"Blood From Turnip" Plan
Kudos to Tom Vannah for his incisive editorial "Do Not Resuscitate" [Dec. 11, 2008]. Tom hits many nails right on the head. But I'd postulate that, far from viewing the individual health insurance mandate as "fairly unpopular," Massachusetts residents in the crosshairs of the law Dr. Marcia Angell has aptly named the "Squeeze-Blood-From-a-Turnip" plan are more likely viscerally enraged by being subject to the depredations of a voracious "health" insurance industry and its skimpy, high-deductible coverage.
"Today's health care system is costly in large part because we allow the insurance industry to participate and profit." Well said. "The individual mandate is a bailout for an industry that should never have been allowed to exist in its current form." But who did allow it? Was there any semblance of public input when the elegantly spun Chapter 58 was being steamrolled into existence from beneath that slick bouffant atop Romney's noggin? You can bet the corporate media will be delightedly spinning Massachusetts' "groundbreaking" and above all "effective" health care "reform" as a blueprint for the other 49 states. Come January 9, 2008, the health insurance industry may indeed get the "change" it is clamoring for and a willing ear in Congress, thanks to our Chapter 58 Trojan horse.
Perhaps the best critique of this health insurance hijacking can be read at www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=fraud+in+the+guise+of+health+reform.
David A. Hopkins
via email
Blogs Are Snoozes
Isuppose one-stop blogging ["One-Stop Blogging," Dec. 4, 2008] is a convenience, but would people pay for it? There is very little news in the various blogs that one cannot find elsewhere. While I would not say their opinions are worthless, they are nothing that I would pay for. Area blogs are usually predictable. Maureen Turner says Michaelann Bewsee's blog is "left," but Bewsee supported Swan and the Democratic party machine in the last election. Dusty and Devine would tell us of the wonders of four more years of Republican administration. Their opinions are no better informed than those of the average writer of a letter to the editor. The award for dumb bloggers goes to MassLive and its anonymous bloggers, some of whom appear to be using it as a private message board. Some informative entries make it worthwhile. I suspect that some of the "concerned citizens" are really political insiders.
Americans generally will not pay for news as will Europeans. So the economic strategy is to go after advertisers, who will only pay for more of the same. Bloggers could develop an edge in local stories, but it has to be unique. The only hope any blog will have of being economically viable will be to offer something no one else offers.
Robert Joseph Underwood
Springfield
