The Poor You Will Have with You Always Especially if you can make sure they stay that way. Liberal Party policy seems intent on punishing the poor for being poor. The latest float: a co-pay for doctor visits. This doesn’t seem so controversial at first glance, but when you consider it in the overall context it demonstrates just how far market-based economics reaches into LNP policy. This is a political party that believes all the wrong lessons Tony Abbott has learned from the Jesuits: To him who has, more shall be given, for example. Along with the approved rate rise in private medical insurance cover, the highest in seven years, it’s clear that this government, like the Howard government before it, is intent on the elimination of Medicare. Private cover is, effectively, mandatory. If you don’t have private cover, you pay a tax surcharge, on top of the Medicare tax itself, and the longer you wait to take out private cover, the higher the penalty and premiums. Effectively, even though we have Medicare, everyone has to pay additional. And private cover, like in the US, pays out very little on claims, especially on anything that can be deemed elective, such as doctor visits. This year’s rate increase is already sending people to their insurance providers to adjust their deductibles, which means an increase in out-of-pocket costs. Meanwhile, the number of doctors who bulk-bill has and continues to shrink, which means that poor people already have less access to health care, and this would only be exacerbated by requiring even a small co-pay. The Liberals hate Medicare. They use it. They benefit from it. They hate it. They hate it because it was, by far, the most successful Labor policy initiative of all time. They hate it because it means that they have to pay for someone else’s benefit. They hate it because it helps the poor. They won’t say it, but it’s true. They’ll say: “personal responsibility,” as if getting sick was a character flaw, and they’ll say that until it’s them that’s ill and needs help. Of course, if they do get sick, they’ll go to their doctor and pay for it, go to the hospital and get a private room and jump the public queue and pay for it – if they can. The irony is that many of the public who support the LNP are, in fact, poor and middle class and will struggle or be unable to meet the expenses of private cover. They will, in fact, go to bulk-billing doctors and be admitted to public hospitals. What drives their thinking is merely selfishness and delusion.

TV & DVD I didn't get into watching Breaking Bad right off, so ended up watching the whole thing on DVD. Now that I've caught up with the rest of the world, I can finally talk about it. This has to be the best show ever. Well, o.k., sure, there were other shows out there that at the time were the best show ever, like Buffy or Hill Street Blues, and nobody can deny how far The Simpsons has penetrated the zeitgeist. But Breaking Bad was so enthralling, even as you knew it shouldn't be. I don't know that I'll watch it through again, now that I know how it all comes out, but if an episode is running when I'm scrolling through the channels, I'm likely to linger. Update O.k., so, in response to the comment received, why is this so good? Well, there are no extraneous characters for one thing. Across the entire season, everybody ties in, serves a purpose, either in the plot overall - and from beginning to end - or in pushing the character development of the majors. Take the tweaker friends who hang around Jesse; by the end they still drive the plot and Walt's character forward, although in Walt's case, backward may be more appropriate, since they are now contributing to a kind of redemption. The structure of the episodes is also very tight; even the less cliff-hanging endings still are cliff-hanging enough to make you want to know what happens next, and season-ending episodes more so. The idea that this is a show that somehow celebrates a descent into evil misses the point. Yes, Walt does in fact go, like Michael Corleone, deeper and deeper in, and although some of the more heinous acts are committed by others they are often committed on his behalf, whether directed or not. But what's fascinating about this is the way he clings, at least initially, to the idea that his actions harm no one who would not otherwise have been harmed. The meth-heads would still have been meth-heads; he just gives them quality, and helps his family as a result. Drug dealers and higher-ups get killed, but that's the life they chose and they deserve it, don't they? Unlike Walt, he justifies to himself, that is. And Walt's development as a character is mirrored, in different ways, by his wife, his brother-in-law, and his partner-in-crime, each having an arc equally fascinating to watch, and sometimes devastating. There are the drug cartels, the lawyers who practice to the letter of the law but not its spirit, the easy marks, the easy money, the police taking shortcuts and the police doing the hard yards. And there's the society in which it takes place and the politics, at least implied, that have gotten us there. So, tightly drawn characters and plots over a short timeframe, with insights that can be applied in a variety of socio-political real-life issues. What's not to like?