Healthcare

A good article on Obama's misleading healthcare proposal.

If you listen to President Obama, his "reform" will satisfy almost everyone. It will insure the uninsured, control runaway health spending, subdue future budget deficits, preserve choice for patients and improve quality of care. These claims are self-serving exaggerations and political fantasies. They have destroyed what should be a serious national discussion of health care.

I disagree with both liberals and conservatives on the heathcare issue. Conservatives basically view the status quo as acceptable. I judge this by their actions as they have not seriously undertaken any steps to reform the healthcare system and expend their energies and passions trying to defeat the Democrats radical overhauls - first Hillary's and now Obama's. The status quo is clearly heading the wrong direction as healthcare costs are becoming out of control and the system is inefficient at delivering care for the way Americans now work.

That said, I am very skeptical of large overhauls of the system and thrusting more control to the government - as a general principle - but as a practical matter, am mostly concerned with the belief the government can both deliver care to the uninsured and decrease overall cost. This is a big lie and yet this is what democrats are trying to sell to the public.

If I ruled the world (imagine that!), I'd focus on lowering the costs first. The democrats, I'm sure, are focused on insuring the uninsured first. I think government needs to demonstrate an ability to lower cost before tackling the issue of the uninsured. If you tackle both, and the costs don't dip, you're basically going to bankrupt the system. If you succeed in the lowering costs, you will automatically be extending healthcare to more people, (by virtue of lowering cost, more people can afford), and will be in a position to extend healthcare benefits to more people in a fiscally responsible way.

By going after the uninsured the democrats are setting us up for failure. Heathcare costs are a problem for everyone. If we go after the uninsured and the costs rise, it'll be pouring water into a leaky beaker and people will start losing insurance as others are gaining it. It is basically akin to the following situation - if you have two sets of outstanding loans - credit cards with a 15% rate and student loans at a 5% rate - and trying to pay off both sets of loans without enough capital. It is impossible to do, yet that what Democrats are claiming can happen. No, the smart approach is to take care of the credit card first. When that issue is resolved, then you take care of the student loans.