HANDS OFF!

Notes of Concern…
….Jackson Blair


HANDS OFF!

Seems like I have been giving a lot of attention to health care topics lately. I am beginning to think it has something to do with my age. I don’t recall having much concern about health care as a younger man.

In any event, I was discussing this matter with a man who was once Assistant Dean at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and more recently the Headmaster of a school in North Carolina. He and I worked together forty years ago and have remained friends all the years since. He is older than I am and he has had some experience with the medical coverage available these days.

We both remarked on the current controversy surrounding the Obama plan for health care, not to mention the many versions of that plan currently before the Congress. Our conversation took us back to the controversy that dropped on President George Bush when he wanted to improve Social Security. Even before that, Hillary and Bill got slapped around over attempts to make changes in health care.

My friend and I decided there had to be a common denominator in all of this. So this is the way we see it.

• Social Security is in serious need of remodeling and the people understand
• The way we deliver health care in our country is in serious need of revamping and the people understand
• Presidents see these areas as places where a sense of urgency is required and the people understand

So everyone is comfortable with these ideas till you reach this point. The point is when an actual plan of action is put forward. When that happens, as they used to say: “Katie bar the door!”

As a people we are OK with changes in social security and healthcare as long as we can see that we will benefit and be better off and that we will not lose anything in the process that we already enjoy.

The government knows there can be no changes to these programs unless someone is asked to give something up.

So the government selects the least offensive wording and they, and the opposition, spin the news so that you focus on what you will be getting under a new plan and you hardly notice what you will be losing.

At about that time, some citizen actually reads the plan, which is usually 1000 pages or more, designed to keep you from reading (and understanding) and sounds the alarm.

As you know, many of our current U.S. Senators and Congressmen plan to vote on the plan without reading it. Some even admit this in public.

You get the idea. I talk a lot about the “turnip truck” and I must admit that the government continues to think we all just fell off ours.

I am not in any way suggesting that I believe these programs do not need to be changed. Frankly, I believe they have to be changed.

I am suggesting that they will never be changed unless the citizenry is willing to sacrifice something on behalf of improving things for everyone.

In my lifetime, in these areas, I have not found the citizens willing to make that sacrifice.

I am still firmly on top of my “turnip truck” and I know that all the people who advised Bill Clinton, the George Bush boys, both of them, and Obama, should count on short careers in government service.

Senators and Congressmen do watch television. While they probably don’t read their mail, someone counts it for them and tells them how many constituents are for and against an issue.

Lately we have had U.S. Senators in shouting matches at public meetings. We have had the Secretary of Health and Human Services pushed around. I saw in the news today that someone actually took a gun to one of these meetings.

The polls on the issue make it very clear: Americans do not want the president to mess with their social security or their medical coverage unless he intends to fatten them up.

Otherwise: HANDS OFF.

The Senate and the House are getting the message loud and clear. No matter how much some of them love the president, they are not going to lose their comfy day job over that vote, no matter how much he wants it. So some of them will go off the State Dinner list for the next three years. Some of them won’t get invited to the lighting of The White House Christmas Tree. And for others, the president will be too busy to campaign for them when they are up for reelection.

That is just the way things are done down there in DC.

My friend and I concluded that if any bill comes out of this, it will be watered down and lauded as a compromise and passed to allow the president to “save face.” So we are not counting on seeing anything substantial out of Washington on this issue.

So if you have health insurance and are collecting a nice social security payment, life will continue to be grand.

If you do not get enough in social security and you do not have medical coverage, life will continue to be difficult for you even though you are living in one of the grandest societies in history.
In that world only the distributions of our taxes, the generosity of philanthropists, and the efforts of charitable organizations can provide a modicum of relief to the uninsured, the elderly and the poor.