The Muddled Mess that Health Care Reform has become

It would appear that the idea to try and sell socialized medicine is a bad one in light of the "near riot" that occurred outside of Tampa yesterday. Also In Connecticut, a similar town hall style meeting was disrupted by chants of "Dump Chris Dodd". One thing that I have advocated for in various forums is for the government to promote Health Savings Accounts which would give individuals choice over what treatments to seek, help drive down costs and provide portability in case someone loses or changes jobs. Self impowerment appears to be at odds with the current administration though.

A recent article by a columnist that I feature over to the right (Deroy Murdock) Provides some intersting ideas insofar as reforming healthcare in the US.

"ObamaCare is propelled by the oft-repeated Census Bureau statistic that 45.7 million Americans lack health insurance. Even if that number were accurate, why should Washington turn the healthcare industry upside down for all 300 million Americans in order to help 45.7 million? In fact, as Pacific Research Institute president Sally Pipes demonstrates, public policy should concentrate on a far smaller group of hard cases...From those 45.7 million uninsured, subtract 17.5 million who earn more than $50,000 annually. Though they can afford coverage, they evidently have other priorities. Of the remaining 28.2 million uninsured, some 14 million are eligible for, yet have not enrolled in, the Medicaid and S-CHIP programs. Meanwhile, as many as 10 million uninsured may be illegal aliens. All told, Pipes estimates that only about 8 million Americans are uninsured due to chronic illness or working-poor status. The latter have incomes too high for assistance and too low for insurance.Why not help these 8 million rather than overturn medicine for all 300 million of us?

You can link to the cited article here. One other thing that I came across this morning is the (so far) baseless accusation of Rep Nancy Pelosi of the town hall protesters carrying swastikas. Again we see the fundamental misunderstanding of equating small-government conservativism which strives for limited government with National Socialism with it's emphasis on nationalizing broad segments of the economy.