It Won't Work Here

No doubt, our health care system needs improvement. Health care in America is way too expensive. Over the years there have been many calls for reform. I too agree that reform is long overdue.

If I were to reform health care, I would talk with people in the industry. I would listen to their ideas. I would then ask them to put something together that makes sense. Some of it I already know first hand. I know that in India I can get first class medical care at one-tenth of what it would cost me here in America. I know that one reason for this is competition. If I think an Indian doctor is charging too much, I simply go to another. A second reason for the high cost of health care in America is the high premiums doctors (and medical staff in general) must pay for liability insurance. A fix in this part of the equation would involve the thorny issue of tort reform. I am convinced that this, coupled with some version of patient-controlled medical savings accounts, would solve the lion’s share of our medical insurance problems.

Karl Marx was once to have said, "First you socialize medicine and everything else follows like night follows day." Whether or not this quote is accurate, or even if it can be attributed to Marx is not the issue. Significant is that the quote exists and has likely found itself into various socialist catechisms. Additionally, it is also likely that Barack Hussein Obama (who has never been known to be a stickler for exactitude) is profoundly aware of it. At any rate, our star-crossed president is acting as if he believes it.

In a nutshell, I would suggest that health care can be fixed by taking the advice of professionals and proceeding reasonably and incrementally towards a solution. Obama, on the other hand is looking to ‘fix’ health care by taking an entirely ideological approach. As such, this would not necessarily require expertise. All he would need to do is to pass into law a loose framework that remains open to interpretation. It must be remembered that, in Obama’s mind, the goal is not to fix health care. The goal is control. The clue that this is indeed this administration’s plan is obvious by their relentless bashing of the industry and shunning its experts.

We have learned much about the Left in the past year. We have learned who they are and how they operate. The implementation of policy is a reasoned and linear process. It is like an equation whose variables cannot be assumed to be such intangibles as falsehoods and emotion. It may work in the Middle East where ignorance, cruelty and cult of personality still reign supreme; where self-destruction is part and parcel with articles of faith; where martyrdom, not progeny, is seen as the link to salvation.

But it won’t work here in these United States.