I should have seen it coming

Please note that I did talk about the national healthcare issue just a few posts ago. What I should have realized then is that the release of this film would be coordinated with somebody's campaign. I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Moore and Mr. Obama are working together. The buzz from the film and the already thought out healthcare plan will create the stage for the democrats. And every other candidate is already behind.

It will probably set the stage for the Republican candidates as well by hijacking the agenda. "Mr. Giuliani, what do you think about national healthcare?" He'll have to be ready with an answer and just by answering will move the issue even more to the front.

Lest you think that I have a conspiritorial mind. I do not see this as a left wing conspiracy. Only very deft politcal ability. Mr. Obama will be a candidate to watch. And I think that's the way he wants it.

SiCKo

Michael Moore is at it again. He will release a new documentary on our health care system and one can only suppose the underlying agenda: "Get us a nationalized healthcare system!"

If you were alive in the 1980s and 1990s you remember the same mantra being chanted. The solution was to create HMOs or Health Management Orginizations. It was a halfway step to national healthcare. What did this do for healthcare? Did we see a steep decrease in healthcare costs because of them? No, we saw an increase in the bureaucracy. Most HMOs have quietly gone away in the last ten years and the bureaucracy has shifted to the insurance companies. They decide what proceedures are covered and when. Try talking to a doctor about this sometime and see if they like how the current system works. HMOs and national healthcare have the extremely undesirable effect of making the high cost of a medical education unappealing. What do you get for it after all? Prestige?

I have no doubt that Mr. Moore will be screaming for a national healthcare system. What will that mean for the average person? More bureaucracy for less healthcare. Any doctor with any sense will switch to a "private clinic" practice. In other words: pay as you go health care. The kicker there is that in order to have a national healthcare system you'll be having some money removed from your paycheck like the government already does for social security and medicare. Then, if you want to go to a private clinic, you'll pay more money out of your own pocket because the government isn't going to pay you to go to a private clinic.

Robin Hood will be at it again. The rich are paying for the poor to have another entitlement. Except it won't be the rich who bear the real burden, it will be the middle class, because they'll be just well enough off that if they want real health care it will be within their reach and yet because of the national system they'll pay double for it.

I say we regulate the insurers and not the medical system. Limit how much profit they can take off the top. Then, in order to increase revenues, they won't want to limit procedures they'll encourage them (more volume means more revenue after all.) More volume would mean more real competition and our medical system becomes a free market system once again.

I know. Its a pipe dream.