The health-care play by play I'd love to hear

If politics is football, here's the play-by-play I'd love to here.

"What a ballgame, folks!  We've had several lead changes in the fourth quarter, and now the Elephants have just called time.  They have the ball, fourth-and-goal on the Donkeys' three yard line.  Down by five.  Only seconds left on the clock.  They need a touchdown here, or it's all over."

"That's right, Bob.  The Elephants  were leading through most of the first half, when the Donkey's star runningback Kennedy got knocked out of the game.  Just before halftime, it was third-and-long, deep in Donkey territory, and it looked like the lead would hold.  But then coach Obama called a reconciliation play, which caught the Elephant defense COMPLETELY off guard, and the Donkeys were able to score on the final play of the half to take a small lead into the locker room".

"But whatever coach Boehner said to the Elephants in the locker room, it must have worked.  In the second half, the Donkeys haven't been able to move the ball at all against this stout Elephant defense.   While the elephants haven't scored either, they have slowly been moving the chains downfield, and are knocking on the door with seconds to go."

"The Donkey defense looks demoralized.  The elephants have their unstoppable fullback, Roberts on the field.  I was listening into the Elephant huddle, and Coach Boehner was telling his players that there would be no spiking of the ball if they score."

"I tell you what.  If the Elephants win this, it may finally justify all the money they spent on their new quarterback Romney.  Many fans of the team don't like him, mainly because he used to play for New England.  He's had to spend lots of time winning these fans over.  But if he can pull this off, he and the Elephants may just go all the way this year."

"If the Elephants pull this off, we may be looking at a dynasty."

"Back to the action.  The teams are at the line of scrimmage, Romney under center.  Donkey's loaded up to stop the run.  Here's the handoff from Scalia, he gives it to Roberts up the middle...."

"FUMBLE! He fumbled the ball!  There's bedlam on the turf!  OH MY GOD, Ginsburg scooped up it up and is running the other way!  They're not going to catch her!  Fifty!  Forty!  Thirty!  Twenty! Ten...  TOUCHDOWN!  The horn sounds!  And the game is OVER!   It's all over!"

"Incredible.  Can you believe THAT?  On the most important drive of the game, Elephant fullback John Roberts--the man known to football fans 'round the country as the Chief Justice, and the centerpiece of the team's offense--DROPS THE BALL!  And then Ginsburg--the oldest player on the field, she turns EIGHTY next year--outran everybody for a touchdown at the other end!"

"She's pretty spry for someone of her age, you gotta admit!

"Incredible.  Just amazing.  The Donkey's on the sideline just dumped a bucket of Gatorade on Coach Obama's head!  Many of the Elephant's fans are throwing garbage on the turf, and some of them are shouting obscenities at an obviously dejected Roberts.  Scalia and Ginsburg are shoving each other at mid-field.  And look at that--one of the Donkey players, Gaspard, I think it is, is taunting the Elephants on the field.  That would be worth fifteen yards, but the horn's already sounded!"

"Amazing.  We'll be back for the post-game reactions, right after this."

A tale of two graphs

I was going to write a longer article on this subject, but I decided to be brief this time.  (And #$!#$ Blogger swallowed my post).  Here are two graphs showing the historical costs, over the past forty years, for two things which Americans buy a lot of:

Here's gasoline (per gallon, in 2012 dollars--image courtesy zFacts).

And here's per capita healthcare costs, also in today's dollars (image courtesy Media Matters):

The fluctuating costs of one of these things are treated as a Grave Political Crisis by the vast majority of the US polity, including political actors who normally prefer to leave such matters to the Hidden Hand™--even though, in real dollars, prices are only about double what they were before supply shocks started to hit.  The other is frequently regarded as something that we dare not do something else, lest we start down the Slippery Slope to Socialism--even though the price that Americans pay for it has increased by a couple orders of magnitude.


Which is which, and why, is left as an exercise for the reader.