Affordable Health Care: Let’s Use Dad’s Credit Card

In a recent AP poll out today, it appears that Americans are confident about two things. First that the Health Care Reform bill will be more expensive than they can afford; and second, that they want someone else to pay for it (preferably all those rich people). I think what we have going on here is the ever popular, but so unfortunately mathematically invalid, the “large number of idiots law”. While I am sure that you are all familiar with the LNOIL, it would be best to state it here for those of you who are new to Government program funding methodologies.

The LNOIL is the political strategy used by your representatives to explain how they are going to deliver on their particular campaign promise or in supporting their party’s initiatives. Our august leaders will explain that they will guarantee that their constituents will not have their taxes increased; and if there is no way to avoid taxes (which there never is) they will either just make it an unfunded mandate, or they will tell you how they are going to only tax a group that you don’t belong to. The only thing that is required to make this legislative approach work is a large number of idiots. Astonishingly we would expect that there must be a significant proportion of the population who are idiots; since it is mathematically very unlikely that we could achieve the numeric representation of idiots in Congress itself, if it were not for there being a statistically large proportion of the population who are in fact idiots.

This political strategy relies on citizens who are foolish enough to think that you can always get something for nothing. A mindset that you and everyone else can actually get more than the average amount of something that is limited by either its natural quantity or by the sum total contributions that everyone has made into the pot. This is the monetary equivalent to the “ Lake Wobegone” of Garrison Keillor fame; “where every child is above average.”

So applying this mentality to the Health Care Reform Act will lead Congress to focusing on only taxing the rich to cover the additional cost of the program that is not within the current budget. Defining who the rich are will be an exercise in covering their asses, but they at least have the real statistical reality on their side as long as they make sure that to be rich you have to earn over the average income level.

But here is where it is really annoying. Congress will never consider or conceive of any alternative to funding the program via any approach other than lets just take the money from everyone like we always do. After all, if we have a Health Care system today that is too expensive and inefficient, fraught with fraud, and built upon a publicly funded methodology; then piling another layer on top will surely be the right medicine to fix the problem.

No thought will be given to tackling the problem with another solution or another way to provide an improved operating environment that will support the American Health Care system into the future at lower costs rather than higher costs. We don’t want those idiots in Congress to be required to challenge the status quo, the tried and true governmental way of doing business, or to actually serve the public.

So get ready America, you are going to get exactly what you can expect from your party leaders. And don’t worry, that hand in your pocket is the one that you shook standing in the political rally where you made the contribution to their election campaign fund.