This piece was submitted and printed in the local paper.

Dear Editor, I propose this piece as a “My View” item or a letter. Thank you.

Looking for a renaissance

After seven and a half years of the “dark ages” it is with hope and trepidation that the incoming administration can bring a new awakening to our national psyche.

Actually I’m very sanguine that our country is capable of overcoming, in due time, the difficulties imposed by the eight years of Bush’s Imperial rule.

Rather than rehash and recite the missteps and mismanagement of the current incumbency I look forward to improved foreign relations, a sane energy policy, environmental responsibility, and technological advancement.

In the area of health care I’d like to see a single-payer system that lessons, to a large degree, the present administrative overburden. “Health-care plans” that have shareholders and high paid administrators and CEOs are not giving the “health” aspect of care that is needed. The exorbitant premiums could be reduced significantly.

The American Heritage group’s claim that governmental programs will “dictate” onerous conditions for consumers is ridiculous. There are no private insurance plans of any kind that aren’t engineered to deny as many claims as possible. In the insurance industry it is called “loss control”. Insured individuals are constantly fighting to have claims recognized. Insurance companies constantly use loopholes to deny claims.

Health-care at his roots is a product. The product has a cost basis. Care providers must be paid for their services, facilities, hospitals and clinics, have costs that must be met. All of these categories must be looked at critically to reduce exorbitant charges currently going into excessive profits.

Controlling administrative costs is of greatest importance. The most efficient system is a single-payer type. Obviously this is a governmental agency. Horrors! What a tax burden! Hold on, what is really happening is exchanging a profit oriented system for one much less expensive. The myth of competitiveness in the marketplace has long been discredited by the collusion among private concerns to maximize profits. The so-called “free enterprise system” would be great if it were truly free. Unfortunately it is controlled and manipulated by politically connected entities that prevent the competitive forces from freely functioning.
All aspects of our economy, be it banking, finance, insurance, farming, medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc. are protected by high paid lobbyists whose job it is to see that legislation is written that works to the best interests of their clients. Who represents the consumer? Our legislators? They promise to fight for us against special interests. What happens is they no sooner get elected than they seek funds from those special interests in order to get themselves reelected? The consumer’s interests are given lip service but the regulations favor the big spenders.

The ballot box only functions every few years. “Throwing the bums out” doesn’t prevent a new set of bums from taking their place; but mostly the old bums retain their jobs in spite of their poor performance.

A good influence of the current recession and world mess is that has grabbed the attention of more people. People respond most strongly when their pocketbooks are threatened. Now is a good time to call our legislators to account and demand pledges of responsibility.

But in reality the entire health-care system should be drastically reengineered. There are too many exotic specialties and not enough general practitioners. Physician’s Assistants, (PAs), could be more universally employed. With relatively little augmentation the Medicare system could be adjusted to cover everyone. The tax burden for such a change would be a fraction of the cost of the present system. The reduction of paper work alone would be a boon to providers.

Due to the retirement of the baby boomers having begun it is long past time to remove the cap on Social Security taxes. The top of the S.S tax scale excludes those dollars beyond $90,000. In this era of astronomical incomes for several categories of employees it is imperative that those high earners pay their full share of the Social Security tax. It is not a TAX INCREASE – it is equalization. This alone would likely alleviate the shortfall that is projected in the next few decades.

With the demise of the current administration perhaps the criterion of what is good policy will be less influenced by ideology and more by reason and practicality.
The prospect of ongoing expenditures associated with the Iraq debacle is staggering. Our own infrastructure has been sadly neglected because of the diversion of funds to war expenses. Hopefully China will not run out of funds for us to borrow.