flynn23 wrote:
This is not something that can be solved in one legislative session.

In some sense I agree. I certainly agree with you about the complexity of the issue. I thought about writing up my real thoughts on this a few days ago and I came up with a conception of the healthcare situation that involved interactions between 7 primary groups of people that I though represented the issues fairly well, but then I tried to explain McCain's proposals from the election in my framework, and I realized it needed more detail, and things started to fall apart conceptually and I decided not to post.

You're right, dealing with something this complex *democratically* would need to be done very gradually so that people could take in each issue separately.

This is a *republican* approach - not politically, structurally. They are making the decisions for us. We won't know what they're really doing until we have to deal with it in our daily lives. I don't know if they had a choice.

They kind of tried to float this as a dialog 15 years ago with Hillary Care, and the Republicans responded with a pretty effective oversimplification:

1. Canada has national healthcare.
2. Canada is a socialist country.
3. Socialism is the same thing as Communism.
4. We've spent most of our lives fighting the Communists.

People all across America bought this hook, line, and sinker - because Americans simply don't know anything about Canada.

As a Canadian, I can't tell you how annoying it is to hear people say things like "Canada is a socialist country." At first it wasn't annoying because I thought it was a joke - a sarcastic hyperbole - but it turns out most of these people are really serious. They really believe that Canada is a socialist country.

Your next thought is "Really? I really have to respond to that?!" Its like the time I learned that several college educated American friends of mine had no idea, like literally did not know, that Canadians had fought in the Second World War, and were somewhat incredulous when I corrected them about it.

You start out slightly amused, but when you realize that they aren't joking your amusement turns into amazement. Like, where the hell have these people been?

But it gets worse with the socialism thing because they're emotionally convicted about the idea and they won't let it go. They argue with you about it like they know what they're talking about or something!

The Republicans effectively found something that everyone in America is totally ignorant about, and they filled it up with fear, and pointed it at this issue. There simply is no reasoning with that. No amount of fireside chats are going to bring people around to thinking about it differently. They've been fighting communists for generations and if this is communism they don't want it and they don't want to talk about it. If there is no room for dialog, we can't have one.

RE: Healthcare "debate"