The grand error that has been undermining health care for about 50 years is grandiosity. It is federal politicians’ belief in their greater-than-average wisdom and resulting ability to guide every individual’s life. Health care provides not 2 or 5 or 50 issues about which politicians can buy votes, but hundreds! Oh, the sweet possibilities.

Federalizing healthcare under Medicare was a stroke of genius: give needed stuff to a demographic that votes. At first, it was “free,” another key element for acceptance of big government. Medicare was originally paid for through Social Security… what a slick idea.

There will always be elderly citizens who managed to grow old without preparing for their old age. Today an observation that those people should have prepared is a radical, hateful statement; obviously it is the government’s job to take over responsibility for individuals once they reach a magic age. Everybody knows that.

Health care has not become “better” as a result of Medicare, but it has become more widespread. “Well,” say most, “that’s certainly ‘better,’ isn’t it?” Well, for some, certainly.

Medicare began the process of creating HMO’s and PPO’s and mediocritizing (if that’s a word) medicine. It’s a process that separates individuals from the doctor-patient relationship, one that will ultimately separate individuals AND DOCTORS from personal responsibility. Only government is left to fill that “responsibility vacuum.” The statists’ dream realized.

Maybe such matters of state and culture are too intellectual. All that matters is that people get health care when needed. Unfortunately, that has not been the greatest effect of federal intrusion in our personal lives. The greatest effect is cost, followed by government growth, followed by fraud, followed by new, tangential costs. All in all, it’s unaffordable and governmentally wondrous.
Amidst the federalization is incredible confusion and obfuscation. Very few patients know what to do or who to do it with for the best results. Almost none has much choice of who or where to go unless he or she pays high premiums to augment or supersede Medicare. For non-Medicare-age workers, everyone must now pay for Medicare in addition to the 13+% of payroll they pay for Social Security. And we are 20 Trillion in debt, placing everyone’s health care at risk, along with our ability to defend the nation.

Obamacare tried to involve the federal government in every health-care decision. Amazingly, costs went up faster, options declined to only 1 in many states, and the government got bigger faster than ever before. Do we discern a pattern, here? Yes! The greatest advantage and success is for government! Not patients, not costs, and not care.

So we really ought to divest ourselves of the “government solution.” There are many ways to provide care, to sell it and buy it, to negotiate the cost of it and to compete for a share of the business. Statists distrust nearly all of them, except those most infused with federal cost-saving finesse. Since we’ve allowed statists to make the rules we are left to hope ever more diligently that the doctor we saw truly cares what happens to us – if it was a doctor.

Statists seem to distrust insurance companies, also, yet love them beneath the sheets of propriety since they provide substantial bribery for re-election and other purposes. Let’s hope that the double-dealing done with the insurance companies and the reverse bribes Obama finagled with the people’s money, is brought to light so that we may never attempt such thievery again. In any case, the attention called “health care” is spent on the wrong target: “coverage.”

It ought to be spent on HEALTH.

We need better ways to inform patients on how and what to buy that will improve their health, repair their injuries and treat their diseases. That’s health care. It’s not sex-obfuscation operations or breast enhancement. Such are not the public’s concern. What is of widespread concern is the 40% of “health-care” costs that go to administration. Anything proposed as a “solution” that increases administrative overhead must be resisted with every fiber of our citizenship.