Insurance: it's the wrong debate

It's clear the events of the last 18 months have thoroughly discredited the "small government" approach. I'll grant that there is something particularly Jeffersonian about the concept ("the government that governs best governs least") but the common good simply is not served.

It's true, government can't solve all our ills ... nor should it be expected to. However, it can (and should) be able to address those issues that serve the common good.

I have several conservative friends (yes, I do). They hold some pretty strong opinions on health care, opinions I absolutely do not share.

My opinions are pretty strong as well. There is nothing anyone can do or say that will change my belief that our health care system sucks. Excuse me, our health care DELIVERY SYSTEM sucks.

Cubans have better access to health care than the average American and certainly poor Cubans have better access to health care then poor or lower middle class Americans. My personal experiences will trump your Cato Institute anecdotal study ...

Further, the latest studies are clear that US mortality is among the worst of industrialized countries at a per-capita cost that is orders of magnitude greater. In other words, everyone else in the industrialized world has greater access to necessary health care at significantly lower personal cost than Americans do.

Let me put this another way: even accounting for the higher taxes socialized medicine requires, nearly every citizen of nearly every industrialized country on this planet has better access to better health care at a lower cost than Americans do.

As long as the "solution" includes insurance companies, we'll never fix it because profits will trump care every time. Health care costs will continue to eat up an increasingly catastrophic portion of our GDP.

In fact, as long as the debate is about health insurance, we're holding the wrong debate.

It wasn't only shoddy products that brought down GM ... it was the way this country deals with health care (blame the unions, if you want -- and they deserve some blame -- but the way this country approaches health care offers one helluva an example on how to keep the great unwashed in its collective place).

In other words, I don't think Obama will go far enough ...

Call is socialism, whatever. I think affordable health care (notice I didn't say "affordable health INSURANCE") is a basic human right.

Any other debate is the wrong debate.