John Scalzi thinks all that’s wrong with Kansas is that a couple of wingnuts snuck into power, and when everyone realizes what wackos are in charge, they’ll be voted right out again. By all that is Noodly, and … er … Appendagey, I sincerely hope that this is true.

Last night Greta and I tried to sort through her employer’s new health care plan choices. Choice 1 was the same old plan, only costing us more money. Choice 2 was a “health savings account.” I’ve talked about how much I hate these things before, but heck, if it saves us money in the long run, I suppose I’m game.

Now … how to figure out if it saves us money in the long run … let’s see, what are the premiums on this thing? (flips through the literature we’ve been sent, describing a number of different scenarios) Premiums? I don’t see any mention of premiums. There’s something about an “underlying health care plan.” Is the underlying plan any different from what we’ve got now? Damned if I can figure it out. Maybe the health savings account is just an add-on to our regular coverage. Other than that, there’s no choice. Woohoo! We get to sock money away in case we get sick some day! Isn’t “choice” great? Or maybe there’s more to it than that. In the end we just signed up for the same old (but more expensive) plan. Why should we be “saving” when we have no idea how much we’ll be paying out-of-pocket in the future?

Kevin Drum has a great post on how conservatives are now advocating portable health care plans — so that individuals don’t have to worry about employers suddenly shifting health care options, or losing health coverage during a period of unemployment.

Drum thinks this is a great idea, but wonders why they don’t take it one step further and advocate a national health care plan. He suspects it’s because people don’t like the idea of giving health care as handouts to welfare cheats. The irony here is, of course, that we already give health care to the poorest Americans — an impoverished person need only head to the nearest emergency room for care. The hospital’s not going to turn them away, and you can’t get broker than broke, so there’s no worry of these people being forced to pay later on.

The people who really get hurt by lack of a national health care plan are the middle class — the people with something to lose. When they lose health coverage due to a lost job, or whatever, and then suffer an illness, they can lose everything. As Drum points out, we should be marketing national health care to these people, not the poorest of the poor.