Hypocrites & Healthcare

It turns out I wasn't through hammering the AZ state legislature in last weeks rant.  This time, the hypocrisy of these wackos is too, too much.  Out one corner of their collective mouths is proposed legislation to tell cities and counties how to run their finances.  This has Phoenix, in particular, up in arms and rightly so.  Then, out of the other corner it's talk of succeeding to show the Feds they can't tell these state lunatics what to do and how to to do it while they eagerly suck up every Fed stimulus, Medicaid, highway and whatever dollar possible to balance a budget they badly mangled.   And it's not just Arizona.  The same shit is going on in Utah.  That legislature is rallying against a recent wilderness designation for federally owned land while at the same time a scumbag Repube representative wants to pass a law that allows the State to force city and county planning committees to accept development of privately owned land and screw their zoning and planning laws.  The throat jammees become the throat jammers.  No hypocrisy there.

Around the time of Archie Bunker's "the big one" (World War II), wages were frozen by the federal government as part of the war effort.   Employers were still competing for workers but could obviously not offer increased wages to get them.  So, the War Labor Board declared fringe benefits nontaxable and employer sponsored health insurance was born.  Like nearly every other dumb-ass idea that has come to roost in this country, the situation was temporary and the measures temporary.  But when the war ended and wages started to climb, it was too late.  Unions demanded that employers continue to provide tax-free health care and employers figured out a way to make it a profit center (for a while anyway).  The U.S. is the only country in the world to do this.  Why?  Because it doesn't make any sense!   The consumer of the product cannot be taken out of the fucking equation for obtaining the product.  If my employer is paying, and the federal government is subsidizing it, I don't give a shit what it costs - especially for something as personal as healthcare.  Duhhhh!!  This has been, in my humble estimation, the overriding reason for healthcare cost escalation over the decades.  It was the primary reason for the bankruptcy of General Motors, who had become one of the largest health insurance companies in the world.  The only problem was, oh yeah, they make fucking cars!  During the entire healthcare debate, not a single politician (that I'm aware of - could be wrong) brought this boondoggle up.  Well, in the next rant installment, this Frog will present the cure for this healthcare mess, and it's so simple it hurts - and it hurts right here doc.