The health care debate continues to heat up and shows no sign of letting up.  today we had a pro health care supporter chew off the finger of an opponent.  Sick.

Both sides remain entrenched and passionate but it occurs to me that both sides live in a comfort zone of extremes.

For example, the left wants to make this an imperative of moral conscience, that we must provide health care to all, and the only other option is to do nothing. 

The right mandates its refusal to bow to government run health care, sometimes ignoring that there are already government run health care systems in place now. 

And somewhere in the middle, perhaps, the truth may live.

Maybe there is a way to modify what exists now to extend coverage to those who need it without giving the government carte blanche to seize control over another industry.

The proponents flaunt the statistics.  They show that in other countries with universal care how the lifespan is longer, but ignore the factors that contribute to that, while also ignoring the flaws in those systems and the quality of care that the US systems provides.  The bandy the number of uninsured (47 million) about as proof that the need is dire, though the ‘need’ has existed for a while, only their trifecta of power makes the need more pressing now. 

The fact is that the number of uninsured has been shown to be misleading.

Of those 47 million,  more than 17 million make enough money to afford to buy insurance and do not.   About 10 million are undocumented aliens who already get free care at any emergency room they go to, usually with no risk of deportation.

Another 8 million or so can get insurance but chose not to, usually these are the younger people who do not feel a need for it. 

8 million children have insurance available via a parent but the parent has not signed them up.

Then you have the 3 0r 4 million who qualify for the existing government programs but have not signed up, leaving the real number (allowing for overlaps of people in multiple categories) to be around 13 or 14 million, of which maybe 9 million are only temporarily without due to job changes.

The point is that the real numbers are being hidden behind emotional demagoguery.

It seems to me that simply expanding Medicare would solve the real problem.  By taking the existing programs and revamping the qualification eligibility, you have an opportunity to extend the coverage to those who need it the most.

The right maintains that there are options available that would not require a huge remodel of the industry, many of which I detailed here.

But also lost on this  are a couple of areas I think are lost.

One, where do the states and the communities fit in?  Why is this necessarily a federal issue?

Two, we talk about the need for insurance but we rarely discuss the amount of abuse we as the consumers put into the system.  how many people use their insurance for elective work, and make a doctors visit for even the smallest ailment, when self care could easily be enough?

We are spoiled.  We don’t have to wait, so we go at the drop of a hat.  What if your costs and premiums were more closely tied to your usage?

Consider the lesson we see in car insurance.  I can get insurance, but if I constantly file claims, my premiums go up, and if I am reckless they rise as well.  Yet car insurance it not a right, it is a mandate.  We have to carry it.  So we are careful how we use it.  We drive safely to avoid accidents and tickets which affect our rates.  We carefully control what levels of coverage, and we shop around for competing coverage.

Shouldn’t people who are higher risk have to pay higher rates accordingly?  Sorry smokers, that could mean you.  Or fat people like me.

We need reform, no doubt about it.  The system as it stands needs fixing.

But fixing it by mandating the government run it requires us to look at how the government runs everything.

• Medicare:  Broken, soon to be bankrupt.
• Social Security:  Broken, soon to be bankrupt.
• Native Health care:  Underfunded, insufficient and broken.
• Postal service:  Bankrupt.
• VA:  Broken, insufficient and clogged with waste and inefficiency.
• Military:  fraught with wasteful spending.
• IRS:  Don’t even get me started.

How about the cash for clunkers program?  Dealers and consumers should pay heed to the delays and bureaucratic nightmares that that tiny program caused.  Dealers have to wait months for the payments, which damages their ability to remain afloat and pay their employees. 

Can the government be trusted to administer a trillion dollar industry?  And can we even afford it?  Taxing the rich won’t do it, and the middle class cannot bear it.  Who will pay it?

And when we have it, will the examples above be the foreshadowing of what we will see? 

I personally cannot trust congress if they all operate on the same page as this guy, who contends that the more debt we have, the wealthier we are:

This is the mindset that wants to revolutionize heath care?  The childish “I don’t like your questions, so f*** off!” attitude is inspiring.

So far no one really has addressed this from the ground up using problem solving.

First step:  Define the problem.  we don’t even know where to begin on that because we are spending all of our time arguing over the solutions.

Right now, the real problem is that neither side is really trying to solve anything, they just want to make the other side look bad and gain more power for their own.

Congress needs more reform than the health care industry.