The Consumer Option

When liberals (or most politicians in general) start losing a political fight, one of their tactics (tricks) is to change the terminology. George Lakoff, pusher of political framing, would be proud. It's like changing the war on terror to contingency operations, as that will make everything different.

The public option for health care is no longer public. It's consumer. Can you believe this? This just in from CBS:

It's not really a public option, it's a consumer option," [Speaker of the House Nancy] Pelosi said. "As we're mandating that people buy insurance we are saying to them, you have leverage, you have another choice. This is your consumer option." To back up her point, Pelosi said that the program would be self-sustaining and benefits would be paid for by premiums, not taxpayers.

First of all, I think that the federal government to mandate everyone buy health insurance is unconstitutional. But we'll probably lose that battle, ever since the Supremes ruled that social security was constitutional.

And the fact that benefits will be paid by premiums is a farce. If people currently either could afford premiums -- or if they can afford it but choose not to -- we probably wouldn't be going down this track toward socialized government health care.

The whole thing is smoking mirrors. The government can't get anything right. They need to stay out of the people's business.

As Shakespeare had Juliet say:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."