Variation on a theme
We seem to have a theme: meaningful government activism at the state, not federal, level. I'd cite my own preceding two or three posts. Then, this morning, the Little Rock paper put on the front page a national wire service piece about how governors and legislatures across the country are kicking tail and taking names while Democrats in Congress try to figure out what to do after their hundred-hour consensus. Our boy Beebe gets a mention in this national story for proposing to take down the grocery tax and expand pre-kindergarten. It may be that, in the morning, I'll columnize on how George W. will propose in his State of the Union that the states please expand health coverage, like Arnold, a Republican, proposes in California and Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, boasts of having done in Massachusetts. I'm telling you: There's something transpartisan percolating out there about expanding availability of health insurance and getting some kind of handle on the costs. As our country ages with Baby Boomers reaching retirement and moving into a Medicare system that includes a drug benefit, and as we keep expanding Medicaid to take in people and children increasingly above the poverty level, and as the VA continues to serve all our military personnel, and as states offer themselves as laboratories of democracy, as someone called them — well, we're going to look up in fifteen years and be closer to universal health care than we realized.