Uncommon Common Sense

There are two maxims that have held true for time in memoriam, "Nothing in life is free" and "You get what you pay for". Nowhere are these two principles more true than when it comes to health care. Politicians are selling "free" health care to the American people, knowing that the word "free" will tickle our ears. It sounds SO good. But in real life, medical care is expensive. It won't stop being expensive just because the government mandates it to be so. "So let it be written, so let it be done." (From the Ten Commandments--ask Pharoah how that worked out for him.) Let's delve into these two ideas. Nothing in life is free: I touched on this in my last post, but there are lots of people that get "free" health care in American right now. (Just because I'm bringing this up doesn't mean that I'm necessarily against it, but we have to deal in realities here.) The government has mandated that all patients that ...

This is a massive, volatile and emotional subject. I have avoided this subject for a while, knowing what a huge undertaking it is. I will try to generalize today, and then break down the subject further in later posts, i.e.--our personal responsibility for health care costs, insurance companies, tort reform, etc. We have the best health care in the world. Is it perfect? Not even close. But, if you have ever had to have medical care in another country, you know that even with all its flaws and blemishes, our system is still the best in the world. Why? There are many reasons and I don't pretend to know all of them, but some of them are as follows: 1)Americans are compassionate and kind people, 2)the vast majority of health care workers really care about people and want to help them, 3)American ingenuity and innovation constantly work to improve the way we do things, 4) the ability of private industry to streamline and work faster than larger bureaucracies. Health care in America has ...