Health Care & Congress: Public Option or Public Masturbation?

The government picks up our garbage at the curb, educates our children unless we want to put them in private school, builds roads and bridges, and watches the skies to forewarn us about impending hurricanes. Because health care is a need that we all have and that none of us can prepare for alone, the Government should assume this common responsibility as well.

Likewise, the National Centers for Disease Control nationalize the job of watching out for and trying to prevent disease, instead of requiring each of us to have sufficient knowledge and resources to do this ourselves.

Now, I don't hear large corporations arguing for the disbandment of the US Armed Forces on the theory that the US Military competes unfairly with Blackwater! Nor are they arguing for the disbandment of the federal highways on the theory that national highways compete unfairly with with for-profit commercial airlines, helicopters and speed boats.

No one is arguing that the Government built Brooklyn Bridge competes unfairly with rowboats and professional canoers.

Let's face it: The Foundering fathers got a lot of things right, as when they made provisions for a national army, a national postal service, and a national foreign policy. What they did not foresee was that there would be immense advances in the practice of medicine and that these scientific advances would far outstrip the ability and authority of any one company or group of companies to meet the medical needs of a highly mobile and national populace.

Had the realized that health care would become as ubiquitously needed and as complex and burdensome as delivering mail to every address in the country, then they would surely have provided for a national health service, just as they provided for national mail service and a national army.

Luckily we have it within our power as a nation to address this issue with an act of Congress, and no Constitutional amendment is required. The US Congres need only announce that the inability to obtain portable medical, as well as state-based medical care provisions that exclude out-of-staters are unacceptable burdens upon interestate commerce under the Commerce Clause, as well as burdening the right to travel.

A national health service that meets everyone's needs if they present themselves for care will serve this purpose and, like the Armed Forces, NASA, the National Park Service, the Weather Service and the coast guard, the new national health service should be paid for out of the federal budget generally. (We don't require fishing boats to purchase Coast Guard Insurance and we don't require international shippers to pay Navy Seal Coverage.premiums. Likewise, the availability of health care to individuals should be completely divorced from any requirement that they, as individuals, have purchased that care.)

That's the way forward and anything less is simply an orgy of public legislative group masturbation.