Well I as a business person with some 70 employees bought into the health care hype (as I did into the outlines for reform to our immigration laws and law enforcement). It enouraged me to volunteer for some hundred hours at Obama headquarters in Chicago during the primaries and register voters in Benton Harbor and give lots of money to the Obama campaign and Howard Dean’s DNC.

While the issue of the war was important too – the prospects of us getting into a third war (despite the Iran sabre rattling among the villagers and neocons) seemed low. And Obama’s speech before the 2004 election in the Dirksen Federal Building plaza decrying stupid wars suggested this would not be a danger on his watch. Now civil liberties that was important too but we were sure a constitutional law professor, whose family comes from a history of persecution in the United States as African Americans, would act on his words that the rule of law was important. But I don’t see Guantanamo closing in my lifetime and I find it risible that anyone, let alone the Administration, could take seriously attacks on its decision to arrest the Christmas Day would be bomber when the shoe bomber was arrested and tried those many years ago in a civilian court. OK I am unhappy as a progressive but as a businessman Health Care Reform was a no brainer. No brainer.

Sure there were different ways to get there but the objectives of universal coverage and lowering costs to our economy were supposed to be paramount. Somewhere along the way health care reform became a TARP for the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Now I am a small businessman who has seen ups and downs because of changes in the marketplace and changed consumer attitudes and just because of change. That is life. It makes business exciting and terrifying and rewarding when you can keep a lot of people on the payroll while providing useful goods and services to the public.

What I don’t want is national monopolies, state socialism by another name, wrapped up in progressive or nationalistic flounce. That is what our country is coming to because of both Democratic and Republican policies. That is why progressives should marry up with libertarians to truly clean out the Augean stable that is Washington. Health care is one of the biggest offenders – an oligopoly funded by tax subsidies which can game the national and state capitals to its advantage purely for the proift of its collective executariat. The results are poor health care outcomes, a huge tax on every business in America that chooses (or was forced by unions) to provide health care, doctors in all the wrong places but with a jeweled health care delivery system for the elites (kind of reminds me of the Kremlin).

So how could have health care been reformed?

- Medicare could have been opened to all.
- Health insurance could have been made portable and not job related by giving every American a voucher for health insurance and removing the ability of businesses and unions to provide health care with tax subsidies. Then the consumer would have controlled the market so long as the government enforced minimum health insurance coverage that every insurer would have had to provide to any would be policy holder. And wealthier Americans would have effectively had the voucher amount taxed back from them so that the system would work fiscally. This would have provided equal buying power all over the country and thus have caused the market to locate doctors and medical facilities where the customers are. And if people wanted to buy extra coverage from insurers they could do so (for elective abortions, viagra, Lasik surgery, plastic surgery, etc.), while those who couldn’t afford more than the basic plan could rely on charity for those procedures too hot for government funded insurance (such as abortions)

The point was to shift the country’s health care delivery system so that it delivers to all peoples a minimal quality level of service. And the tie of immigration reform is that if we had immigration reform we could have engineered a way for including undocumented peoples to receive health care too (after all most undocumented workers use fake social security numbers to contribute payroll and federal and state taxes into the system and a government that acknowledged their existence could have recovered the cost of health insurance from these people too).

Sure I am not a supposedly typical businessperson who walked in step with Republicans every time they promised me lower taxes and the prospects of owning multiple homes, a yacht, many cars and memberships to golf courses everywhere. I like the public sphere. I like roads, telecommunications, a power grid, the protection of personal liberties and property rights by the public sphere, parks, public schools, and communities without gates. I like being in a nation of well nourished and clothed and educated people. So no I was not a "I got mine" republican ever.

On the other hand I did not think that the Obama Administration would so quickly be infiltrated by the "I got mine" interests in Washington. That is why I have told Tim Kaine to go take a hike every time he asks me for money. That is why I don’t really care if Mark Kirk becomes the next senator from Illinois (as opposed to the oily, silver spoon in his mouth, smarmy, Blago 2.0 the Democrats are fielding). I am not a revolutionary but apparently in America it has to get a lot worse to have a chance to get better. Rahm Emanual said something about never letting a crisis go unused. Well the way he has handled the economic crisis the President inherited shows how effing retarted he is by his own standards, unless of course the President never meant to provide our nation with universal, efficient and affordable health care.