Health Care Fight Is The True March Madness
Ernest Istook /
The public doesn’t trust Washington politicians—and those politicians don’t trust each other. Those two truths could doom President Obama’s health care bill even if it weren’t an unaffordable behemoth.
The final health debate merges multiple story lines into one, just as March Madness does for an assortment of college basketball teams. Some of these themes are:
–The Ugliness of Today’s Washington. Trust in elected leaders is collapsing into a hole deeper than Alice ever fell into. It deepens with every disclosure of the process. “Deeming” a bill to pass; avoiding votes to avoid accountability; buying votes with taxpayers’ money, etc. “Louisiana Purchase” and “Cornhusker Kickback” are only visible symptoms of a wayward system that long ago went amok.