Healthcare: Not Defining Our Terms

But what truly makes this topic the pundits' dream is that we don't actually know what we're talking about. And we can admit it because neither does anyone else. A single payer plan is easy to explain and understand: Medicare for everyone. Love it, hate it, call it socialism or social justice, we know what it means. It is also irrelevant being off the table.

However, a "public option" means, uh, well, I don't really know. I suppose that "public" really means government, and thus a public option is the government doing well, uh, something. Good, bad, socialist? I don't know. Now go to "Co-op," and definitions get yet murkier. Are buyers merging to get leverage with insurance companies? Are insurance companies going non-profit to attract market share? Are co-ops different from other health insurers that are not for profit like some Blue Shield groups and Kaiser? If so, why haven't our current not for profit systems brought costs down and competed with the for profit insurers?

The whole healthcare conversation has been a farce. Obama and Hillary in primaries argued about whose plan would cover more people. It was vapor. No one thought that a plan would be taken or rejected in whole. We knew that the great grinders of sausage making would chew it up and spit out what the money people wanted. So now we debate a plan that is not a plan. At least four bills in the House and one in the Senate--and we don't know what, if anything, will come out, be reconciled and become law.