Some of the most deliberately woodenheaded* elected officials are those in Congress and the White House. These incumbents only think of lining their pockets for their next election campaign, selling themselves to crony corporate contributors that control them. 

Elected officials are mainly either Republican right wing lunatics or Democrats who are the new Republicans. Very few Democrats have a progressive vision that encompasses the common good and the fortitude to fight for that common good.

And the health care reform issue is a perfect example of that.

The GOP hypocrites lawmakers hurl epithets like socialism while they enjoy government provided health care coverage and other benefits and multimillionaire hypocritical Democrats (the majority of seat holders in Congress) claim it's too expensive to offer government administered health care, privately delivered, to all while they also enjoy government provided benefits.

As for socialism, it already exists for members of Congress; federal employees' health care and retirement; ditto, the military and their families with government provided health care, military hospitals, base housing and PXs with cheaper food and other items, and retirement possible after 20 years service allowing for two pay checks if they get another job, which many do; then there are VA benefits like health care and hospital facilities (though the criminal Bush regime damaged the VA system).

You get the picture. 

So why is it so difficult to provide government administered, privately delivered Medicare for all, just like other industrialized have successfully provided government administered, health care for all for many decades? 

It wouldn't be.  But then, the "for profit" health care industry wouldn't be making the immoral billions in profits that they currently do by treating health care as a commodity, primarily available through employers which is another negative, and these fraudsters wouldn't be able to line politician's pockets with the same generous bribes.

Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch writes, "When it comes to reforming America’s disastrous health care “system,” there are two issues that need to be considered: access and cost.

"The so-called reform proposals being offered by the Obama White House, the House and the Senate, are failing on both counts, and deserve to die.

"No progressives should allow themselves to be suckered into promoting one or the other.

"Medicare, the health program for the elderly and the disabled, and Medicaid, the federally and state-funded program that funds medical care for the poor, together cost some $850 billion a year. Add to that the $150 billion that hospitals and local governments spend annually to cover the uninsured poor who don’t qualify for Medicaid, and the $50 billion the federal government spends for veterans’ care. That’s just over $1 trillion in government spending to cover the health care of roughly half the population of the United States.

"The rest of us—working people and our families—rely on private insurance, some of it paid for by employers, some by us, either as our share of the cost of company plans (growing every year), or as the deductible and co-pay portions of our medical bills. That privately- funded medical care costs us about $1.5 trillion a year—50% more than the government spends on the medical care for a roughly equal number of people. If you do the math, it turns out that we who rely on the private sector are spending about $10,000 per person per year on health care, either directly out of our own pockets, in the form of money our employers are paying into insurance plans for us—money that could otherwise be coming to us in the form of higher wages or lower-priced goods, or in taxes to cover the cost of treating the poor or uninsured.

"...that’s not to say such a change wouldn’t involve a tax increase. The current publicly-funded share of that $2.5 trillion bill is about $1 trillion, when you add together federal, state and local outlays, all funded by the taxpayer. An expanded Medicare that covered everyone would, by my reckoning, cost about $1.4 trillion, once all the costs were added, and the savings implemented, including lowered payments to doctors, hospitals and drug companies. So we’d have to cover an extra $400 billion a year through tax increases.

"...before you tax-rebels freak out, remember: there would be no more local revenues going to pay for uninsured care at local hospitals, no more state taxes going to pay for Medicaid for medical care for the poor, no more out-of-pocket payments by families for co-pays and deductibles and non-covered out-of-pocket charges, or for the every-growing employee share of insurance premiums. And companies would no longer be paying anything for employee health insurance. The net gain to the average person, and to the employer, would be enormous.

"That’s the point that the medical industry lobby conveniently ignores. It’s a point also conveniently ignored by the politicians that those lobbiests have bought in Washington and the White House, who only talk about the increased taxes that a single-payer government takeover of health care finance would entail, not about the savings.

"And, to get back to the beginning of this article, there would no longer be the shameful situation of Americans going without access to medical care. Everyone would be on Medicare. And not one of the costly “reform” proposals being pushed through Congress today can boast that. Every proposed “reform” plan leaves tens of millions uninsured (which of course means they're on the public dime when they finally get sick enough to be hospitalized).

"Note too that, under basic Medicare (as long as you don’t get suckered into one of those HMO privatization rip-offs like Humana and other insurance firms advertise), everyone gets to choose his or her own doctor and hospital. There is no gatekeeper system—another fake bugaboo raised by the health industry lobbyists.

"For everyone (and I would say that every member of Congress should, as in Sweden's or Norway's parliament, have to get by on that same Medicare program, which would help assure its adequate funding and level of service into the future!).

"Socialized medicine? Maybe, but it’s a socialism we already know. Call it “socialism with American characteristics,” if you like. Or to crib from a comment President Obama made to the fat cat docs at the American Medical Assn. convention recently, it’s a socialism that is “part of the American tradition.”

"So, want to have some fun? Tell your congressional delegation to demand that the Congressional Budget Office, which just came up with an estimate that the Senate’s health “reform” bill would add $1.6 trillion in costs over 10 years, do a study of what expanding Medicare to all would cost, after netting out the savings to individuals and employers of having their insurance payments and out-of-pocket health expenses eliminated."

*Woodenheaded: "The late eminent historian, Barbara Tuchman, described it as 'assessing situations in terms of preconceived fixed notion, while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs...acting according to the wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.' "