Another Impasse?

Steve Benen saves the best for last in his review of Orszag's performance on Meet the Press:

Who gave media anchors the idea that insurance companies reflexively approve payments on everything?

There's certainly an odd perception of a lot of things about health care that seems to go on in Washington. I say that as one who's fairly uneasy with the sausage-making process in Congress creating a better set of rules for the industry to play by, but I also tend to agree with Benen that health care is already rationed in terms of what insurance covers. I'd add the characterization that it's rationed by people who have it very much in their interest to say "no" more often than not. If there's more of a cause to have a public entity with something closer to a public interest adding their two cents, I'd think this is high on the list. But I guess it just comes down to whether being pro-business takes precedence over being pro-life.

There's good reason to question the bills moving forward on health care. To me, it's a classic case of something being far better in the general sense than it could ever be in the specific sense. I realize that doesn't exactly solve the very legitimate problems with the health care industry, the insurance industry, the pharma industry ... and more importantly, the problem of people being one illness away from impoverishment because of the failings of one or more of those industries.

The inability of having politicians who generally rely on big-money donors isn't exactly conducive to getting any desired result in reforming the nature of these industries. It's, in large part, that frustration that leads me to agree with Michael Porter's thesis that "[t]he only way to truly reform health care is to reform the nature of competition itself."

ADD-ON: Right as I hit "submit," Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill tweets:

Bill that came out of Health Comm in Senate: dozens of hearings, Hundreds of hours of work, includes 161 amndmts offered by Republicans.

Call me cynical, but somehow I don't see the final bill getting many votes from the people adding the amendments. And even if it did, does the prospect of 161 amendments (plus any Dem amendments) really sound terribly promising for any bill covering such a massive issue? (a point which suggests even more cynicism on my part than the first point might have ... meh!)