Without question, Trump has been setup for failure. Before it gets worse, speaking of Repeal and Replace, even if a “Bill” were to reach his desk he should immediately retract his support of their efforts and go to the American Public with a prime-time address explaining the truth behind what Congress has done.
I’ve had the great privilege of participating in efforts to formulate a functional restructuring of the U.S. Healthcare System and the many of you who’ve read any of my books or essays on the subject know the expanse of the efforts. The fact is there was never a concerted effort (by Congress) to Repeal & Replace Obamacare, the single greatest and catastrophic blow to the U.S. Healthcare System bar none (with Medicaid/Medicare a close second).
We know this simply because the methods Ryan/McConnell used (reconciliation) ensured any efforts to defeat even though they openly assured the President that it was the best alternative, the best solution/approach despite the facts that with only a few minor changes to Senate/House Rules they could have simply done an up/down vote and forced a blanket repeal.
The fact is that there has been no single Nation on this planet that has put in place a sustainable national healthcare system and for one very good reason. a national healthcare system removes two critical components for the economic mix that ultimately destroy both the quantitative and qualitative attributes of a viable system:
(1) Personal Risk/Responsibility for Health Maintenance/Costs
(2) Competitive Advantage
The delusion that hides behind the belief in national healthcare is both incriminating as it is diabolical. On one hand, it preys on the sick/aged by metering-down care/service levels (the sick die-off), restricts expensive/advanced surgeries and it does all of this as part of its cost-control device while at the same time requires a massive revenue-consuming bureaucracy that in many cases exceeds the value of the mediocre services they manage to provide.
If a Nation the size of Canada (35 mil) or the U.K. (65 mil) can’t manage a functional healthcare system how does anyone believe that the U.S., given its great success with Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, with a population of 330 Million will have any level of success? Why then the search for failure? Why no apparent drive, by Congress, to take the correct road? Simple: Vested Interests in both Political and Economic terms, which, in many ways is one and the same.
Congress has backed itself into a corner by making promises purely for political reasons based on pure conjecture by a Healthcare Industry who sees massive dollars and couldn’t care less about how base the means might be or devastating the consequences. This Nation has matured into an economic-theology that now relies wholly on controlling access to the government trough in lieu of succeeding, based solely on their own economic viability/credibility.
A collateral view of this type of vice can be observed in the blow-back Trump received relating to the Paris Accord; did you notice that the greatest objections came from those Nations/Organization who benefited (economically) from U.S. participation? After all, I read the entire Paris Accord and I saw no provision that required participating or non-participating nations to continue their voluntarily polluting of the planet so what other reason could their repulsion (to Trump’s decision) be explained?
Now then, using the same logic however in the reverse, ask yourself this: Why would the Healthcare Industry be repulsed by the thought of having to perform within the matrix of normal free-market economic forces? Here too,the answer is quite simple: Without the open-trough of the government’s power to tax, borrow and spend they’d have to earn it! Painful words: “earn it!”
The Federal Government, like many of the States, is one massive occlusion where positive and rewarding outcome is blocked by a political system that is, like the economy that survives off of it, hopelessly tethered to interests senior to your own. The election of Trump, as predicted, was only a start and more needs to be done.
I don’t, for one moment believe that the American Ideal is hopelessly fractured even-though the staged appearances of anarchists may make it seem so. What I do believe is that the tension that is out there is more likely an exhibition of the frustrations we endure as we try to figure out how to knit ourselves back together. We need to send a shot across the bow of the System; what we need is a viral move to force Term Limits upon the Congress. You in? If so, start spreading the word!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
