Trying to Fix Health Care: The Only Adults in the Room

A year before my father died his kidneys failed and while he was hospitalized I offered to be tested for compatibility as a kidney donner.  Not only did Dad refuse the offer most vociferously, he had his doctor call me to tell me why that would not—ever—be considered.  The fact is my father was dying and my kidney would buy him only a small amount of time with little increase in quality of life.  On the other hand, I was a 43-year-old woman with a full-time job and young children to raise.  It would make a huge impact on my life and only a marginal one on his.  Even I had to agree to the sense of that.   

Good health care involves the same hard choices and sensible thinking.  Unfortunately, the Democrats in Washington want us to think that all health care is made up of histrionics.  In truth, all decisions pertaining to life and death contain some element of a cost/benefit analysis.  Think that sounds cold?

How many times each month do you cross a train track?  If every one of those tracks, everywhere across this country were surmounted with an overpass there would never be a train/car collision.  So why don’t we do that?  I can hear you now saying that would be ridiculous.  What you really mean is it would cost too much and people just need to be observant of trains.  They are an avoidable problem.  Yet, every year some car is hit by a train and lives are lost.  So life and death decisions do have a cost/benefit analysis. 

Obamacare lovers want us to believe it is all about taking care of the less fortunate.  It is not.  It is a thinly disguised attempt at socialized medicine.  Every problem associated with health care could have been solved with legislation that supported individual choice and free enterprise. 

If you want coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, pass a law saying that you can’t be turned down for them and they must be offered for no cost above those on a similar plan.  Then tack on a provision that for every 0.5% of total clients a company has that fit “high risk” or “pre-existing” conditions that the company can reduce its tax burden by the same amount.  Companies would be fighting for high risk clients.

If you want small businesses or individuals to be insured for minimal amounts by pooling small groups into large ones offer a tax incentive to companies to create those pools.  But while you are at it, why not introduce a modicum of personal responsibility.  We know that personal choice impacts health.  If you are a smoker, a drug user, obese because you eat too much and exercise too little then you should have to pay more.  Children need to be cared for, but why have more than you (not the tax payers) can afford?  

Congress should create legislation, not a welfare state.

The point is, the current health mandate commonly called Obamacare is a political, not an altruistic effort.  Its failings were one of the myriad reasons Clinton couldn’t defeat the worst Presidential candidate the Republicans have ever fielded.  Unfortunately, the lathered left is still in its foot-stomping, “I’m holding my breath until I get my way” mode.  If they refuse to deal with reality, that leaves the Republicans as the only adults in the room.  Maybe what the Dems need to do start “resisting” is  petulance. 

Right now, I am angry at everybody, but I keep the faith.