Congressional Health Care Reform: A Fragment of a Vision

The Democrats abandoned the pubic option portion of their Health Care plan. They had already backed off of the more global universal health care proposal and were retreating to an expanded access to Medicare for people 55 to 64 years old. But amid concerns that expansion would drastically increase the Medicare costs above any funding increases, the proposal lost support among a number of Democrats. The Republicans were joyously sitting on the sidelines excitedly touting the problems and horrendous dangers that the Democratic Health Care Reform bill would rent upon America. Republican's were eager to join in and support a call by Howard Dean to scrap the current proposal and start afresh. In other words, the Republicans were busy contributing nothing useful to or supportive of a Health Care plan for American despite the dire straits that the populace agrees it is in. In short, the Republicans do not see any urgency to find a means to bring relief to the American public's need for health care reform.

The Democrats, while well intentioned, are apparently insufficient to the task of finding a Health Care plan that can garner the necessary support to either get all the Democrats and Independents to vote for it, or to draw in a very few Republicans who would vote for a bill that servers their constituents and is acceptable to their Republican principles. In other words, the Democrats are unable to think outside the box and to find creative solutions to the Health Care dilemma. The surprising aspect of this dilemma is that it's not just the politicians themselves who are unable to see their way through the fog of 'how things are always done'; it is also their staff and advisors, their experts, and the industry movers and shakers who are doing their utmost to guide Congress toward an acceptable solution.

But what has been proposed that is creative, what is innovative, what is new? And there is the crux of the problem. There are no new ideas, no insightful visions of how to re-shape the Health Care system to bring about a sea-change that will accomplish the goals of universal access and care. To bring economic sanity to the cost structure within the industry, and to provide a motivating force to move the industry to higher levels of quality and advances in treatments.

It would seem that if the American public wants Health Care reform, they will need to pick better Republicans and better Democrats then those they have done to date.