The NCG - LComment Health Care Debate Begins: C Gen's opening remarks

We need to enact reforms of our health care system. I think there are few that would argue otherwise, on the right or left. Health care costs are projected to outpace GDP for the next few decades creating a cost crisis. There are many good things about the way our health care works, but individuals need to have greater control and choice over their health decisions. However, passing no legislation is better than passing poor legislation. I intend to lay out arguments that will convince your average American that HR3200 is not the solution to our health care issues. Those arguments will show that private reforms, not sweeping government intervention, will be needed to improve health care for all Americans.

How will I do all this? I’m going to point to the left’s holy grail of health care assessments, the World Health Organization’s 2000 report that ranks nation’s health care systems, and show that by analyzing the report, we can glean that sweeping government intervention would make our health care worse off and not better. Yes, I know that the WHO report was written by those that promote socialized medicine and therefore biased. However, it is still a method for measuring health care. All measures have their problems. Recessions by definition cannot be determined until we’ve been in a recession for six months and the unemployment rate does not include those unemployed, but not looking for work. We can still obtain valid points on how to reform our health care from WHO.

When we take a look at the WHO report and many other reliable sources, I’ll show:

• That HR3200 does not fix the cost crisis, but make it worse,
• That our current health care providers are not letting American patients down as is argued by the left
• That the American system has many aspects that lead and not lag behind the rest of the world and HR3200 will diminish our system’s advantages,
• That our government and specifically our current administration has no credibility in taking a larger role in our health care system, and
• That market based solutions will promote the personal responsibility that is the key to many of our health care problems

Health care is too important to get wrong and it affects too many people to allow the government to try the same failed, leftist policies that are already destroying the health systems of other countries as well as several states in the US. It’s time to try something bold, something that is sacred and part of tradition in America. It’s time to unleash the genius of the individual and not the tyranny of the government.