Missed Opportunity

A nugget from Krugman's piece in today's NY Times.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again.

Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.

It seems we've learned nothing from Reagan. Or even from the collapse from which we're still digging out. Government = Bad, Business = Good? C'mon, people, let's pull our heads out. A public option has to be part of this plan, or, quite simply, the bad guys win. Insurance companies will continue to call the shots and dictate the terms of our health care system. We will continue to treat health care as a commodity, not as a right.

Politicians are fond of saying that no one in this country should go broke because they get sick. But no one's willing to do anything about the fact that people do go broke when they get sick because, when it comes down to it, you can always go to the ER.

This kind of thinking is what got us where we are today. And it'll eventually drive us into a hole we can't get out of.