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Publisher's Note: Health care joke
By Jody Reese
If it weren’t such a serious subject, we’d all be laughing at the jesters in Washington trying to reform our health care system.
The Republicans seem to favor the current system and say they are protecting small businesses and the self-employed, the two groups most abused by the current system. As for the Democrats, they seem lost. The one idea they seem to agree on is to force everyone to buy into the very system the Republicans support. Sometimes you wonder if these people are actually on the same side.
Republicans blame lawyers for our health care problems and Democrats blame insurance companies, but the problem is that there are no bad guys. There’s just a very bad system. It’s the Frankenstein of awful systems. The only way to save this beast is to dismember it.
We have two issues that get mixed up. The first is immediate care — you break something, you get cancer, you can’t search for the best price, you just need service. That is a case for insurance, a Medicare plan, a public option or nationalized health care.
The other issue is health maintenance, such as screenings or prescriptions for that chronic heart condition — the largest part of health care for most of us. This is where people can best negotiate for their services, and the health care market will respond with innovation and lower prices.
Until Washington treats health care as two separate issues, there can be no reasonable solution.
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