What do you know and How do you know it?

On the way in to the office this morning there was a piece on the radio about Florida turning down $400 million dollars of Federal money because it was associated with the healthcare reform act which Florida believes is unconstitutional.  Now that is putting your money where your mouth is--go Florida.

As normal, there was quite a debate about healthcare reform, which got me to wondering.  I know for me GIGANTIC issues - such as healthcare, legal, and tax reform, and the effects of globalization - are hard to keep up with and yet there are many "experts" who claim to know what I should be doing and thinking.   

With healthcare reform specifically--Rush Limbaugh often comments that there is nothing wrong with our current system.  Now for me that is difficult to swallow given my personal experience and the projections for the impact on our economy of just Medicare costs going forward.  Simultaneously, while I have not read the entire bill the claims made by President Obama sound iffy at best too.

A related story mentioned that the Oklahoma version of Medicaid is called Sooner Care.  Whatever happened to the term WELFARE?  So the way I understand some of the recent changes are that Sooner Care "members" would be limited to 6 ER visits per year and 2 per month office visits to the doctor.  By limiting visits--hardy har--members will become more personally responsible for their health.  BTW--the hospitals all say they will not turn someone down just because they do not have any remaining visits and the costs will then be passed along to other paying customers through higher costs.  

Like big corporations are experts at tax relief and influence peddling, there are millions of citizens and businesses who are experts at working the government welfare system.  Often these big corporations are beneficiaries of the system getting worked.  It is a crazy time when many have nothing to lose and others are too big to fail.  

So maybe the question should be--for those of us in the MIDDLE who aren't too big to fail and who do have something to lose HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I KNOW?