expenditure a sizable portion of the population is not covered, and those who are, are frequently hamstrung by the fine print, which allows for ghastly deductibles and excludes from coverage every imaginable malady, from foot problems to childbirth expenses.

You do the maths. If the UK can provide full, universal coverage at half the cost, where is all that extra healthcare money going to? Basically, it has been a dependable cash cow for the insurance industry. Healthcare profits have been a perennial cash crop year-in and year-out since the beginning of the modern healthcare industry. It’s been a dependable reserve for the country club set, and if it goes a lot of bogus companies and grossly overpaid administrators are going to get washed down the drain. It’s inexorable.

That’s why the modern Republican Party has been totally co-opted for use as a hand puppet to stop Obamacare. The idiot GOP congressmen have a gun to their heads from two sides: on one side the Tea Party wingnuts, which is a special purpose entity created by former Republican senators Phil Gramm and Dick Armey with insurance industry funding; and on the other side are the K Street lobbyists and lawyers telling them, “If you don’t stop this legislation from being enacted, what good are you? You’ll never receive another nickel from us”. All of these legislators are recent arrivals in Washington who don’t know the ropes and have no other sources of funding, and they are desperate. Look at freakin Ted Cruz, straining like hell with threats and filibusters, as if to show his masters that despite the fact that he couldn’t stop it, at least he deserves an “A For Effort”. Yeah, sure.

In the meantime, Obama is smelling victory in the air, and it smells like napalm in the morning. Let them self-immolate! He’s not compromising on the health care law, nor is he willing to negotiate on the budget or the bogus debt ceiling. The Republicans are complaining, “Why won’t he negotiate the way he did in 2011?” Duh, in 2011 Obama felt he had to appear conciliatory because he was up for re-election the following year. Well, he won, and now he frankly doesn’t give a damn, Scarlett! Congressional elections are more than a year away, and nobody will remember anything that is happening now unless the Republicans paralyze the government and bring things to a halt, that they will remember. Anyway, if the health insurance program proves to be popular, the Republican meltdown will rival Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster and render them toxic for the next quarter century.
© Dean Borok October 2013
dean@200motels.net

The State We're In Now
Dean Borok in New York
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Election. The population wised up.

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