Thanks But No Thanks To Proposed Health Care System Changes

Our health care system needs an overhaul. In my experience, what most people rightly complain about are the high costs of insurance, the fear of losing it, and the complexities and inefficiencies that characterize our system.
I am always suspicious of someone who tries to motivate me by using guilt. Maybe you, like me, have been hearing that we need to be ashamed of ourselves for not providing health insurance coverage to everyone, like they do in many parts of Europe and Canada. I, for one, am not ashamed, and although I feel strongly that changes are needed, guilt is not one of my motivations.
I like the way Americans tackle issues like this, and I like what the current debate says about us.
We tend to believe that it is immoral to fail to provide for those among us who are most vulnerable. Hence we have such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS, CMS, just to name a few. In Dona Ana County, about one fourth of the yearly county budget is contributed to our local hospitals to help with the costs of providing care to those who have no coverage. As someone who has been on call to our emergency rooms for 16 years, let me make sure you know that patients who have no insurance, but who are truly ill, get the care they need.
At the same time, most Americans tend to believe that it is equally immoral to systematically give to those who should be expected to take care of themselves. It cripples them. We also instinctively understand that guarantees by our government to provide for basic needs always come at the cost of liberty.
Put me down for providing for those who are truly unable to do it for themselves, while preserving maximum liberty for all. Needs cannot be converted into “rights” out of the thin air of wishful thinking.
I think what we Americans do about health care is admirable in its intentions, if not so much so in its execution. My own ideas about how to improve our health care system will have to occupy another editorial, but they certainly do not include turning any more control over to government. Such a move would have all the expected waste, dense bureaucracy, and inefficiencies we have come to expect from government programs. More ominously, we would be ceding one of our most precious freedoms: our right to direct our own health care.