Sounding Off:

What’s the big deal with this whole health-care-reform debate?

I don’t know why President Obama and his sycophants in Congress don’t simply use a page out of their own playbook that worked so well for them with the auto industry.

You know, buy a couple of car companies with our money and then pay people more of our money to buy autos via the “Cash for Clunkers” program. That’s the one where people who can actually afford new cars get to buy them now versus later and use our cash to help them do so while we destroy several billion dollars worth of perfectly good used vehicles, depriving an entire generation of little Johnnies and Suzies cheap starter cars. This forced charity for the well-to-do from the previously used-to-do-well gives me a warm and fuzzy glow all over. How about you?

All the new administration would have to do is take some more of our cash (China has plenty of it to lend!) and buy Blue Cross/Blue Shield and HealthNet and Humana and a couple of other insurance companies. And if they won’t sell, just pull a Cesar Chavez/Venezuelan-style armed hostile takeover and get on with it.

Then give half of our new public-owned insurance companies to the unions, of course. I’m recommending the Service Employees International Union, as it spent nearly $60 million getting Obama elected, and it could really use the money. Maybe give ACORN a sizable piece as well (community organizing is expensive!).

And lastly, give more money from the overtaxed to those among us without insurance to buy health coverage from those same companies. Voila! No more uninsured. And just like GM and Chrysler, if they lose money, no problem, because government- controlled entities like FannieMae and FreddyMac and Amtrak and the Post Office and Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid/-Cal don’t need to make a profit or even break even! Is America a great country, or what?

This little plan of mine would mean Obama and company could keep their grubby mitts off the health insurance that 83% of us tell the pollsters we’re happy with. After all, if you need to remodel your kitchen, you don’t start by burning down your house, do you?

CHUCK CASSITY lives in Costa Mesa.