Government Reform #3: Health Care

Our whole system of government is broken and incapable of solving complex problems. Therefore, the system must be reformed before it can be capable of solving problems.

Our government is designed to make changes slowly and eliminate drastic, radical changes at one time. This is a good thing. 

The House and Senate is trying to radically change entire industries (energy, health care, etc.) at one time. This does not work in our current system. What ends up happening is that every possible solution is debated and thrown into a massive health care bill. The entire health care bill becomes so complex that it is bound to have terrible provisions within the bill. People understand this.

A more reasonable approach is to change the process in the House and Senate. Instead of having a massive bill, the Congress should look at passing, and signing into law, ideas that both parties could agree upon. Here are several issues we could agree on...

1. Making health care insurance portable (take it from state to state)

2. Creating incentives for every person to invest in individual health insurance policies

3. Creating efficiencies in electronic medical records

4. Creating incentives for people to control their usage of medical services

5. Creating incentives for healthy living

6. Controlling excessive litigious liability costs

Each of these categories is complex enough. To bunch them all together creates too complex of a bill. Further, people will actually be able to follow the discussion through a transparent discussion. Right now, everything is leaked out at a snails pace and nobody is able to understand the radically complex legislation. 

The current system is designed to create divisions and harsh political rhetoric. A more measured approach to simply address the issues we could agree on would eliminate the radical changes that destroy the decorum of political debate.