Health Is On The Way!

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.

Okay, not really. But I have seen them wrestle with the issue of healthcare in America. Does that count?

Our nine august, honorable Supreme Court justices (yes I'm including Clarence "Long Dong Silver" Thomas) are currently debating whether ObmaCare is unconstitutional. This makes perfect sense--unless you've read The Constitution. It has absolutely nothing to say about healthcare. If we really wanted to know what Washington, Adams, and Jefferson would have thought about a health care mandate, we would be better off hiring Danny from The Shining to read their minds from beyond the grave. Tony can come along too--but I hear his service fee is pretty steep. If they're unavailable we might as well break out the Oija board: "When the Fathers said the government is allowed "to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas", was this actually an esoteric reference to the Public Option?". Just let the wood thimble or whatever it is move to "yes" or "no" and call it a day.

But don't worry because you have me. Why don't I put on my Superman cape and solve healthcare all by myself? Don't read any further if you're not prepared to have your mind blown.

First things first: we need to stop lying to ourselves. Horatio Alger must die. The American Dream tells us everyone can obtain success: a high paying and rewarding job, an adoring spouse, 2.3 kids, a dog, and a pool for everyone. Some might get an Olympic sized in-ground pool while others might need to look into a 4 foot deep, circular above ground pool that will humiliate their kids so much they would never invite their friends over for a pool party if their life depended on it, but that's the beginning and end of inequality in America. You can do it!

No you cant.

Well......let me backtrack. You, dear reader, can do it--assuming "you" are a person of at least moderate intelligence with a strong work ethic and you live in a house with more books than fully loaded semi-automatic rifles. Since so many of your competition for a slice of the American pie are lazy slobs, you should get a real leg up on the competition and do well.

That's looking at it from the ground floor, but if we take a bird's eye view of things, it seems The American Dreams is exactly what it says it is: a dream. Even when our economy was better, our job market didn't supply much more than about 120 million domestic jobs. 120 million opportunities! Except we have 300 million people in America. The unemployment rate is a more misleading statistic than George W. Bush's undergrad GPA (he was even dumber). The Department Of Labor uses a much less publicized Participation Rate--the percentage of working age adults currently working. Even including part time workers, that number in February was 63.9%. A LOT OF PEOPLE DON'T WORK. This isn't always a bad thing. Non workers may be Powerball winners or stay at home moms. Or......prison inmates. But the simple, stark fact remains that our country has far fewer jobs than people. What if every single person in the US put down the crack pipe and graduated from Harvard? Would that end unemployment? Probably not. Where would we place them all? Sure, with all that brainpower you could conceivably add a few rocket science jobs, but with a society full of brainiacs those job additions would be offset by a plummeting of jobs selling Gatorade and Limp Bizquit memorabilia, so it would all come out in the wash and not cause a skyrocketing of job creation.

So social entitlements are a necessary evil in any economy in which the population has outgrown the job supply. Many won't be able to work, so what else are we going to do with them? Put them ALL in jail? Let them starve in the streets? Impossible. But we cling to the illusion that if everyone just worked a little harder, unemployment would end forever. Hence the push to cut back or end entitlements. Ron Paul is right about The Constitution. It's a perfect and complete document---for the 13 states of farmers and weavers it was written for. But it doesn't serve or guide us on every issue today--which George Washington himself predicted.

Nevertheless, we "reformed" welfare. People don't receive long-term-to-permanent checks from the government every month based simply on their position along the poverty line. Instead we make poor people grovel on their hands and knees to try to prove they (or their child) is disabled. Again, we cling to the dream that every non-disabled person will have a plush job waiting for him or her if they would only watch Dead Poets Society again and carpe diem.

The problem with this model is it creates a brave new world in which everyone thinks they are disabled! If ADHD didn't exist (and I'm not entirely sure that it does) we would need to invent it. To a poor mom, a baby Einstein is a potential liability, but a learning disabled child offers a chance for her to pay her rent next month. For adults, running 5K's and eating garden salads is a financial non-starter. But becoming morbidly obese and developing diabetes, back problems, heart problems, knee problems, liver problems, kidney prob.......Ah!!! Sorry. I feel like I'm at work all of a sudden. What a nightmare!

Critics of social entitlements often talk about the ways it drains people's initiative. Fair enough, but what can we do? Again, the basic numbers seem to say we're going to have large unemployment no matter what we do because of the limitations of the job market itself. But might it be possible that a social entitlement model skewed toward demanding proof of a disability is endangering the health of America? I don't actually think poor or working class people consciously make a choice to eat Fritos for breakfast and freebase crack for brunch as part of a long term, three pronged strategy to get on disability, but I do think it may have a strong and powerful subconscious influence on behavior. If you have limited education, job experience, and skills and you're surrounded by an unforgiving, risk averse job market and you see friends and families becoming a bit more financially secure after receiving disability, might this weaken your will to eat brocoli, lace on a pair of running shoes, and download the Nike Plus running app?

Are social entitlements and healthcare linked? Is our attempt to truly reform healthcare doomed as long as we're trying to do it in the face of a disability-centric "reformed" social entitlement system? I wish we would say, "We're going to give you benefits because we are a compassionate country, we know you and your family are at risk of starvation, and (don't tell anyone this) but the job market is a room with a seating capacity and the ushers will never escort everyone to a seat. But you will not be financially rewarded by the government for being sick". What would happen to those with mental retardation or paraplegia if we stopped using disability as our criteria for benefits? Nothing. They would still qualify if they were unable to hold down a full time job, but it would be determined by a means test, not an IQ test or an Internist exam.

I know--rich people get cancer too. But poor people are sicker. Rich people do palates--whatever that is. Rich people eat organic squash. Poor people are more likely to eat a Baconator and order an item from Taco Bell's Volcano Menu. So removing ANY financial incentive to be unhealthy is, like, super important and stuff.

People complain, "We have health care, not sick care!". I used to agree with this. But now I think, "Duh. Sicker people are always going to move to the front of the line". Is sick care the problem or is the problem the term "health care" itself and its implied false promise? "A new miracle happens every day!", hospital commercials devoutly proclaim. Most doctors I've talked to seem to feel less like miracle workers and more like damage control experts. They know how limited their powers really are. Other than maybe vaccines, most preventative health care seems to be about eating right and exercising. No doctor can make a patient do that. Healthcare folks don't work in the miracle department, it's the managed sickness department.

So I say sick care isn't a problem when it comes to doctors and nurses, but it's a problem when practiced by elected officials and government bureaucrats. No financial compensation for disability! Only compensation for the disability of the job market!

I just remembered something really weird. I work for Social Security's disability program.