It Won't Work

What I'm referring to is our dear president's health care president. No, not our Only president, our president.

I think, essentially, he thinks he'll leave the private health care providers alone. What he does plan to do is create required, cheap health care, for everyone. Somehow my mind is having some trouble imagining someone who thinks this is a good idea, but that might just be my headache.

Let's suppose, for now, that the price of government health care is below the average private health care, or even lower than a great percentage of private health care. What would you do? Get it, like one of those weird humans would? Probably. Most likely, a huge percentage of Americans would have government health care within, probably, the first year of its existence. Obviously. But what other effects would there be? What would you do, if you were a doctor? Your salary could probably be significantly decreased, and you could do little or nothing about it. Obama also, I think, believes he can impose quality standards of some sort, meaning that if you, a doctor, began providing bad health care, you would either be paid less, or become unemployed. If this is the truth, wouldn't doctors be put in a very hard place, being paid less than they used to, in fact, probably need to? But I digress.

For the consumer. First, let it be clear that we do not have a free market health care system. Obama says we can't go where we've been going (for the last eight years, I'd bet 'ole Quivie he'd say), but where we're going, and have been going, isn't where I, and many others, as republicans or conservatives, wish we were. Let me explain.

A while ago, one of our presidents, possibly Carter, imposed a wage freeze. What that means, is that an employer simply cannot compete. One employer cannot raise his wages to attract more employees. A potential employee would see the higher wage at one company, and the lower at another, and the choice was too clear.

Obviously, employers had to do something. Bundling health care packages as benefits with employeeship ended up being, I think, one of the most defining factors. By doing so, employers can make their deal much, much more valuable. By this system, employers can compete. Still, there's a problem. Still, Americans don't have anywhere near the choice they would in a truly free market system. Your health care quality is limited to that of your prospective employers. You really can't get what you want, unless you're working for a huge employer, or can afford even the most expensive health care.

I don't know if I've made my point, but I stopped writing this last night, and don't care to reread what I've already written and continue it. This has been a senselessly shameless plagiarization of my mother's rant a few minutes into last night's Presidential question/answer forum thingy.

Inauthentically yours,


!Noah!