Neon golden like all the rest

Well, I needed a reason to not vote for John Kerry and I think I have plenty. One is the insulting letter that Nancy Pelosi sent me, which contained a "George W. Bush Disapproval Poll," with questions like "Jobs. Since George W. Bush took office, over 2 million American jobs have been lost. How would you grade President Bush's record on jobs?" and "Prescription Drugs. President Bush supported a Repbulican bill that prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prescription drug prices from the pharmaceutical companies. How would you grade President Bush on reducing the price of prescription drugs for seniors?" Fortunately, for those with trouble deciphering whether they should give Bush a high or low grade on these topics, Pelosi made it easy: "If you give George W. Bush grades of A or B, then I have bad news: First, you are a Republican. Second, the Democrats are going to win in November."

Second reason: Paul Krugman says I should vote for John Kerry. That's downright frightening. I won't say Paul doesn't mean well (because I assume he does) and I won't say he's always wrong (because he's not), but I'm afraid I just don't understand the logic behind this sentence (from this article):

"John Kerry's economic advisers have a very different analysis: they believe that health costs are too high because private insurance companies have excessive overhead, mainly because they are trying to avoid covering high-risk patients."

I hope, I really hope, that that's not an accurate representation of what John Kerry's economic advisors think. Because it simply doesn't make sense to me. Healthcare costs are too high because of excessive overhead, which is caused by... the mountains of paperwork and inefficient bureaucracies dedicated to avoiding high-risk patients? Ok, that's a tiny bit plausible, but apparently the solution which these economic advisors have come up with is... creating a government bureaucracy to make it more efficient. That's mind-boggling. I'm actually a bit of a fan of universal healthcare (of a limited sort -- mainly to establish a baseline of preventative care that would go a long ways towards cutting down on the amount of emergency care for the uninsured that the healthcare system is currently absorbing), but the one thing I wouldn't expect government intervention into healthcare to do is reduce bureaucracy and inefficiency. He says it would (and even provides vague but impressive looking statistics to back it up... but I'm a bit skeptical).