OK. Let us use our Noggins here... Why doesn't the government skip this farce and extend unemployment "benefits" indefinitely? Why not make them permanent? If you lose your job, don't worry... we got you covered. You NEVER need to work again, nor experience any of that unpleasant stress that comes with any consequences for your decisions or the vagaries of bad luck.
After all, if you are going to pay people not to work for 2 years, why not 5, or 10? What kind of society are we that we would stop paying people after any period, no matter how long, that they are "out of work".
This is all part of the Washington Blame Game. Its also part of the "I feel your pain" politics that worked so effectively for Bill Clinton. Take a hard look at the healthcare debate. The folks in favor of the nationalization of the healthcare system frame the debate as them being for providing care for poor Americans and the folks agains it just don't care about the American people.
Who WOULDN'T want perfect and free healthcare for the American people? The question the adult side of the debate was asking was: "How are we going to pay for it"? The other side's response? We'll take away the profits from those filthy and disgusting insurance companies.
OK. Here is where I, as a responsible adult, break out the dreaded calculator. If I add up ALL, ALL!... of the profits of the health insurance industry, it totals less than 5% of U.S. healthcare industry. I often hear 33%. Well, REVENUES paid to insurance companies (that are then paid out/passed through to healthcare providers) are roughly 28%, but you would still need most of this overhead structure unless you planned completely free healthcare services with NO ONE doing any clerical or administrative work on the data whatsoever... if you accept that, then the most you could save would be the 5% profit (but you would have to subtract the taxes paid on those profits).
So what's the real deal? Boy, you are really not going to like this. I don't like it either. The real deal is just too unpleasant and too "Life's Unfair" for the multitude of over-the-hill teenagers. Healthcare will eventually be rationed. I don't know what form or how it will come down, but it is very much like having 10 people trapped in an underground cave with the cave only having enough oxygen for 9 to survive. If we attempt a rescue, the equipment will consume oxygen sufficient to keep 4 people alive. We don't know who is going to perish, but we know with certainty that someone has to go. And, no, I do not presume to play G-d.
Our system is incapable of working with parameters such as these (except when we need to kill thousands of non-Americans over Oil or some other "National Interest"); the Blame Game will simply continue, and anybody that questions the veracity of the numbers will be ridiculed as a mean spirited, unenlightened, compassionless, racist, bible thumping, (fill in the Blank), Republican.