Health Care Proposals Must Be Above Board and in the Light

What I would like to see in the health care debate is an analysis of a range of choices, the services (including how effective they are) and the costs. This can be done dispassionately enough, because if falls short of advocacy, which is the politically charged part of it. A similar breakdown can be listed for existing entitlements, such as social security and medicare, including how fast the various categories are growing.

What we get instead is a backroom tug of war that involves some well documented bribes as the tip of the iceburg, which implies many more hidden deals below the surface, invisible to us. A casualty of this process is visibility and dialog of what we are trying to achieve, what are the ways to get there and how much it costs. The 1000 page document is not only impossible to comprehend, it is voted before it sees the light of day.

We can't afford annual MRI scans for everyone each year (they cost $5000 apiece and diagnose a limited number of conditions. We have to put a price on care and seem to have lost the moral fortitude to stick with a realistic goal: Cut the costs of the most needed health services which expands the affordability and availability for an increasing number of people.

Proponents will say that complete disclosure allows people to organize against it. Then let's break it down into pieces and vote on them. There are many potential improvements waiting for all this to happen. And the big legislation risks real improvements themselves being a casualty of the process.