$1,100,000,000,000 SUV

Over the weekend, you may have been astounded to discover that the Congressional Health Reform Bill had passed by a couple of votes. This, after an election day on which Americans seemed united in saying "We Hate All Of You" to every politician in the land. You may also have been surprised to see that Congress, with a little assistance from their enabling press friends, was doing fuzzy math again. The paper of Wreckord, the Times, suddenly claimed that the "reform" would cost $1.1 Trillion over ten years. They always write numbers like that, so that they look small. Let's look at the real thing: $1,100,000,000,000. That's better. Or, is it?

But, you may have wondered, as I did, how could this be? During this long saga about healthcare reform, we had been speaking of adding about $800 Billion to the deficit: $800,000,000,000. Now, actually, we all knew that number was fuzzy and its only significance was that it was it was not $1.1 Trillion or more added to the deficit. Now, we find that this is the ten year "cost of reform."

This sounds suspiciously like adding the entire cost of this reform to the deficit. In other words we are going to borrow every cent from our Asian "friends."This despite the Congressional bill's raising of more new taxes on the wealthy, whom everyone hates just for breathing, where does that go?

Whether you consider yourself to be Red, Blue or Purple, it doesn't take a genius to know that this all stinks to low heaven. This is Iraq dressed up in a surgical gown. This plan is also exactly the kind of plan that  GM loved to adopt: let's build a cost structure so high and so out of control and let's make sure that we own that cost structure forever, then let's make silly looking but huge cars. Le's pretend these sales numbers are also real forever and ....on and on. We'll lose a few teeth, but put our heads down on our Grosse Point pillows and in the morning there will be the money we need to borrow under our pillows.

Having just looked at my "open enrollment" information and seen the increases in premiums and the decreases in coverage, I confess to wanting real reform in this area. But, I cannot help thinking that we are about to build the world's biggest SUV factory, just at the moment when oil prices go through the roof, unemployment becomes pandemic, banks 'fess up to stealing everyone blind and all credit markets dry up. I would say that, if Congress was a company, it would be GM. But, it already IS GM.

That's not good. I don't want healthcare reform by GM. I want healthcare as if Google or Apple made it. People who know what they're doing.