Did you see the debate on health care at the Blair House today? What did you think? Was there a winner or a loser? How about the people who were not in the room, like you and me? I may sound like a broken record, but this debate seemed to be organized to prevent it from coming to any kind of conclusion or agreement from the beginning. My father used to say that, "you can't learn anything with your mouth open". Now the person who claimed he was going to the meeting to learn something was our President Obama. Now did you notice what percentage of the time he had his mouth open? It was a lot. By my old Oklahoma logic regarding the state of ones mouth, I would say that our President learned the "least" of anyone in that meeting. I have some other comments as you might have expected.
It would seem to me using my normally logical approach to things that the group should have first tried to agree on exactly what the health care problem is in the USA. They did not do that. How would they know if their plans solved or made the situation better or not if they did not first agree on the problem they were discussing. Given that they somehow divined the real problem, they would seem to need an objective, something like fix the problem they had previously agreed on. Logical so far? Now the next step would be for different groups to make proposal on how to get to the objective and put as many logical alternative on the table as they could come up with. Ideally, we would be expecting an exhaustive list and on that list, by definition, we would know that the best ones would be included. Simple logic. If you don't have them all, who is to say the best one is even on the table. Still with me here? These guys did not follow any of this kind of logic. They started right out with their proposals (alternatives) without doing any of the pre decision making setup. I'm sorry, I would have to give the whole group a failing grade.
For some reason that I don't understand, both groups keep injecting "insurance companies" into the mix right in the beginning and keep taking cheap shots at them. The insurance companies are not the problem, they are just the symptom of the problem, whatever that is. They have to keep insurance companies out of the debate and address the basics of the health care system. I think the only problem is "cost". See there I said it. Using old math logic, you take something to the limit and see what happens. With health care and its cost, we first take it to the high cost limit and see what happens. No one has health care except what they do for themselves. This sounds like most of the world and the way it was here for 90% of the people 100 years ago. That is bad, but it is not the end of the world. Now how about the other extreme where health care is dirt cheap? I did not say "free" because many people seem to think if it is "free" then it does not cost anything. There are a lot of people who get "free" health care right now in the USA, but it is not dirt cheap as in the limit. If health cost were dirt cheap, it would in affect be "free" and everyone would be covered without any government programs. Hey, I think we might be onto something here.
Let's say we want to drive down health care cost toward being dirt cheap and with the minimum amount of government involvement. I think that last statement just might be redundant in that if the government is very much involved nothing will be dirt cheap. If you read my Blog on Cost Reduction, then you know where I am coming from. If so, then why did we not hear a single word specifically on how to reduce health care cost. You might have notice the slight of hand trick where the government went out and wasted a lot of health care money and now are going to "save" money by cracking down on cheats. Would your mother give you an "at a boy" for spilling food on the floor due to incompetence and then cleaning it up? I don't think so. How many of you have had to travel and dine on your expense account? Did you eat differently than when it was your own money? If you got a fixed perdiem, did you eat the same way? I did not think so. When it is someone elses money, it seems to spend easier. How about when your grandmother sent you $10 for your birthday? Did you save it or spend it on junk? I don't think many of you saved it. This is human nature and that is what any program has to do and that is to take advantage of human nature and arrange the chairs so that it is the individual's money that they are spending not the government's. That is why the government has to get out of the picture.
The original founders of this country set it up so that each individual had a more or less equal chance at the starting line. It was not perfect, but it was the best that the human race had come up with at that time and is still better than most. That opportunity included health care though it did not say that specifically. It was upto you what you wanted to work toward. You could have a nice car or you could save for health care and retirement. It was and still is your choice. Now if you were to act irresponsibly and opt for the fancy car vs health care and retirement, am I the one who is supposed to give you some of what I had worked hard for? Not me. I just had a long discussion with one of my older children about "tough love" and why I and they had to practice it once in a while. If you know what I am talking about here then you know that "tough love" is what this country needs more of right now, not excuses, blame and free lunches. In the debate today, did anyone even get close the principle of "tough love". As a parent it is difficult and for a politician it is impossible. Do you think we might be getting closer to the real problem here? There are limits on every thing and we are going to have to start facing upto them. If you have read any of my Blogs, you will know what we have to do to make health care more affordable, not free.
