New and Improved Health Care Reform, The Beginning of a Path

With so much that drives the Health Care Reform efforts wrong, is it possible to find a way that will actually improve it? The reform activists believe that they can. The politicians, who back reform whether from personal belief or astute awareness of their constituency’s willingness to boot them, pontificate that they can. And every vested interest group and ‘for hire’ lobbying/consultant firm promises that they can craft the policy that will do the trick. But as discussed in the previous entries, they follow the path that in fact got us here in the first place. A pervasive view that if you wield political power, you can dictate and legislate the results that you want. This pharaohic expectation that if they can just decree in that absolute authority which they command that “So it is written, so it shall be.”

But like their predecessors, who expected to make nature conform to their simplistic understanding of reality, you can command that Pi (π) be exactly 3.14 so that calculations using it are more easily done; but you cannot make the world and all within it adhere to your proclamation. And the consequences of their arrogance manifest itself in the problems and failures that propagate from the application of a fairy-tale rule used in conjuring up structures of brick and stone that collapse upon the heads. Nature cares no more for their edict than a tsunami cares whether the beach it is approaching is empty or awash in sunbathers. A health care system and the socioeconomic system in which it operates will not produce the costs, quality, and effectiveness that you desire just because you elected to declare that it will be as you command.

How then can we undertake Health Care Reform with an expectation and hope that we might achieve the goals which we all find so desirable? The answer is not guaranteed to be simple or easy, but it can at least be relied upon to take us along a path that will constantly lead us toward the best that we are capable of providing ourselves. What then is the way that is not being pursued by the ardent advocates of the all-American Health Care Reform dream?

It starts with an old-fashion, tried and true, good old American know-how approach. One of the basic principles that must be embedded in the core of the system is competition within the market-place. And this competition will provide the same American promise that we have relied upon since our pilgrim/immigrant forefathers came here. You will be rewarded for success and you will not be entitled to succeed because of who you are or who you know.It’s a seed of an idea.

Let’s water it and watch it grow.