12.07.2008:... On "Universal Health Care... What's Missin..."

There's a big gap between "where we want to go" and "How should we get there"!

Blogging/commenting on Current.com this morning, it finally dawned on me... the thing that's been bugging me about everyone's "solution" to our nation's health care problems: "Universal Health Care."

All of the suggestions [from the likes of Kennedy and myriad others] lack only one thing....

A DESCRIPTION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION.

They talk themselves blue in the face about the problems they want to solve and how everyone will benefit from implementing something to get us there, but i don't hear CRAP about how they intend to do it!

...And therein lies the problem: Maybe all y'all like to know where you want to go without any concern of how you're going to get there.

Not me, thanks!

So, help me with this... Please define what "Universal Health Care" means. What does it include, what does it not provide. How do I pay for it? Where do I go for medical assistance, either for general medical aid, emergency room help, chronic problems, specialist treatments, operations, medicines...?

It's fine to hear all the blather about how great it's going to be and how much we all need it, and how the benefits will be wonderful and save tons of money in the long run.

Noble goals. But what's it going to look like in terms of implementation and our immediate experience of it?

Without any descriptions of those kinds of scenarios, it's heart-rending and tear-jerking and wonderful tv and press interview material for candidates and Congressfolks, but it tells your electorate absolutely nothing of what that system will be like.

Please take some time to flesh out at least some sketchy pictures of it for us. Who will run it? Whom will we pay? What's a reasonable timeline for getting it up and running? What companies are likely to be involved in it and which ones will see their current business models blown out of the water as this thing is rolled out?

Human beings don't exactly like surprises and "the unknown" and right now, that's all we have. Given the paucity of "facts" most of us are free to imagine the best images of what it will be like, while others will immediately find all of the downsides and "holes" in the systems that haven't even been described to us.

Not a good way to go. Please get someone on the stick to write something up for all of us to see that describes what the entire process will become, ok? We need that, and need it soon.

Yeah, and for our "energy independence future," too... same reasons.

Thanks.