Healthcare Reform = Paris Hilton

As a follow up to our discussion yesterday regarding Obama's health care reform legislation, let's talk about problem solving today. No where in the Congressional and public debate about this issue have I seen anyone define the root cause of the problem. As laid out in the book, what is the real cause of escalating health care costs in this country? Is it because doctors make too much money? Do lawyers drive up cost with phony malpractice law suits? Do drug companies make too much profit? Is the American public health care system riddled with fraud with crooked doctors, lawyers and criminals scamming the system? Is government paperwork to massive, adding costs to the system?

Nowhere and no one, that I can see, has done a simple problem solving exercise in this area to 1) identify the root cause(s) of the problem 2) quantified the impact of the root cause(s) and 3) developed a solution to solve the root causes. Until you know the root cause of a problem any solution you propose is just a crap shoot, you may or may not solve the problem. In Obama's case, he and other members of the political class are willing to take over a trillion dollars of our money to the crap tables and gamble they can solve the problem without identifying the cause of the problem. Escalating American health care costs are the symptom, not the cause.

Thus, the Paris Hilton analogy: Paris Hilton is famous because......she is famous. Health care costs are high .......because health care costs are high. It is circular reasoning in both cases, not problem solving. Thus, when ever you see a member of the political class stating that we as a nation need to spend a trillion dollars to fix health care costs because costs are too high, think of Paris Hilton solving the problem instead. Both parties will have the same chance of getting it right.