The Federalism Pill

I got this patriotic notion about the beginning of Lent that it would be a good idea to run as an independent candidate for my State Senate District Seat. I live in a district that does not have a high voter turn out so the percentage of signatures an independent has to get is paltry compared to the available registered voters. I primarily decided that since the State legislatures are the ones that will have to make the health care agendas work, that I should step up with my thirty years of hospital care experience and try to make a difference.

I am sorry to say that I just couldn't make it work at this time. What a wonderful time I had trying, though. I want to personally thank the 135 voters who did sign my petitions as I started out my adventure. Everyone was kind, some were worried about me for what I might be getting into, and others were incredibly supportive considering we met for only moments. I plan to try this again sometime when I personally feel more prepared to include that type of dedication to public service in my life.

I ran into a very small percentage of people who did not want to sign, and learned from them that the issues that are happening right now in our nation are troubling and create fear.

So now that I have decided I can not make the push to be a decision maker in these times of medical care crisis, I have to re-evaluate what my duty is. I have been telling myself since I started this blog that my goal was to read and compare the new health care bill to what I know from the practice of both medicine and law and make predictions on how effective it will be. I will start doing that in May.

But as I walked and talked informing people of my concern that people who do not know what health care is are trying to make decisions about health care, voters wanted to know what I would do. I don't think I answered very definitely at first, but as I got used to the question and more comfortable with my answers, I came up with this.

As a health care professional it is difficult for me to say whether I agree or disagree with the bill. I primarily think that the bill was written by people who know business and money better than service and health care, and thus the bill is neither right nor wrong, but ignorant. Obviously, I was not in favor of ignorant law. As I read it, I will point out the areas where I think the money factors have been appropriately addressed by the bill, and the areas where they are ignorant of the realities of health care.

But if I were President and had to treat the Health Care Bedlam chaos that I illustrated in my earlier blogs, I don't think I would treat the nation with the health insurance pill like the legislature has done. Instead, I would treat the nation with the Federalism pill. In other words, I don't think the overall mess can be handled in one way by one entity. The appropriate doctoring needs to address which entity - state, fed, private, etc. needs to address which problem - regulation, provision, liability, etc. When the right entity is given control of the appropriate issue then better solutions will be found. Sorting is so often the best way out of a mess.

Our Constitution was set up with specific governing duties for the Federal Government and the State Governments. This split of responsibility is called Federalism. By getting back to the true power in the States, and limited government in the Federal government, we could change from the never ending rat race of the States to qualify for money from the Feds into locally functional solutions that meet the needs of people where they are instead of on paper as statistics.