Okay, this is kind of a preview of one of my rants that I’ll be going into more detail on in our upcoming Mind of Men show.

Seems like everyone has an opinion on the healthcare bill – people are either in favor or against it.  There are numerous polls online that give you two choices – yay or nay.

My question for everyone who has an opinion – How did you get there?  Did you really read the entire 1,034 page bill?  Sections of it?  None of it?  Getting your info from all of the right wing and left wing nutjob talk shows?

I had an interesting experience yesterday – I just got my XM Sat radio subscription renewed in my car ($30 bucks for six months – why not?) and decided on my drive up to work and home to listen to the America Left and America Right talkshows that were conveniently talking about the Health care bill.   My rationale was that I have heard people say that the way they form their opinions is to listen to both sides and then figure it out.  Problem is that both sides are spewing a bunch of hooey.  I listened to both left and right commentators and could tell that none of them had actually read the damn thing.  Worse still, lots of folks were calling in with strong opinions and I could tell that none of them had bothered to read it either.

Now, in fairness, I have not had time to read it either, but have reviewed parts and when I heard one claim or another, dove into the plan to see if those claims were factual or not.  Mostly they were not.

I’m not going to tell you how to vote on this issue – not my place.  Instead, I’m going to simply ask that before you form an opinion on it and start to angrily argue it, that you make sure you are discussing points of fact rather than simply regurgitating something you heard from some idiot talking head partisan nutjob.

What I will say is that while I don’t necessarily have an opinion on whether its good or bad, what I do have an opinion on is the fact that this bill should not be rammed through too quickly.  There is a lot of fear from the President and the backers of the plan that if they don’t get it passed now, they never will.  The logic goes that they want to get it passed as far ahead of the midterm elections as possible.  Huh?

This is a huge deal for our country and deserves a lot more debate before we make any decisions we are going to regret.  Let’s face it – if our legislators take their time and pass this bill next year – and its a good bill that benefits a large segment of our population without unduly reaming another segment then they are all going to look like heroes and will sail through re-election.  If, instead, they feel that they want to get it behind them as soon as possible so that it has less of an impact on next year’s election, that tells me that they know their plan sucks and they don’t want to have to pay the piper.

So in summary, I think I may be against it, not because of what’s in the bill – I freely admit, I don’t have a good grasp on that information.  Instead, I’m against it because I think it may be a bad bill, otherwise, our legislators would not be trying to get as much distance between it and the next election.