State of the Union

I've been trying to give our new President a fair shake, after all, he did win by a large margin and many people wanted him to be chosen.

In what could be withstood last night, President intimating that those that oppose this health care reform are stuck on minor discrepancies and self-interest. I am about sick to death of listening to this pompous jerk.

And don't mistake anything, this proposal will lead to total governmental domination.
The Medicaid law includes statements that preclude government persons dictating care to doctors. That has been totally ignored, do you expect different in this situation?

There are pragmatic steps that should be addressed before health care is nationalized.

1. Deregulate the insurance industry, allow them to compete on a national level. Business is motivated by economies of scale and potential monopolization. And unlike liberal dogma, corporate dominance can and does benefit the customers, e.g., Microsoft, Bell and Standard Oil. Who honestly thinks that the government is the mechanism built for extracting saving through economies of scale? Nobody. More so, under the government plan, tens of thousands of insurance workers will become unemployed, replaced with more costly federal government, unionized, employees.
2. Tort reform. Sorry but Congress is dominated by lawyers and the Democrats have the ABA as a major contributor. The threat of malpractice suits, per the doctors and practitioners that I know, is more costly than the judgements themselves. Take your average urban hospital situation, emergency room are packed with non-paying customers who will sue at the drop of a needle. Doctors would be foolish not to expand testing and care service in an effort to remove the risk of a claim. The amount of care can be better focused.
3. Change the pay system for insurance, let the patients be the customers of the insurance company. This will permit more job to job flexibility. This will make it in the insurance companies best interest to promote preventive care. There will have to some rules to prevent the companies from dropping coverage, given certain markers and obligations are met by the customer
   

This I started writing weeks ago and could not find the stomach to complete. Point 3 is not fully developed for it in some way requires government regulation and this should be avoided at all cost.

The health care workers that I know all felt like the undeniable path the federal government was taking was consolidation toward a single payer system, before Obama became president. Before is important, because this is where most politicians want to arrive, they are just going to baby step their way to to it by using the inertia of federal bureaucracy. I do not think we can stop it. Politicians are most predictable when they focus on the group of voters they judge to be as the group that will get them elected and keep them in power, they presume most stable citizens are already aligned and therefore taken for granted. By catering to the needs of this most needy fraction of voting society, that fraction receives the most attention and and the most unattached benefits.