A column about history, culture, policy, and things in between.
The television ads have begun – the big guns will not be far behind.
I saw the first one last weekend and it featured a Congressman advocating the need for universal, government-sponsored health care. It’s time to start thinking about this, as it will be a huge component of the 2008 Presidential race and the attendant public policy debate.
Everyone who reads this article (both of you!) is either a current or future taxpayer. Everyone who reads this article has already been a user of health care, and will obviously remain one. I believe the most fundamental concept we need to grasp when considering this complex issue is this:
HEALTH CARE IS A CONSUMER GOOD.
We may not like that, but it is a reality that exists independent of our desires. And like all consumer goods, health care reacts to and is governed by the laws of economics. No legislation, no matter how well intended, can change that.
An ever-increasing amount of our tax dollars is required to pay for health care. The budgets of our school districts, universities, municipalities, States, and the Federal Government are being consumed by health care and other benefits. At the same time we are witnessing the inexorable death of the U.S. auto industry as it hemorrhages fiscal red over the cost of benefits it extends to the employees of GM, Ford and what used to be Chrysler.
The ever growing appetite of government to consume health care and retirement benefits, and the ever shrinking ability of the private sector to support this appetite, is a dynamic that sets us on a collision course.
Until we stop this destructive path of just simply paying more every year for the same played-out old plans, we will continue towards a political upheaval of enormous proportions. This will rapidly become our most dominant domestic public policy issue, with the immigration issue actually being a sub-set of this. We will continue to see less and less resources to fund the products and services we want FROM government, as budgets are almost wholly consumed by paying the costs of benefits of those who work FOR government.
We can talk about the high cost of government until the blue states turn red and vice-versa, but until we put this issue of health care on the table and discuss it in a serious and dispassionate manner, we won’t get anywhere. We are presumably all in this together – both private and public sectors. So let’s have the debate.
Part of the debate needs to be the consideration of substantive reform of health care, rather than just placing the same broken system into the hands of the Federal Government with the expectation that somehow this will “fix it”.
When it comes to health care, substantive reform means consumer driven health care. It will be brutally difficult work, but not as difficult as the political warfare that will result if we don’t.
Some specifics on C.D.H.C. - what it looks like and the impact it can have - later this month, after I finish up with Church and State.
