Health Care Reform: How to Prove it Will Work or Not

It is painfully obvious that the main impediment to Mr. Obama's health care reform is the populous. People fear change and no one has yet been able to prove to John Q. Public that universal health care can work in the United States of America. No amount of charts, graphs, studies, statistics, white papers, commercials, speeches, or pointing at other countries' heath care systems is going to be good enough to prove to Mr. and Mrs. Public that universal health care will work for them.

Instead of ramming the special interest laden, backroom deal brokered, quid pro quo vote traded bill down our sore throats, Mr. Obama needs a small, successful test that universal health care will work. The test must include a diverse, cross-section of the US population, large enough to be statistically relevant. To avoid major Congressional wrangling, he needs a test group which won't need a universal change in U.S. law just to change their health care plans. Fortunately, there is such a group and Mr. Obama just happens to be their CEO.

Why not use the federal service to prove universal health care can work?

The federal government is one of the country's largest employers. The federal service is large and diverse enough to give a statistically relevant result. Congress would have to change only a few laws and regulations instead of the sweeping mandates in their current bills. Only one employer would have to comply with the changes instead of millions of business across the country. The change could be easily monitored through existing agencies like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) who already do this kind of thing. Then, given a reasonable amount of time, we could all see if it was working or not.

We would then have our proof that universal health care works or not in this country. Right now you're asking yourself, "Why hasn't someone already thought of this?" I know. It's so simple.

There is only one reason I can think of that makes this suggestion abhorrent to the administration. Time is the enemy. It would take time to prove or disprove the hypothesis. It may take five or ten years before we could analyze the changes and come to any conclusions. That is the kind of time a President doesn't have. The President has at the most, eight years to leave his mark on history. Few are willing to leave it up to their successor to follow through. Most are of the mind set that we not let a good crisis, real or imagined, go unexploited.

There is one thing I've learned in my years of working with the government: the more sense it makes, the less likely it is to be implemented. Though we put every thing from cars to cradles through rigorous testing before releasing the products to the public, there are no tests being done on universal health care. Congress is slapping some duct tape on their original 2000+ page bill and kicking it out the door. Makes you wonder how they have the stones to grill Mr. Toyota, doesn't it?

No matter how much sense my suggestion makes, don't worry that it will be taken seriously by anyone. I'm a simple man with simple thoughts. Simple thoughts are beyond the grasp of the average politician. On the off chance someone in Washington did consider my idea, let me throw one more out there. Could we stop making federal employees pay federal income tax on their wages? My boss doesn't insist I give him back part of my paycheck every payday. Why does Uncle Sam pay his employees only to stick his hand right back out and demand a refund? How, exactly, does that circle of idiocy work?