March 15th, 2010

UNIVERSAL HEALTH FEAR

The American health care system is not broken.

Find another person anywhere willing to say that publicly.

The most often repeated refrain of the last year, as changes to America’s health care system have been debated, has been “everyone agrees something must be done (about health care)”

Count me amongst the group of non-everyones.

As with all institutions, I have my own personal wish-list of things I would like to see changed. For example, I would like to see the NFL change its’ overtime rule, the way instant replay is used and its’ salary cap policy. Those changes which I would ardently fight for, however, do not in any way represent the opinion that the league is broken beyond repair.

I would like to see United States’ Supreme Court Justices serve only 12 year terms, as opposed to life-long appointments, but that doesn’t mean that I believe “something must be done to completely overhaul the Supreme Court.”

I really wish that Costco would adopt the policy of Sam’s Club and open at dawn on Saturday mornings for its’ premium members so that I could shop for bulk items in peace; yet that doesn’t mean that I believe Costco is on the brink of bankruptcy.

The American health care system, despite all attempts to twist statistics to the contrary, is the finest, most elite care on the planet. Keep your bogus numbers about “infant mortality rates,” which represent foreign countries’ dishonesty as opposed to America’s non-existent health crisis, and look no further than behavioral evidence. The history of the last century is littered with non-Americans who came or died trying to come to America for its health care; for its quality of health care.

To my wish list; I would like to see pre-existing conditions removed as a reason for health insurance companies to turn down patients. I would also like to see extensive and legitimate malpractice reform, the ability to buy insurance across state lines and government subsidized, privately run clinics in challenged neighborhoods. We should also begin refusing health care to illegal immigrants and find a way to allow less privileged citizens to acquire insurance if they want it, and we should never, ever mandate anyone to have it.

My changes, along with other great ideas about how to slowly turn about the behemoth tanker that is American healthcare are rooted in common sense and the understanding that no government anywhere, ever has ever done anything to make anything better ever for anyone. Conversely, humans everywhere have benefitted from the never ending ability, drive, passion and creativity of the American citizen. If we simply place more power in the hands of the people, adjoined by proper regulation, the minor changes needed to vastly improve our health care system will occur.

Instead, though, health care is being treated as a motorboat that can be turned on a dime, which is lunacy. It’s also unnecessary.

America’s health care system is not broken; America’s entitlement system is broken.

Health care is nothing more than the symptom of the disease. We have become a people of hands-out. In other words, anytime we want anything, we extend our hands out and ask “where’s mine?” From Social Security to Medicare to Welfare to endless unemployment benefits to food stamps, WIC, and everything in between we have created a nation where in some cases, entire lives are spent being subsidized by the ever dwindling group of us who work hard and demand to take care of only ourselves.

The American health care system is not spiraling out of control; America is.

If we were to stop making promises to working people in their 30s that we have no intention or financial means to keep, if we were to demand more of our citizens and each other and less of our government, if we were to immediately remove the never ending list of restrictions in place between us and our own prosperity, put there as a means of protecting us from ourselves, we would thrive, prosper and flourish as a nation to the tune of being able to provide top quality health care to anyone who wanted it. This, unfortunately, is a pipe dream rooted in the basis that we would be willing to accept years of pain, hardship and some human suffering to turn the tanker that is America around and point it back in its rightful direction. We are neither prepared for, nor capable of, that challenge as a nation. We remain scared, frightened, timid and in need of a helping hand in order to accomplish the most basic thing in life, taking care of ourselves. There is no need for universal health care; we have already achieved universal fear and with that comes a society that looks elsewhere for protection. A scared society is a lost one; one in need of great courage, sacrifice and leadership. As the person who loves his nation as much as anyone else, I want to believe it’s in us and it’s out there…but I’m still looking.