Just what the bean counters ordered

If you want a bean counter's view of life, I suggest you go back and re-read U.S. Rep Jason Altmire's op-ed piece last Friday "Why I Voted No on Health Reform."

What is striking about this is what it is not - a rousing argument addressing the moral imperative to do something for the 46 million or so Americans who don't have health insurance. For Jason Altmire, it is all about the cost - and to heck with raising a clarion call for suffering people.

He wants to slow the growth of health-care spending - me too! - and build a system that "focuses on quality of care, rather than simply quantity of care." I can only assume the quantity of care he refers to is the miserable 46 million. To heck with them, eh? Apparently, we need quality care before the quantity they represent are addressed.

To be fair, he says that if these two goals are met, we can "greatly reduce the number of Americans without health-insurance coverage." Frankly, I don't believe that. I might believe it if he had shown me just a glimmer of a heart, a sense that the whole point of health-care is to address a moral wrong.

Instead, for him, it's all about those beans. He seems to thinks everybody is happy when the accountants are happy. I have never read a more shallow and anemic defense of a political action in my life.

What a prescription for change: Take two beans and see me in the morning.