I think we’ve reached that point in the movie where the hapless, soon-to-drown protagonist frantically abandons his lifeboat as it is drawn ever closer to the waterfall,  in the desperate but curious hope that sending the boat to its demise will stave off his own death long enough for rescue by a passing commercial steamboat. The audience has seen, however, what the protagonist has yet to recognize: that his fate was self-inflicted,  and the promised help of the steamboat will never arrive.

One wonders what the elected pilots of the good ship MA Legislature have been thinking when they first set sail on this voyage.

First there was the curious assertion by the legislature and governor that they could provide affordable and universal heath care coverage by subsidizing private insurers already imposing tsunami inducing price hikes, without ever addressing the exponentially rising costs the price hikes were supposed to cover. Ignoring the only demonstratively seaworthy vessel for affordable and comprehensive health care for all — single-payer —- the legislature charted a course for failure at the very outset of its voyage, saying it would revisit the issue of costs once they reached open water.

http://network.greenchange.org…

Once ship has started to take on water, our legislators started to bail. Ending collective bargaining in an effort to temporarily reduce their costs is only the latest attempted port of call.