How Can A Boiler Explosion Instruct Health Care Reform?

FATAL EXPLOSION IN CLAIFORNIA (sic):
"Three are killed and scores injured when a boiler explodes beneath a drug store and a dress shop in San Jose, California. Customers, counters and merchandise are hurled through a huge hole torn in the floor of the drug store; both shops are completely wrecked."

As we learn from the newsreel description (http://www.buyoutfootage.com/pages/titles/blacktype/pd_nr_titles/pd_newsreels63_003.html) a fatal boiler explosion occurs when the engineers' assumptions underlying the plans used to design the boiler were wrong but in their arrogance, the designers failed to question their calculations' validity, when the implementation was faulty, when the specifications were not precise leaving room for serious error, when the boiler was operated at too high a pressure, when the maintenance crew did not check safety valve operation at frequent intervals, when the operators of the boiler assumed that the safety valve would blow off steam at time of need, and when no person involved in the premises in which the boiler is located conceives of a fatal explosion, and so no reasonable emergency plans are made.

When I read the economic justification for Obama's health reform, I my impression was that the economists' calculations were grounded on uncertain speculation, that the outcome was determined before the analysis was done, that there was a lack of specificity, and that the risks of disaster if the analysis is used as a justification for proceeding, are too high and too dangerous for a great many Americans who have or will develop serious health problems and will be unable to secure appropriate care under the high-pressure Obama reform package.

A "plan" that does not reference serious ethical issues, is not a plan. A "plan" that doesn't discuss hard issues concerning our need to provide high quality care to all, is not a plan. A "plan" that damages the most vulnerable workers in the United States, hourly health care workers, and decimates their ranks in an unrealistic expectation that saving money on their wages and benefits, will provide the springboard for the massive employment growth strangely predicted by the economic analysis suggests not a plan, but a major group-think disorder. A "plan" that does not confront the concrete reality of people being unable to purchase the drugs prescribed for them because they can't afford them (even at Walmart), is wishful thinking.

Watch out for a fatal explosion when high pressure reform, unrealistically generated, lays waste to our health care system and to those who depend on ethical high quality health care in order to live another day. But beware, the economists' gauges are faulty so you may not be warned until it is too late.