Guaranteed Healthcare

For anyone not interested in slogging through the debate on the 500-odd amendments to the Baucus bill, it has become increasingly and painfully apparent that the healthcare legislation soon to emerge from at least the Senate will fall far short in reigning in out of control health care costs.

That lapse is especially ironic in that "affordability" is perhaps the only goal that seems to top everyone's to do list, from President Obama to the "keep the government hands off my (government-financed) Medicare" crowd.

But as long as our policy makers refuse to throw the elephant out of the room, the insurance company pirates and their predatory pricing practices,  all their subsidies and tweaking will amount to little more than an umbrella in a hurricane.