From a hospital bedside..

This week I am in Kansas, with the family of a girl that is precious to me. Her mother lies in an ICU hooked to a respirator after suffering a multiple organ failure event probably related to her diabetes. She is currently sedated and unconscious while a feeding tube provides her nutrients and a bag near the foot of the bed collects the (thankfully growing)urine her battered kidneys produce. In between my worry and concern a single thought comes to me time after time:

The last thing I would want is some D.C. bureaucrat with a spreadsheet deciding if this woman’s life was worth fighting for.

I look at the faces of the people (and my own) who care about this woman, all the lives that depend on her for joy, guidance and love thinking that like all of us she deserves every possible chance to survive. She isn’t a number in a massive database. She is a human being, and her life is precious. How horrible it would have been if she had to wait for a long time to receive the best care, or if she would have been denied outright simply because a provision tacked onto some miserable energy bill or pork allocation had quietly made her ineligible for expensive support treatments.

One only needs to look to the North and the national health system in Canada to see the horrifying effects of leaving health care decisions to politicians. In England just recently we see a firestorm of controversy raging as some doctors say out loud what the folks paying the bills for their massive and inefficient health system wont say that they don’t want to treat the elderly, obese or smokers. While certainly the private system has it’s flaws: competition does what it always does and drives the quality up and prices down. Competition a government system simply will not have.

Clearly the creation of a national health system is a step that a nation should only take after the most careful consideration. The examples of how badly wrong it can go are all around us. In fact there is not a single government run system that isn’t plagued with wait times, rationed care, denied procedures and massive waste. Ever single place it has been tried, it is a failure.

Why then is the current administration rushing through a bill that has more that 1,500 pages under constant revision (often within hours of votes) that the vast majority of it’s supporters admit they have never even read? Why have they used administrative procedure to shut out debate on the floor of the House and Senate? Why have they suppressed reports about the cost and medical implications? Why do they want to force on us a system they themselves will not have to suffer under?

With all our lives in the balance and the quality of care for an entire nation at stake is there such a a rush to pass anything at all, and damn the details? Because six months into his presidency Barack Obama is in real trouble.

1. His foreign policy skills have proven to be inadequate.
2. The government take over of the automobile industry has been a disaster.
3. His massive tax increases and bailouts have trashed the economic recovery and his much touted popularity is crashing fast.
4. The massive money being funneled into the embattle ACORN has brought about scrutiny that his wife’s involvement with and meddling in that organization cannot survive.

What Obama needs now is a victory he can point to in an effort to regain some momentum. All his hopes now are pinned on his attempt to reform the health care industry the only way people like him know how by advocating a government take over.

There are real reasons why the Democratic party wants a government run healthcare system in the USA. Traditionally the Democratic party line to get votes is to scream loud and long about how the evil greedy Republicans want to “take away” the benefits the government grants you. They alternate between blackmail (if we don’t get elected, you will lose your house!) and bribery (elect us and we will take money away from people doing better than you and give it to you!) at the best of times: but health care is the ultimate level in the Democratic parties wish list.

With national health care, the Democrats can actually put you in fear of your life, and the lives of your family. Once you are on the government teat for your very life blood, they gain a huge power over you.

With lives in the balance, essentially with ALL OUR LIVES in the balance I deeply resent that this administration is in such a hurry to save its own political ass that it will push for support of a bill almost no one has read, that has had no public review and almost no debate.

I suppose if you think that the government does a fantastic job with, say your local DMV or you consider the IRS a well run and efficient organization then you will be happy to leave the critical decisions over your life and death to the folks in D.C. If you are living in the real world, however, you will realize these are the last people you want deciding whether your loved ones or yourself “deserve” some time in a ICU.

As or me? I am leaving in a hour or so to stay by the bedside of a woman who is only alive because she had fast access to incredibly high quality health care. This care is not an anomaly in the US, it is the norm. She has access to this care and we didn’t have to show up at some government office to beg for it, or fill out a special form or promise some low level bureaucrat that we would vote for him.

That is today, right now. The best care available. Made possible by competition and the profit incentive. Next year when these decisions lie in the hands of some D.C. functionary who is willing to trade access to these procedures away in exchange for a bigger kickback for his state on some highway bill who knows?

that should scare all of us.