On one side you have a group of people that have the strong belief that healthcare should be free to all.  Everyone should be insured they say.

On the other, you have the belief that government shouldn’t be involved in healthcare whatsoever and that we should be focusing on the economy and not healthcare.

Both arguments are flawed.  Healthcare isn’t free, so someone has to pay for it at some point, and the government shouldn’t be trying to fix the economy because government really doesn’t have the ability to fix it.

So there’s our false choice – which do we fix – healthcare or the economy?  As if we have the power, or testicular fortitude to fix either.

Healthcare

We can’t fix healthcare because we won’t talk about the root of the problem – insurance.  We need to get rid of all insurance.  We can’t do that though because there is no way to force the abolition of a business in our government framework – and this is a good thing.

Rewind 120+ years ago, back to a time when health insurance didn’t exist. People paid hospitals and doctors directly.  Of course we didn’t have near as many treatments available, but healthcare wasn’t so primitive that it didn’t cost money.  When people couldn’t afford it, they were generally able to find a doctor or hospital that would provide free care, or make payment arrangements.

Those payment arrangements weren’t as steep to meet though, because there wasn’t the hidden tax of health insurance baked into the bill like it is now.  The cost of medical services were exactly what they really cost, plus a decent profit, depending on the provider.  Adjusted for inflation, healthcare was just a fraction of the cost it is today, and people got by as well as they got by today.

The right complains about socialized medicine, but we essentially have it now.  The left complains that a single payer system is the only answer, but we can’t afford to make the problem worse by expanding the healthcare insurance industry into a large government organization. You think you hate how health insurance is now?  Just wait until the government takes it over.

Even if there were a way to provide healthcare to everyone for free, the government infrastructure to provide this service would be horrendous, and we wouldn’t like the consequences.

My plan for healthcare would include the following:

• Call on Americans to take personal responsibility for their own healthcare – stop eating junk food, watch what you put into your body, and do everything you can to reduce the need of healthcare services.
• Explore homeopathic remedies – there are many out there, and they work well, sometimes better than modern medicine.
• Call for a nationwide boycott of healthcare insurance – pay your healthcare provider directly!  Can’t afford to pay them for their services?  Just wait, the price will come down dramatically after the healthcare insurance industry removes its talons.

I know the plan isn’t perfect, and I don’t claim to be a model of health myself – but it’s a good start, and I bet would accomplish more than what’s being proposed now.

Economy

The government can’t fix the economy, because they’re in bed with some of the same folks that messed it up in the first place – the Federal Reserve!  The economy seems to unravel more and more no matter how hard we try to push it to grow.  That’s because you can’t make something grow by papering more money over it.  Printing borrowing money isn’t the answer, and only makes the problem worse.

Why do we expect the same people that caused the mess we’re in now to come up with solutions to fix it?

So how do we fix the economy?  The short answer is we can’t without a bit of pain, but the pain would be a lot less than it will be if we continue down the road we’re on.

Essentially my plan would involve the following:

• Have a jubilee – forgive all public debt – start from scratch.  All tax debts, federal loans, and debt owned  or owed by the federal government, would be included.
• Bring the US dollar back under control of the treasury and re-link it to the value of a basket of precious medals, like gold, silver, and platinum.
• Enact carefully thought out, constitutionally valid financial reform.
• Relinquish government control of all private companies (i.e. Government Motors becomes General Motors again) back to their private owners.  If this means they fail or go bankrupt, so be it.
• Get rid of federal agencies like the FDA, FCC, Department of Education, etc. and use the money save to reduce or eliminate income taxes at all levels – federal, state, and local – and watch the economy grow.  Supplement when necessary with sales tax, but you’d be surprised how little you need when you trim the fat.
• Reduce our military spending to cover a decently large standing army ready to protect America’s homeland only.  We don’t need troops overseas unless there’s an active conflict we must be involved in (and by must, I mean a direct threat to our homeland security).
• No more bailouts – if a company is about to fail, let it.  Get the pain over with fast.

Final Thoughts

If we really want to fix both, or either problem, we have to make some gutsy moves, and get to the core of the issues.  Both issues can be solved with minimum government, brief minimum pain, and a long term sustainable solution that isn’t a paper over until next year like everything being proposed now.

The left and right paradigm no longer serves us.  It gives us false choices, ideological battles that can never be won, and a false sense of democracy.  It’s time for a fresh, yet surprisingly unoriginal perspective on our problems – a return to the framework that the country was built on.  The problems left over can be addressed by the good will of all Americans coming together to help those in need and to fix problems larger than ourselves.  When done voluntarily, as part of charities, community groups, and religious organizations, the power of these good deeds is amplified.  When done through force of government, the human spirit is diminished to its lowest common denominator.

I’m sure we have all come to the conclusion now that phenomenal growth, year after year, is unsustainable.  It is simply unfeasible for a business, country, or anything else to continue to have double digit growth year after year and not have some sort of meltdown.  While the problems that plague our economy are quite complex, one of the basic weak points in its failure is that plans were made only for continued expansion, and no one ever thought to plan for contraction.

It wasn’t just modest expansion either – no, we collectively as an economy planned for big expansion. The future was so bright that we had to wear those proverbial shades just to manage to walk out the door in the morning.  People would always need our services, and markets would always be expanding.  The thought that things could ever go backwards completely seemed to slip our collective minds.

Then we awoke from this dream-like state.  We now realize that things can’t go up forever, and like Newton discovered almost 400 years ago, what comes up, must come down.

Companies, like ours, that lived within its means, didn’t take on substantial debt, and stuck to single digit year after year expansion just might have the fortitude to weather this storm.  Companies and individuals that lived beyond their means, bought more than they could ever hope to afford, are in trouble.  For years I told colleagues that slow growth was best and patient, simple business principals with low-cost but sensible means of self-sustainable would be the way to go.  A lot of people agreed with me, but in general that business model was thrown out the window several decades ago.

Now I don’t want any of this to sound like an “I told you so”, because its not.  But if any of what I’m saying seems to come off as that, then it’s probably repressed frustration from years of hearing about how a company like ours would never become big time because we weren’t outsourcing and taking on a huge debt load or investors to grow 30-50% year over year.  Both directly and indirectly, I was told, “You’re too small”.  Well, so we were.  Big deal!

Now being small and agile seems to be an advantage.  We’re not exposed to complex debt instruments or nervous investors.  Sure, some of our clients are, and we’ll invariably suffer in this depression recession, but I don’t think we’ll be in such dire straits that many firms twice or three times our size will be.

That said, there’s no way to know what the future holds.  We are all in for a rough ride for sure, but one thing is for certain:  The pattern of unsustainable growth is simply not an option anymore.  If you want to grow as a business or even an individual, you have to work to make it happen, prove why it should happen, and be able to back that up with the need for it to happen.  The economics of my grandparents and their parents are back, and this is a good thing.