National Health Care: Everybody Else is Doing It, so Why Can't We?

This is what I call the Cranberries^* argument, "Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?" Our beatific neighbor to the north, Canada, is often held up as a shining beacon of working national health care. Surly we're as good as Canada. Most of our European cousins have some sort of national health care. Surly we can be as sophisticated as the Europeans, n'est-ce pas? In a nutshell, the U.S. government isn't set up to handle something as complicated and detailed as national health care.

The U.S. Government isn't designed to work that way
Do you remember that little experiment we tried in 1776? It was something new. No country before had tried creating a new nation on the scale of the United States. The guys in the powdered wigs were pretty smart, but they weren't perfect. There were some brilliant minds in the group, but let's face it, there were some real droolers present who couldn't quite grasp the whole "new nation" concept. This is evidenced by some in the back of the room who desired to elect George Washington king or president for life. Luckily, George had a head on his shoulders and politely declined.

These guys wrote a constitution based on their own interests and fears. The big fear was the power the king of England had. They wanted to make damned sure nothing like that would happen in their new America. They created a government that made it difficult to get things done. They made change on a national scale a difficult thing on purpose. They knew that a government was a necessary evil and tried to make sure it stayed out of our lives as much as possible.

Why does it work over there?
I guess that depends on your definition of "work," but the point here is that our fancy European cousins and those toothless hockey jockeys to our north don't have our constitution. They have totally different governmental systems than the United States. We have different fail-safes built into our constitution.

Their parliamentary systems allow for a more flexible, rapid response to change than our presidential system. If a parliamentary government gets out of hand, they can issue a vote of no-confidence and start over. If a parliamentary government does something really stupid, they can undo it fairly quickly. The parliamentary system is designed to be close to the people. The U.S. system is designed to be as far away from the people as possible while still being a democratic republic. Other countries can experiment. The U.S. can't.

Once we do a thing, it's pretty much done for the next decade at least. Remember the 18th amendment? That took 40 years to pick up steam and pass. It took 14 years to repeal even though we figured out within a month that it was a really stupid thing to think Americans weren't going to drink alcohol.

Once we vote, we're pretty much at the mercy of these clowns for the next two, four, or six years. Our constitution makes change slow. It pits the branches of government against each other so they'll stay busy debating and stay out of our way. Our constitution understands that the best government is the least government. It makes provision for the big things we can't do as individuals and must do as a collective, but even "provide for the common defense" has limits. Those guys in the wigs had a real fear of large, standing armies for a good reason. They didn't just pull the third amendment out of a powder-encrusted hat.

If something as stupid as having a beer caused such a problem, why do we think we'll do better with national health care? I don't know about you, but I'm not real comfortable committing trillions of dollars to something without some sort of constitutional amendment. Passing thousands of pages of a bill through congress feels like it's circumventing the system.

The U.S. Government is only good at only one thing
D.C. is very good at throwing money at things. That is their modus operandi for solving all problems. They redistribute money through the D.C. funnel with expert precision and based on political motives. The baseline thinking is, "I better show my constituents some money if I want to get re-elected." After all, we contributed to our congressman's campaign. We expect a return on our investment.

Every wonder why the F-22 Raptor was built in 60 different locations? Every Congressman wanted to take a piece of the sweet work back to his district. They set up the budget so they could all go back home and wave money and jobs at their constituents. Does it make sense to build a two-billion dollar fighter in parts, all over the country? Of course not, unless you think like a politician.

Want to build a road? The Federal government does not build roads. They throw money at the States, usually with political strings attached, and the States build roads. Ever notice how the interstate changes at the State line? The States do all the work. Want to go to the moon? Then pour money into companies who make rockets and hire them as contractors. Do you think NASA built the space shuttle? No, it was hundreds of companies and scientist all working for private companies. The Federal government just set up a coordinating body, NASA, and threw money at the contractors until the thing got built.

Throwing money at health care won't fix it.
The U.S. government is good at hiring contractors. They use private companies to do almost everything we think the government does. That's how they've worked for 200 years. They can't change overnight to become the largest health care provider in the western world. With their current mindset and constitutional restrictions, all they can to is throw money at private companies and hope. I know, hope is what we all voted for, but you can't hope national health care will work. You need to get it right or close to right if you're going to throw a trillion dollars at it.

Politicians don't think in such a way that can create a unified, national health care system. They are creatures of self-interest who want to take as much money back to their district as possible. Do you really think Senator Lieberman would support something that put the insurance companies in Hartford, CT out of business? If you want his support, there better be some protection in the bill for his state. It's that kind of political wrangling that fouls the best intentions.

But we can make it work
Well, maybe we could, but there's that stupid constitution sitting there glaring at us. If you really want to be like our European cousins, you're going to have to rewrite that. That shouldn't be too difficult. After all France has had like 427 constitutions in the past 200 years. We just buy the French version of Microsoft Word which includes the Le Constitutíon template. It sounds like an easy thing to do.

Survey says?...Oh! wha, wha, wha. There's that pesky oath of office every government official from the President down to the Post Master General takes, "I swear to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies from without and within..." The hard part is identifying those enemies within. So it's best to keep everyone in D.C. busy talking about stupid things like the war on drugs just in case they might fall into the latter category without knowing it.

¹Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We? was the title of the 1993 album by the Cranberries. info