9 Hours and I am Still Standing

This year just gets better and better. Yesterday, we had 9 hours of solid seminar, with views ranging from a left-wing Yale economist who favors single payor to a representative of ALL of the moneyed interests in the health care debate, who wants nothing to do with the public option. The latter was interesting; she was as pleasant as can be, and yet stood for large amounts of what we are all (I suspect) against happened. It was the most interesting exchange of the day. Mary Grealy, her name was. She came on after John Iglehart and Harvey Finberg- two of the nicest and smartest doctors in the US- representing the Healthcare Leadership Council. She spent a lot of time explaining how her group wanted to deal with the problem of the uninsured, but not by expanding public insurance, and was very interested in stories of people who were eligible for public insurance refusing it because of the stigma of "welfare". Of course, she saw nothing wrong with the stigma- her response to that was to assert that it showed the need for more private insurance in America. Sje spoke of Jacob Hacker's work as "voodoo", (Hacker is a nobel-prize winning economist who feels stringly about the plan) and really thinks that the public option is creeping socialism. Sheldon nailed it by appearing to be confused- "So, am I reading this to mean that your group supports the public option?", and her "everything's fine" manner quickly dissappeared- "Show me where it says that" in a sharp manner. The other speakers spoke more of the process- ways Fellows can get in over their heads and the like. One quote stuck with me: "You have to be cynical to survive in the Capitol. You have to use cynical means in order to achieve altruistic ends.". That sounds an awful lot like "All the King's Men". I am indeed in the right place.