Politicians and Health Care Reform

American health care, including the way that we pay for, is badly broken.

Start with doctors, who are terrified of being sued, and reimbursements to doctors, and hospitals, that are based on the perverse principle that the more they do to you the more they get paid. Then include makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices whose second largest expenditure, after development, is marketing.

The result, inevitably, is expensive over treatment.

While payment for results, rather than activity, would rapidly improve quality and reduce cost, there are many powerful vested interests to oppose it. Such a system is possible but overcoming the vested interests, and their allies in Congress, will require determination and patience.

Next, consider for-profit, and so-called non-profit, insurance companies whose administrative costs are monstrous and who seem to care little about controlling costs by improving quality. They do, however, spend vast sums of money to avoid covering people with pre-existing conditions or, if forced to, they charge outrageously high rates. Finally, stir into this noxious mix patients who take the position that "something must be done" even when there is no effective treatment or when the cure, as the old saying goes, is worse than the disease.

President Obama abandoned his responsibility to lead by providing little or no guidance to Congress as it spent the past twelve months attempting to produce a health care reform bill. What was created fails to solve the real problems of quality and cost while the goal of universal coverage is only partially met at great expense.

Faced with united Republican Party opposition, neither of the monstrosities created in the House and Senate has become law. That is the good news. The bad news is that the Democrats have done little to involve Republicans in the creation of a solution and Republicans, while capable of blocking Democratic proposals, have done nothing constructive.

President Ronald Reagan understood that it was possible to compromise without abandoning one's principles. Sadly, it seems that the current generation of politicians, regardless of party, prefers to play to an audience of extreme left and right wing activists rather than making the, admittedly difficult, compromises that lead to solutions.

Have they forgotten that they work for the People? Or have they so much contempt for us that their only objectives are re-election and the maintenance of their privileged lifestyles without actually having to do any serious work?

At the next election, politicians of both parties should keep in mind Abraham Lincoln's words:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

Then Senator Obama, during his Presidential campaign, offered us 'Change'. To the extent that many of our elected officials chose to retire or are defeated in November, such 'Change' would be more than welcome!