Political Equinox

I’ve decided that I can’t keep bashing the Democrat’s Universal (Socialized - you can call it whatever you like, but it is what it is) Healthcare Plan without offering up a solution of my own. Now let me start by saying that I’m open to changing this plan. In fact, I’m all for scrapping the entire plan or at least large parts of it. But this the best solution I’ve been able to come up with that continues on with the free market American way (controlled with a standardized plan, mind that) and maintains the high-quality of healthcare in this country.

I’m come up with a plan that mixed the current system with some of the elements I feel are the best in the Universal Healthcare proposals.

Please offer suggestions, comments, and criticisms of this plan - this is the first draft of the plan - so I doubt it’s even close to perfect. In fact, I can say with 100% certainty that it’s not perfect.

1. Standardized Health Insurance Contract - Put together a conference of top medical professionals, insurance industry leaders, government officials, and certain private citizens to develop a comprehensive and standardized health insurance contract with categorized (itemized, but not really) choices. Almost like a health insurance buffet where you get a standard plan and then you can add on all sorts of choices. The companies would then be able to compete based on customer service and pricing of their policies, based on how efficient they could turn their internal systems would allow them to lower prices and become a more successful company.
2. Nationwide Electronic Medical/Insurance Database - This is where I pull in one of the best elements the universal healthcare proposals, since the Democrats seem so willing to pay for the entire system I think they would probably be just fine covering just the IT. This would be an extremely progressive system that would allow every doctor in America to link up to this system and enter patient information, billing, medical records, and check out insurance policies. Essentially, this would be every American’s medical diary. According to facts the Clinton Campaign uses in it’s speeches on healthcare, 30 cents out of every dollar for insurance are spent on paperwork, so I decided lets cut that out and take 25% of the healthcare costs away (leaving some room for expenses under the next system, of course). How many more people can afford it then?
3. Open Prescription Drug Import/Purchasing - I know the drug companies may attempt to get in the way of this one, but I still don’t understand the whole ban on outside drugs. We buy toasters, televisions, cars, and many other products outside - why not medicine? Cheaper you say? Isn’t that the point of a free market society? To create the best possible price for the consumer.
4. Perks for leading healthy lifestyles - Let’s face it, America has a problem with it’s health. Obesity is penetrating to every level of society in record numbers and we are turning into a society that treats instead of a society that prevents. We need to offer benefits for preventative measures - losing weight/staying in a healthy weight, etc. I do realize though that we need to be careful with this because many times there is a story behind the problem. This is one of the parts that could probably be chucked right out because much of the time some of it is included within the insurance policy. Regardless, we really do need to deal with the preventative versus treatment problem in our healthcare system.
5. Roll in Medicare - In order to make the system truly efficient, Medicare will have to be rolled into this plan. Otherwise, we are back at the same spot we were before - multiple systems, multiple rules, multiple processes. Furthermore, we will need to take a serious look at Medicare (but I’ll save that for another post), as according to the Federal Government Controller General David Walker Medicare is a far more serious problem than Social Security.
6. Provide Relief - Probably the most difficult and controversial (and maybe it won’t happen right away), but in all honestly we’ve probably got to provide at lease some financial relief to those families who are unable to afford current insurance. While I’m not sure how much or even if we will be able to do this, I think it is probably a possibility.

Pretty scary when this guy gets going into his charts, graphs, facts, and figures. It’s not like he’s an activist either - he’s the government’s top accountant.

Today was a hard day - my first primary election and my card reads, “17 Year Old Democrat.” I nearly cried.

No, but seriously - I felt my vote was best served selecting the best candidates on the other side. (As I will admit, they do have good candidates - just not as good.) And since nobody showed up to challenge my Democratic declaration, I didn’t have to refuse to sign the affidavit.

For the Office of President: My vote was Barack Obama. I feel he is the 2nd best candidate for President (actually, the 3rd, but Mike Huckabee is out). I see Barack as the best leader from the Democratic ticket. I don’t see Hillary as an effective leader, so I won’t vote for her.

For the Office of Governor: My vote was Jim Schellinger. I like Jim. He’s a man of good character and an a good man at reaching comprimise. Maybe I’ll be awful generous and call him Henry Clay - but I don’t think that’s fair to Mr. Clay. Mitch is still “My Man,” but I would rather see Jim in the office than Jill Long Thompson.

If able, I would have voted Don Duff for NACS School Board.

Those were all of the contested offices I was eligible to vote for because of my age.

As we edge closer and closer (hopefully) to having a Democratic presidential nominee, I cannot believe how close this election cycle has (so far) ran to perhaps the greatest TV series of all time…I’m talking of course of the West Wing, the a series that garnered both critical and public support in its storied 7 season run.

The last two seasons of the show dealt with (primarily) the decision of who would become the next president after the much beloved Democrat Josiah Bartlet left office.

This is where the show and reality overlap. In the show on the Democratic side there are two primary candidates – Vice President Bob Russell and Congressman Matt Santos. Russell represented the party establishment choice, yet his lack of charisma and overall charm made him a difficult candidate for moderates to embrace. Santos, a minority, was the definition of charismatic yet found the ‘experience’ argument something difficult to overcome.

Halfway through the primary contest the Republicans coalesced around a moderate senator from California, Arnold Vinick. Vinick is old, considered a ‘maverick’ and a ‘straight talker’, but also has a testy relationship with the religious right.

The Democrats battle down to the wire, with no candidate winning the required number of delegates to be nominated at the Democratic National Convention. Santos and Russell nitpicked at each other and spent an exorbitant amount of money and time fighting tooth and nail over every single state.

…sound familiar?

I am not going to go on too much longer, but there are other potential similarities between the series and real life that may play out.

1. Another politician, Pennsylvania Governor Eric Baker, widely considered the front runner before the race began attempted to get nominated on the floor. Delegates are only beholden to their candidates for the first vote – after that, its open season. Baker, in the name of ‘party unity’ threw his name in the ring – exacerbating the already contentious situation.

2. Santos, who is the eventual nominee, must pick a party stalwart and man of experience in order to win. Vinick must pick a young conservative with impeccable conservative credentials.

In almost all situations, replace the name ‘Santos’ with ‘Obama’, ‘Russell’ with ‘Clinton’, ‘Vinick’ with ‘McCain’ and ‘Baker’ with ‘Gore’ and you pretty much have the presidential election process in a nutshell.

For anyone who remembers the Pokemon game for Nintendo’s Gameboy…