A Modest Proposal for Health Care

By Randall Hoven

I have found it: the grand compromise. We know Barack Obama is a proponent of single-payer, government run health care He and others, such as the Communist Party, have backed off to the "public option" for now, as a way to get to that single-payer system. Recently, Obama is hinting he could even live with merely a non-profit, co-op model instead of a full-up public option.

On the other hand, Republicans have a plan that simplifies much of the taxing and regulation of health care, promotes competition among health insurance plans, and gives more control to patients and less to governments and corporations.

The grand compromise should be obvious: adopt the Republican plan, and let the Democrats who want to, run a non-profit, co-op thingy that competes with all the other insurance plans.

With their co-op, the Democrats could do whatever they want. Since it would obviously be better than whatever the greedy, for-profit insurance companies would come up with, it would win in a competitive market. Within only a few years, the Democrat co-op would dominate the market and, voila, single-payer, Democrat-run health insurance by free-market monopoly.

All the health-care expertise that is currently untapped, existing only in the heads of Democrat politicians and their staffers, would be unleashed in the free market. Michelle Obama, former Vice-President of a hospital, would have something besides gardening to do again. The people who wrote a 1,017-page piece of legislation could put their words to practice. No stupid democratic process to get in their way.

I see only one risk in this proposal. The Democrats who are experts in health-care might not be satisfied with the small job of providing for the health of 300 million people. After all, they have a whole planet to save. Running health-care in just one country might not be a big enough task to challenge their intellects. And we need them for so much else.

On the bright side, we would obviously not need all of these experts. Perhaps Michelle Obama, former hospital VP, could be the CEO and "outside" person, outreaching and organizing. Ezekiel Emanuel (MD, PhD) could be the COO and "inside" guy and day-to-day man.

Ezekiel's brother, Rahm, and Barack Obama himself, would of course remain in their positions of saving the planet.