A Kingdom of Conscience

or "How to Turn a Profitable Health Care Crisis into Family Theme Park Fun"

For over forty years, We the People have been hard sold many innovative ideas, progressive solutions, economist's pipe dreams, recollections of historical revisionists, statistician's comparative studies, folk wisdom simple solutions, and revolutionary panaceas to make health care affordable and accessible for all Americans. Some of these visions attempted to treat the symptoms, while others targeted a cure for rapidly rising, across the board health care costs. The results have been an attempt at holding back a rising tide, our human efforts amount to vanity. Useless, all useless.

Of our own accord or a lack of options, We the People have turned to our most dangerous servant, government, to formulate the chill pills for our red hot medical bill ills. Government has provided a four decade long political theater of very expensive rhetoric with low budget performance. To date government has performed on par with the aforementioned aspiring remedy providers. It's been a situational comedy with an all too common plot: "Talk much, Do nothing." We didn't elect consultants, we elected leaders, supposedly. So, I'm not laughing anymore. Neither should you.

For over forty years, we have witnessed Congress after Congress pass law after law, initiate or abrogate some program or regulation, and revised or rescinded all manners of administrative authorities in the hope of reigning in runaway medical costs. Republican solutions, Democratic solutions, Populist solutions, Left wing, Right wing, every kind of thing solutions, all their efforts have proven futile… every single one.

The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act (AKA - Obamacare) was the government's latest, and most sweeping permutation of a one size fits all, command and control health care system for the masses. You just have to vote for it and hope it passes before you can see what’s in the Bill. Oh, look, it’s a bill of the burgeoning, budget busting variety. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

So much for “free” health care.

After so many years and so many leaders with so many ideologies, philosophies, and let’s not forget, so many "Grandma had to sell her house for the surgery” atrocities, I must question the veracity of those honorable ladies and gentlemen of the late payment State from which they hail (not a typo). I question their sincerity and posit those who bear the responsibility to make life and death choices for the People, are either misdiagnosing the problem in ineptitude or performing malpractice by intent. In spite of all their assurances and claims of concern for the health of average Americans, regardless of all their long speeches detailing the deleterious effect of health care costs on the financial well-being of Mr. and Mrs. Main Street America, I have my doubts about their sincerity. So, should you.

I have to raise an eyebrow at both the sources and the tsunami of campaign contributions slamming and damning our alleged Constitutional Republic which may sway those who fill the seats under our capitol dome to represent the interests of those back home. With millions upon millions of dollars being laundered clean to anonymize their origin through Super PACs, foreign donors, and dark/ shadow back trails, these "Oh, so concerned" policymakers are looking sleazier than the most notable organized crime bosses of the 1970’s. At least, the Mafia had a Code by which they lived and were executed gangland style. Sure, it was brutal, childishly club-like and violently club-like, but it was a Code, a genuine loyalty to the Boss. Unless you could do better on your own. Say an offer you couldn’t refuse. It was a loyalty set in stone until they made your shoes from concrete, but even then you knew you weren’t coming back. You were headed for a bullet induced heart attack over a generous helping of ziti and Italian sausage. A kind of prelude to your next incarnation, post mortem.

This one contains only pork. I hope.

Politicians have no such ethos. They are ethically free and unencumbered by the drudgery of accountability. Their sole responsibility for their terms majority is maintaining and improving their re-electability. Unfortunately, re-electability has damn little to do with the People in the Land of the Fee, health care affordability, or anything else that happens on Main Street. Politicians tend to be more money grubbing, clannish, and self-interested than those old Mafia goons that they put out of business to take up the room in the finest hotels, restaurants, and bars making shady deals and rubbing elbows with the rich and nameless, near, and far. The gangsters loved their mothers and kissed them for luck. The politicians would sell their own mothers for a couple thousand dollars and not…

rely on luck.

Therefore, knowing the nature of the political beast, my eyebrow remains elevated.

Your eyebrow should not remain seated, either.

These very same "I feel your pain" legislators who set National Health Care Policy (which is just a colloquial way of saying “printing checks”) in Washington DC are helplessly addicted to and heavily under the influence of big dollar donor dope. There are relationships between campaign contributions and votes cast in both chambers of Congress. It is as our Fathers would say, “self-evident”. There are also relationships between those who donate and those who vote. These highly valued and equally suspects relationships between regulators and the regulated, the big donors and the constituent owners of representation in the Condo of the Free. I see this “to the highest bidder goes my vote” as sapping or undercutting the Principles we claim to honor in our American legends and lore, our history, and our heroes not to mention a few old documents called The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America, and The Bill of Rights. This is our biggest national security threat, today. What good is winning a War on Terror, if in the struggle we have already returned to the Reign of Terror. Off with ~~their~~ OUR heads

Health insurance is covered under insurance, not health.

