'Blame Bush Not Obama' (For Our Healthcare Crisis?)

This is Monday's message was posted yesterday at Representative Loretta Sanchez's Facebook wall:

Representative Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) thanks everyone who came out to the healthcare reform town hall I hosted in Anaheim yesterday. The forum was productive and as always, I learned a lot from my constituents!

'I understand why she doesn't want the government option.'

Here's the report on the town hall from Megan Barth, who organized last friday's tea party at Congresswoman Sanchez's office, "Blame Bush Not Obama" (For Our Healthcare Crisis?)":

Well, that is what I was led to believe, for this is the first thing that I saw when entering the Loretta Sanchez Health Care Town Hall forum this Monday afternoon. One of her volunteers was proudly wearing a t-shirt emblazened with "Blame Bush, not Obama" as he was passing out leaflets to each person that entered the room. The front of the leaflet advertised "Guaranteed Healthcare for ALL with HR 676," and "One Nation. One Heath Plan for All Americans." The back of the leaflet was an advertisement for the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).

So, my first impression of this town hall forum? Outside of the blatantly obvious, I will, with civility, state, that Congresswoman Sanchez has left her Blue Dog Democrat stance and is now for "one health plan for all Americans"--regardless of the cost and consequences.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, but I still sat through the 90 minutes of her talk. She admitted that she hasn't read the bill (she has a staff for that). She repeatedly (and I need to stress repeatedly) exclaimed that healthcare was very complicated--it is a very complicated issue, and she knows, "as we all know, that if this bill passes, that there are no guarantees that it will work." Congresswoman Sanchez proceeded to be perplexed by complexities, for if healthcare isn't complicated enough, the process by which a bill is created and voted on is complicated. "Very complicated." The bill goes from the House to this committee and to that committee, and then to the Rules Committee and to this chair to that place and so on and so forth. She doesn't sit on any of these committees, we were told, but, she repeated that this "process is complicated and difficult."

She then made an analogy to baseball. Which, for me, complicated things even more.

After she answered some questions that were hand written on 3x5 cards--which she had trouble reading because she forgot her glasses (which led me to wonder why she didn't choose vision insurance under her government plan and why I was only given a leaflet), she summarily stated that she has the same insurance that everyone will have when they are able to choose from the Government Exchange (which I think is some bureaucracy in Washington DC) and she hasn't been sick in 13 years and she likes her plan. Thank you for coming.

Meeting adjourned...............................................................................................

So, in a nutshell, it's complicated. 90 minutes of my time to find out that everything is just complicated.

Exiting the town hall, swimming in all of this complication and passing by "Blame Bush not Obama," I was left to wonder this: if everything in Government is so complicated now, why should people be forced to go to some "place" called a Government Exchange for this complicated healthcare issue? Does adding a complex problem to a government, complicated process really insure us of anything except for maybe, oh, i don't know...complications??? Maybe Barack Obama summarized it best for all of us the other day when he was quoted as saying this: "we must ensure that people have choices in dealing with difficult end of life issues, we have to look at hospices as a legitimate option." Hmmm. It looks like the government is already warming up to making our "choices" for us--not only in our life, but also in our death.

Clearly, it seems that all of us people, especially the elderly, are really making all of this just so......complicated.

Leftist have cheered Sanchez's defection from the centrist "Blue Dog" coalition. See the radical Firedoglake, "Loretta Sanchez: A Blue Dog Barks Back on the Public Option."

Also, The Politico, "Waxman, Blue Dogs Strike Deal on Costs," and The Hill, "Dems at Odds on How to Turn Tide on Health." Added: From Political Punch, "Facing Blue Dog Rebellion, House Energy and Commerce Committee Cancels Markup for 2nd Day in a Row."

See also Memeorandum.

Related: Grizzly Mama, "Letter to My Representatives."