Word: systemically
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Third, more Ross Perots. Vicious-circle politics thrives because while gridlock sours the public on both parties, the out-of-government party (particularly if it's also the antigovernment party) benefits anyway. That might change were our political system filled with latter-day Perots, cranky independent candidates determined to punish both parties for not getting anything done. In the early 1990s, the original Perot combined an assault on the way government did business with a demand that it climb out of debt. Like the public itself, Perot believed there was a commonsense, nonideological way to cut the deficit, if only...
...Perots would remind Washington that although Americans disagree on lots of things, the country isn't as divided as its capital. Every four or eight years, a new President gets elected by pledging to bring the country together. And every time he fails, the pressure on our two-party system builds. When government acts to solve problems, even if the solutions aren't perfect, it breaks the vicious circle of political failure and mistrust. When it comes to health care, for example, virtually every expansion of government's role - Medicare, Medicaid, the veterans' health care system, the Children's Health...
...hope, for the sake of America's health care system and our country's ability to solve public challenges, that both Obama and congressional Republicans take advantage of this opportunity...
That trust deficit comes up in conversations with Tea Partyers everywhere. In Arlington, Va., Kevin Murphey said he would love to see a better health care system but has no confidence that the government can deliver one. "I can't trust them, and we can't afford it. They haven't proven to me that they can do anything efficient," he said. Murphey's recent Tea Party meeting consisted of just five guys in a bar, but that's not so bad for Arlington, home of the Pentagon. Protesting Big Government in Arlington is like disdaining microchips in San Jose...
...Anthem Blue Cross kerfuffle. "BIG insurance rate increases and MORE coming," wrote Gibbs, who said that such increases would serve as the "backdrop" for a bipartisan health care summit scheduled for Feb. 25. There, the Democrats will argue that without a massive, federal overhaul of the health care system and insurance market, costs will continue to rise dramatically and unpredictably for consumers. In addition, Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has launched an investigation into Anthem Blue Cross's parent company, WellPoint, and asked it to provide everything from internal e-mails about rate...