Healthcare Polka

Let's take a step back from the precipice for a minute and refresh before we take this healthcare leap:

So far in our story, we have been asked to look at healthcare from several points of view:

• The Uninsured: 48 million people, about 11 million of whom are illegal "aliens."
• The Wealthy: Arbitrarily, people who make $250K, $500K, and over $1 million annually, who are going to cover the uninsured by paying more taxes.
• Corporate Insured: Individuals and families covered by large company "benefits."
• Small Businesses: Some offer subsidized coverage, some don't.

To this group, we add a couple of "special" categories:

• Congress and other government insured. Members of Congress, for example, offer themselves one of the most generous medical benefits plans in existence. Wouldn't it be nice to know what they will be sacrificing in any new national plan?
• The Media. that's right, the folks in the room during Obama's healthcare presentation "press conference." Most of them work for large companies (see above), and are also "Wealthy" (see above). These people believe that they represent the middle class, because that is their audience, but most went to elite schools, make great dough, and have great corporate coverage through Disney, Time Warner, Newscorp, etc. Wouldn't it be nice to know how their coverage would be impacted by the new plans?

Now, let's forget all of them, and focus away from all adults. What does healthcare look like from the perspective of a newborn baby? After all, health is the immediate unconscious issue for the baby, and will continue to be the most important issue as life progresses. Questions:

• Do we really want this baby to depend on an employer or the government to provide the most important human services, beyond parenting, that we will provide this baby? Do we want to tie its health to the profitability of a corporation, a small company, or an individual living in the cash/no tax economy?Do we want to gamble that future tax revenue will be able to cover the baby's health costs, without borrowing?
• Do we want to have this baby depend on a Medical Political Complex: Congress, Lobbyists, future Presidents, current political parties, pharmaceutical companies, State Legislatures?

If that baby could speak, it would probably tell us to take this opportunity to uncouple healthcare from employers. In the employer-based plans, those who work in Congress or for Goldman Sachs will always get better coverage and find ways to easily afford it.

If employer-based healthcare and healthcare insurance works so well, why don't we apply it to the other central issue in that baby's life: education? We are not talking about tuition reimbursement plans here; we mean K thru College. Why don't companies offer education insurance as a benefit?

Because it's a terrible idea. Real healthcare "portability" can only be created by individuals and families owning their coverage, whether its subsidized or not.

The real reason the plans are stuck is that we started with a bad assumption: that employer-based plans are the best way to go. The other wrong premise was "reform."

If the iphone designers or google engineers had started by trying to "reform" cell phones or online search, they never would have made radical change.

We need radical change. Radical change cannot come from a reactionary world composed of the same people who created the flawed system and nobody in the room thinking non-status-quo thoughts. We're watching The Lawrence Welk Show, when what our baby needs is John Lennon.