Problems are Easy, Solutions are Not

The problems with healthcare are pretty easy to understand.  We all have friends and relatives that have gone through serious health issues, and many of us have walked through the flawed medical delivery systems right next to someone.

End of life care is outrageously expensive.  Just like treatment of serious disease, which becomes more likely as we age.  As my baby boom generation ages into retirement, most of us expect the government to take care of our healthcare issues with Medicare.  Our problem is that our own children are unemployed and underemployed.  And they're not having children. 

So that Medicare system that was created when more than 5 wage earners paid in taxes to care for a single senior.  That ratio has now dropped to about 3, and it projected to fall to 2 in a decade or so (See www.Heritage.org)

Add in the burden of taxpayers funding Medicaid for the unemployed, and the whole system is upside-down.

So what should be done?  President Obama's solution is already melting down before it's even fully implemented. 

One day I know I'm going to get sick. I don't know what my illness will be, whether cancer or a diseased organ or some sort of orthopedic problem.  But whatever it is, the treatment is likely going to cost well into six figures.  As a middle-class ordinary man, that kind of money just isn't available.

So who's going to pay for my treatment?  That's the big question.

Democrats say, "Let us take care of you".  In return they want the power to tax me into oblivion and insert themselves between me and my doctors, making all the decisions for me based on statistical formulas that completely disregard my individual needs.  They can and probably will, at least in some cases, make decisions for us that say, "just give him a pain pill and try to keep him comfortable until he dies".

I don't like that option.

Republicans say, "We'll give you a tax-free medical savings account to help you save up for an eventual disease".  Sure, I like that better, but if my eventual disease generates bills in excess of, say, a half-million dollars, I might as well plan to buy a seat on the NASA spaceship going to Mars.  That solution is terrific for high earners, but for folks like me means I'd have to save every single discretionary dollar and still risk coming up short when the money's needed.

No solution is going to be ideal.  But I firmly believe the best solutions may lie somewhere between the two put forward by the parties.  I am still sold on the idea of everyone having a simple Major Medical plan that takes care of our treatment for serious illness or injury.  We then need to take responsibility for ourselves for everything short of major health issues.

Yes, I know that poor folks, both seniors and non-seniors, need care too.  A revitalized economy is really the only answer.  If we can get the percentage of able-bodied workers gainfully employed, then we will be able to afford to chip in a few dollars to help cover the truly poor and needy.  Democrats will never achieve a revitalized economy.  Republicans might, but only if they can resist their natural impulse to get drunk on power and act like Democrats again like they did in George W Bush's first term.

Right now I don't hold out much hope for a reasonable solution from Washington.  Maybe if Americans band together and defy Washington, we can find solutions without them.