is it too much?

I look at the health care debate from a practical angle, as a business owner. In doing so, I can skip past the part where the conversation would lead me to ask, incredulously, "Why would anyone not want others to have this?" I have numerous friends and acquaintances I respect with whom I would differ on this topic, philosophically. We are wired differently.

What I simply don't get is why the entire business community, other than the medical insurance lobby, obviously, isn't DEMANDING a rational argument and a national health plan. One that would offer an option for a public policy that would be a viable and regulated alternative to the system right now.

The medical industry represents 15% of our GNP. The next nearest industrialized country spends about 6%. How can I compete with that? If it is simply logical that my co-workers and staff need to be healthy, and that therefore I need to supply them with the funds to buy health insurance, and this insurance is rising by many multiples of the cost of living, then it would seem the system is broken, and by looking at systems that aren't (the German, the Swedish, even the French, for God's sake,) we could possible learn something.

I've been blessed with some great staff and subcontractors at the Vermont Street Project. I'm dismayed by how many are not covered by health insurance. It's a bad way to run a country. And now it looks like the public option, first weakened to a level of insipidness, is now off the table entirely. Score another for big insurance.