How do you solve a problem?

Somewhat famously, Pres. Obama stated that the healthcare issue in the United States was a test to see if Americans could still solve big problems. The problem he was referring to is that healthcare costs a relatively high percentage of our GDP. This is money that could otherwise go to reinvigorating infrastructure, educating children, our buying a new stand mixer for every kitchen in the country.

If that was the problem, what have we, as a Nation, solved? According to what I hear on the news, nothing. What we did do, according to the news, is try a socialist takeover of the country, skewed the marketplace, gave a windfall to drug companies (if the reporting is on Network A), screwed the drug companies and innovation (if the reporting is on Network B), or a whole bunch of other stuff. None of what is reported on answers the question “how do we stop spending money on healthcare so we can spend it on other items?” If we’re not answering that question, why report it?

And here is my hang-up for today: there isn’t enough news to fill a 24 hour news cycle. There is more than enough stuff that happens to talk incessantly for 24 hours, babbling like the idiot in the back seat that insists on reading every billboard and road sign to you as you drive down Interstate 94 toward Chicago… but that isn’t news, is it?

Our country’s legislature just came back from a break. Over that break, on every newscast on any network talked at length about the Republican desire to overturn the healthcare bill. That was a month. One whole month of talking about what a group of people wanted to do. They were contemplating, planning and scheming on how to do it. But they couldn’t. Why? Congress was not in session, that’s why! We talked for a full month for a brief period every hour in the 24 hour news cycle about something that people wanted to do.

In that time, we kept fighting a war in the Middle East.