A Treatment Plan for Healthcare

Both Republicans and Democrats want to fix America’s healthcare system. Both want to reduce the rapidly rising cost of health care, particularly Medicare and Medicaid. And both want to use their view of how healthcare should be provided to defeat their opponents in their election campaigns. But neither has shown any ability to actually provide a plan that actually provides a plan for accomplishing it that would serve the public. How is this possible, if healthcare is an important issue to the public?

The easy answer is that politicians are as woefully ill-equipped to grapple with the healthcare system as they are with pretty much anything else. Yes, our politicians are an incapable lot. But while it’s an easy answer, and it is true that the politicians are in no position to develop or craft a viable healthcare plan; they are unfortunately in the position of having to agree to whatever plan would ultimately be adopted. So they are a player at the table, we just need to find a way to put them at the kiddy-table and remind them that they should be quiet while the adults are discussing serious matters. Once the adults are done, they will be allowed to go play in the family room (Congress), but will have to do what they’re told.

The more important part of the answer is that the public is once again caught in their wishful thinking mode about healthcare. Most people are satisfied with their medical care. This satisfaction is of course disconnected from an appreciation of what they are paying for. Either they are covered by a medical play that covers all or most of the costs, or their deductable is not outrageously bad and the co-pays are relatively small. What they are not accounting for is that they are paying for other medical costs that are not part of what they think of as their expense. Local, state and federal taxes that go to support medical systems like hospitals; the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are not adequately funded and which are increasingly consuming more and more in public funding. The public doesn’t see the increasing medical costs that are outstripping any salary increases or inflation rates anywhere else in the economy as part of their medical expense problem. The public thinks that an unsustainable healthcare system doesn’t mean they will be affected in the future. I am not saying that they’re stupid, but Forrest Gump had a philosophy about intelligence that comes to mind.

What the public needs to do is not delude themselves into thinking that things are generally ok with healthcare, they are not. The public must reject the notion that the political parties or factions within a party are even more clueless then they are about how to fix healthcare. The first step as with most problems is to admit that you have a problem and then to find someone who can help you find your way. The problem is that as the healthcare system collapses under the weight of unaffordable costs, your personal healthcare will suffer through either increased costs, reduced available providers, or altogether unavailable healthcare services.

The solution is for the politicians to remove themselves from being the agents that design the healthcare system, they must be restricted to only agree that whatever is funded under a government budget is paid for with non-borrowed revenues. If the public cannot pay for it, then they cannot get it.

Now while neither the Democrats nor Republicans can design a governmental healthcare system that will provide more care at lower costs then the mess we have today, it can be done by people who know how to solve problems that are constrained by the requirements that define what is to be delivered as the end product.