According to the nonpartisan research group The Center for Responsive Politics, the biggest contributors to political campaigns are from the “Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate” sectors, which makes perfect sense when you consider these are by far the biggest beneficiaries of our peculiar national policies. Many within this sector have benefited in ways which in any EDUCATED and CIVILIZED nation would result in large mobs of citizens storming the capitol to drag their respective representatives into the city streets and unceremoniously shooting them in the back of their heads. Mercifully and regrettably, we don't live in such a nation.

A Farewell to Kings... and lesser tyrants.

I don't advocate such mob action, but I wouldn't necessarily object too strenuously either, as the Right of Revolution is the true final check on government corruption. However, I would prefer we allow the Angels of our Better Nature prevail. Rather than choosing destruction, let us build a wonderful theme park. A modern Great Wonder of epic proportion where we can bring our entire family and teach our children American values. Values like Freedom of Choice, Self-Sufficiency, An Honest Day's Labor, and lest we forget, Accountability. Yes, accountability for one's actions and inactions. "This is what we do with those who try to reduce a free people into unwitting mercenaries for merchants”, we would instruct the kids as we pass the cozy accommodations for the current convicts whom we formerly entrusted to do what is in the People's best interest, not their own.

Such an awesome tourist attraction and patriotic venue would surely draw an international crowd. The idea might spread, imagine this! A rollback to Republic v1.0, without slavery and sporting universal suffrage from the git-go. That would make me so proud to be an American again.

Cartoon of confused taxpayer in government theme park.

Another Revolutionary American Innovation!

(Long sigh...)

But... in lieu of this beautiful national treasure, and potential World Heritage Site, we have the politicians blaming pharmaceuticals, defrauders of the system, insurance companies, those nasty HMO's which the politicians created, (LOL!), and finger pointing at each other. The pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and health care providers in turn blame the politicians, the inefficiencies of bureaucracy, and the demographics of an aging population linked with the costs of high-tech treatments.

It's all very complex, very confusing, and it's all been so heartbreaking for so long that we've grown numb from the horror... the horror. Grandma having to sell her house to afford the surgery doesn’t seem so bad anymore. It’s the norm, and that’s pitiful because somewhere in this carnival of hope, fear, worry, and loss we've forgotten the simple, effective tool of Supply and Demand. Do you remember this key economic principle from high school?

Supply and Demand

the amount of a commodity, product, or service available and the desire of buyers for it, considered as major factors regulating its price.

"By the law of supply and demand the cost of health care will plummet."

Yes, it is that simple.

What brings costs down is competition, regardless of whether we’re talking about widgets, vacuum cleaners, cell phone providers, oil change franchises, cheese burgers, blog writers, heart bypasses, medicines, scalpels, beagle puppies, or Beanie Babies, prices are primarily determined by Supply and Demand.

Author's Note: Please, keep this in mind as you read the rest of this post and EVERY SINGLE TIME you hear about the high price of health care in the future.

Those who push for the “Single Payer” system, which is to socialized medicine what ”Climate Change” is to global warming, are advocating the free market system of Supply and Demand. They won't admit to it, but what they are doing is limiting demand by grouping everyone into one giant consumer. Then, removing choices they consider overly burdensome on public monies and adding mandates they consider essential for the benefit of their own personal agendas, which most likely has nothing in common with your own. That's a backwards solution, although they won't admit that either. Instead, they will employ one well known American value called "the Fifth."

While we could all use at least a fifth, what we need are more providers. Lots more. I want to see as many health care providers, insurers, and equipment manufacturers as there are porn sites on the web, coffee kiosk in Seattle, and hair weave shops in ethnic neighborhoods. I want to see doctors chasing patients like telemarketers hawking magazine subscriptions and Girl Scouts hustling cookies, because it's the Supply side of the Supply and Demand equation that has been over-specialized, rationed, and regulated into rarity.

Doctors are disappearing from private practice into huge “Single Provider” regional medical centers… one stop shopping like Mega Walmarts of health care with the Sotheby's price tags.

Many politicians, research analysts, and advocacy groups have taken "Big Pharma" to task for their predatory pricing, but nobody says a word about the massive medical center down the street. However, the Medical Center's popularity plays a central role in health care's lack of affordability.

Meanwhile, health care insurance companies are gobbling up competitors in a feeding frenzy to be the one and only… you guessed it… “Single Payer” for the whole health care cartel.

I know, it looks like they're working towards a monopoly! Yes, I do understand that monopolies are bad for consumers and lead to price gouging. Of, course, I know that a monopoly is like an aggressive cancer which should be surgically removed, but who is going to hold the scalpel when all our surgeons are working for the cancer?

We need a lot less of these…