If I were President

Are you getting tired of the rhetoric? I know I am. Every day I turn on the news(it's like being a junkie, I think!), and I start getting frustrated. I can't seem to turn it off for long though. Watching the politicians and pundits in Washington is kind of like a horrific car accident. You don't want to look, but you can't help it. Why can't we all just get along? Wait a minute, I am starting to sound like Mr.Rogers or a playground supervisor. There are so many special interests and so many differing views of what needs to be done in this country. We can't finish one thing without treading on the toes of whoever doesn't agree with every aspect of any plan to fix anything! Why can't we just start on the points of agreement?

The first problem we seem to encounter is the language we use. We know what we mean when we say something(kind of!), but we worry about what the language is going to say to the people of the future in this country. Can what we put into law right now open the door to any other kind of interpretation in the future that will cause material harm to any part of American society in the future? Generalizing does seem to happen to virtually all language. All you have to do to realize the truth of this statement is try to read a book written by authors of previous generations. I am a pretty smart cookie, and a college graduate, but I can be intimidated sometimes by the change in the language. My best subject was always English, but when I read Plato's Republic in college, I had to read and re-read each paragraph several times to really "get" what he was talking about.

So, in the interest of simplicity, couldn't we get that guy that wrote all the "for Dummies" books to translate all these bills for us and put it in language the average American can understand? I have attempted to read a large part of the House Bill #3200 for healthcare reform, and the language is ridiculously complicated. That is why it runs over a thousand pages long. I am new to political activism, but not to political interest. I have been concerned with politics since my early high school years. Politicians have been progressively concerned with either pleasing everyone who seeks entitlements, or with trying to hide the more unpleasant aspects inside these massive appropriation bills even if they have nothing whatsoever to do with the original intent. It's a cushy life and they want more than anything to get reelected.
So, if I were President, instead of trying to sell a bill that is so huge and arcanely complicated, I would start working on consensus. My bill would start like this:

Can we agree that we are all living organisms?
Can we agree that all living organisms that can breathe and form sensate thought are human beings?
Can we agree that human beings need health care?
Can we agree that money is a necessary tool for civilized culture, but not the be-all-and-end-all goal for living?
Can we agree that fixing problems is a good goal?
Can we agree that fixing problems we already have is preferable to creating more problems to fix?
Can we agree that human beings not having access to health care is a problem that needs fixing?
Can we agree that Medicare and Medicaid have problems needing to be fixed?
Can we agree that fixing an existing structure may be more economical than building a new one, especially if no one knows how to build a new one?
Okay, I think we just hit a snag!

The snag is this: Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany have built socialized medical models. Germany abandoned it already because it was not cost-effective and led to rationing of services. Great Britain, Canada, and France have models that are already in big trouble, bankrupting the countries and leading to the rationing of services. The people in those countries with money come here for health care, so why are we trying to follow them down the rabbit hole? People with money will always get whatever services they need no matter where they need to go to get it. We need to fix the services for people without enough money to access care. Instead we are throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Many middle class people in this country have found that it is cheaper to go to India for health care services. It is a growing trend because the cost of the plane ticket and hospital care is cheaper there and the outcome is just as good. Not as many frills there. You probably won't have cable TV in your hospital room, but the cutting edge treatments are just as good as we can get here. Why can they do it there in a cost-effective way, and we can't? I don't know all of them, but I bet it's partly because their doctors don't have to worry about outrageous medical malpractice claims.

It is ridiculous that tort reform is not part of the healthcare reform consensus. How many people do you know have talked about the lady who sued McDonald's for the injury due to spilling hot coffee in her lap? How many ads for fat cat law offices have you seen on TV telling you to see them if you or a relative has had death or injury from a procedure or a medication? The advertising budget for just one of those big firms would support my family in style for a year! Insurance companies are in the same league. The goal of profits at any human cost is the biggest problem with getting anything done in this country.Insurance companies, lawyers, and unions are the most insidious lobbyists in this country, and anyone wanting to get re-elected has to bargain with these players to the American peoples' detriment.

I am convinced that most of our lawmakers want to do the right thing by the American people, as long as they don't have to sacrifice their own livelihoods to do it. I don't believe that most of these people get into office to be corrupt. They become corrupt because of our system. If they all had to play by the same rules, there would be no incentive. Campaign finance reform is another problem that needs to be fixed before we can successfully move America forward on all these other platforms. If we could prioritize these things and form task forces and ethics panels and get these other things figured out, any legislation would be a comparative piece of cake.

It seems huge and intimidating, and it probably is because of greed. But socializing government programs doesn't fix the problem, it just further polarizes the "haves" from the "have nots". We already have a 'class system' in American society, and it's getting worse, not better. No one is going to give up their wealth voluntarily so the rest of us can live better, healthier lives.
Can we agree that money should have nothing to do with curing a disease in a human being? I thought not.