God bless our stupid system of government

You have to love the logic that comes out of our elected betters in Washington, sometimes. While some Democrats took time out at the beginning of the health care debate to mention what they'd really prefer is single payer health care, they know it's a pip dream. For most other Senators the reaction to single payer was NOFUCKINGNOSOCIALISMSTALINCOMMUNISMNOOOO!

Hell, even people like Joe Lieberman and others were deeply opposed to a public option because they thought it was a trojan horse for single payer. But now when you see one of the proposed amendments that has popular support, you find out that our senators fucking love single payer... just in a way that's completely backwards, overly complex, and makes little logical sense. To wit:

Senate leadership has pledged to allow a vote on re-importing prescription drugs from Canada as an amendment to the health care reform bill...
...
On top of the billions it would save consumers, the re-importation measure introduced by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) would save the federal government $19 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Dorgan's amendment would also bust the deal the White House cut with Big Pharma, which has vowed to kill the re-importation provision in "hand to hand combat."
...
When it does come time to vote on re-importation, however, the White House-PhRMA deal may be a bigger obstacle than Republicans. Dorgan's amendment is also championed by health care linchpin Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who pledged last weekend to work to garner other GOP votes. Republican Sens. Charles Grassley (Iowa), John McCain (Ariz.) and David Vitter (La.) are cosponsoring a bill that would do the same thing.

Yes, not only are Democrats largely supportive of re-importing drugs from the socialist single payer health care wonderland of Canada, so are several Republicans. You follow? SIngle payer is something that would mean the death of freedom here in the US, buuuuuut if Canada wants to have it that's fine and oh, by the way, can we completely piggyback off it in order to lower our crippling medical costs?

You know why Canada has lower drug prices? Because they, like every other country in the world that has lower drug prices than us, negotiate directly with drug companies on prices. So of course we'd want to take the long, convoluted path of letting them do the work and then importing their drugs instead of, say, passing a bill that allows our government to directly negotiate our drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. I mean sure, our country is much larger and with much more people and we'd be able to use our leverage to garner much lower prices than Canada, but doing so would be socialism. No, it's makes better sense to import our drugs from socialists.

Don't you love the logic of the Senate? Now do you understand why nothing good ever happens there? Good, now go pass this amendment, Senators.