Reforming What About Health Care?

Between the President, Congress and the Media, I am totally confused as to what’s going on with health care. I keep hearing – as I did yesterday – that we “have to do something right now” which strikes me as politician’s logic (i.e. “We have to do something, this is something, and therefore we must do this.”). The fact is that I keep looking at Health Care and while I have my opinion that the morons who run the HMO’s are certainly operating both a monopoly and a heartless one at that, there doesn’t seem to be anything actually wrong with the actual medical care itself. In point of fact, people come from all around the world to see our Docs and nurses, but bypass the HMO and bureaucracy.

Which is what I have said for years, the HMOs and idiots who run them are what is driving reasonable people to conclude that our Health Care System is broken and thus demand reform without really thinking about what we mean by demanding that “reform.”

Like most things, there are always the populist ideas that – in this case at least – seem to appeal to leftists and the President which ought to make anybody who thinks about it suspicious to begin with. I ask the question again – what exactly is wrong with the actual health care that we receive – other than the control systems we have to go through to get to that health care and then decide what will and/or will not be paid for as health care?

I noticed yesterday that the latest Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayer took a bit of a tumble and ended up breaking her ankle on the way to Washington, D.C. As t turned out, she was able to get it treated and not miss a beat, making her important meetings all day long with Senators. If that had been you or I, we would still be on the phone trying to get a referral to an Orthopedic Doctor or at least an X-Ray.

Which is what is really wrong with the system – the HMO’s have created a functional monopoly. Justice Sotomayer, an apparatchik in the system either paid for it herself or “had it taken care of” while the rest of us are forced by the HMO’s to rely on them to pay for our care. In effect, the HMO’s have hijacked the Free Enterprise system and made us their slaves.

But I am certain that the Government taking over the HMO’s will solve that and make it ever easier to get to the actual health care, which as far as I can tell, doesn’t need to be reformed at all….