Health Care Reform - The Never Ending Story

It is no secret that I have total disdain for the entire health care reform fiasco and debate that has been playing out in Washington the past several months. Nowhere has anyone showed me a quantified analysis of the root cause(s) of the problem of rising health care rates. Once more, who really knows what and by how much each of the following factors influence health care costs:

• Doctors make too much money.
• Lawyers who sue doctors make too much money.
• Insurance companies make too much money.
• Drug companies make too much money.
• Fraud and criminal behavior is rampant in the industry.
• Government interference in the market introduces excessive costs and inefficiencies.

Rather than an analysis of the problem, we have untold number of lobbyists jockeying for the best possible result for their respective clients, politicians who know nothing about the medical profession or health care market making uninformed decisions without any analysis, and members of the political class calling citizens un-American for having a differing viewpoint, a Congressman calling the President a liar, and another Congressman calling all members of the opposing party knuckle dragging Neanderthals. Some days you just want the pain of the whole issue to go away.

Unfortunately, an article I came across today in Reason magazine gives me little hope that the insanity will end any time soon. In the October, 2009 issue, Brian Doherty has a short article called "Just Say No.". The main point of the article is that the state of Arizona voted to place a bill called the Arizona Freedom Act on the ballot. The main thrust of the bill is to pass an amendment to the state constitution that "will protect Arizonians' rights to spend their own money on any legal health care service and opt out of any health care system imposed upon them." In other words, we do not have to do what Washington is telling us to do if we do not want to in the area of health care reform and programs.

The article goes on to quote a representative of the American Legislative Exchange Council who says that at least five other states are considering similar initiatives. If enough states pass similar type opt out programs, Mr. Doherty says that they may be able to overcome the Federal imposition of national health care much like the states turned back the Federal mandated Real ID Act several years ago. And what would all this mean: probably years and years of court battles, years and years of more kindergarten like behavior of the political class, and no resolution to the problem of rising health care costs.

Bottom line: Obama blew it by not doing a root cause analysis like the one that this blog has been proposing for months and which was initially laid out in Step 28 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government": Convene an expert panel to undertake an in-depth national economic study to determine the real root causes of spiraling health care costs and recommend appropriate actions to eliminate them. Voters, not Congress, would approve these recommendations. An old boss I used to work for had a favorite saying: "Nothing is more devastating to an opinion than a number." If Obama had done his number and root cause analyses ahead of time, he could have quashed a lot of the emotion that has been injected into the discussion. But he didn't and we are stuck with the bitter and divisive disaster we have today. Will it never end?

Tomorrow's discussion: Why history dictates that Step 24 is the only viable option for fixing the health care crisis.