Immigration problems shed light on why health care won't work

I'm sure people realize that the health care law is long, boring and almost meaningless when it comes to telling you what is actually going to happen to you. So to take a break from that law and address the newest issue on the government's plate, I'm going to tell you a little something I know about Immigration reform. I had been a law student for four weeks when the terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and then passengers downed the fourth plane in a field in Pennsylvania. And I took Immigration Law in the fall of 2002 when the Department of Homeland Security was being formed. So I did a long research paper on what was wrong with US Immigration and whether or not the creation of Homeland Security was going to change anything. What was wrong with Immigration was really very simple. No one in charge of it really cared about it.
Now that may seem like a horrible thing to say, but by 1998 advise was on the table that stated the primary problem with US immigration is that the task of legally getting people into America was not a priority and even though ignoring the need for good service in that area had increased illegal entry exponentially, the government still had not changed anything.
All the priority and power was given to enforcement of those trying to go "outside" the gate, and no one was addressing the fact that smoother direction to the appropriate gate and better facility of legal entry would help the illegal problem. So for decades, governmental advisers had been asking that a separate entity be created, like the EPA for just the supervision of people coming properly to the country. To make a long story short, since The Department of Homeland Security was set up for the sake of security, it hardly made a priority out of making legal immigration function well, and of course the border issue is even worse than before.
So why should I mention this on a blog about health care? Because the issue really is government, not health care. My research says that for almost two decades advisers had been trying to get the government to change and get someone who cared about the art of service to the immigrant to make the flow better so that we would be seen as a peaceable neighbor and not a walled city that had to be overcome. And yet, no change had happened, and after catastrophe occurred, no good change was possible. And now look at our mess.
My personal opinion is that if the government did that to itself, it did it to itself, and since who comes and goes in this country really is the government's right to decide, a twenty year negligence of their own administrative responsibility probably explains why they have the trouble they have now, and they probably deserve it, though I feel very sorry for the people caught in the middle.
But what is going to be the situation when that kind of negligence works its way into the health care of citizens.
Sometime in the past month I had to commit a patient to a State facility. No less than 10 professionals were involved over two days to jump through all the hoops to get the permission for this to happen. By the time I was able to connect with the professional who could receive the patient, eight of those professionals were eating dinner and two of us were working overtime to actually get the care to happen. Both of us were cursing the system that took two days and 10 approvals to function and was still so dysfunctional that it burdened off shift workers with extra work. But ask anyone you know who works in government and they will tell you that the only way things actually get done is the occasional person who is motivated handles it. Otherwise, things are lost in the hours of paper shuffling and getting to dinner on time.
The government of the United States is simply not set up to accomplish things well. They are protective, slow and unwieldy. They are reactive and defensive. They have not been able to maintain good immigration policy in spite of that being a primary governmental duty, they certainly have no foundation to maintain good health care policy.
I have one hope for immigration lessons that may help with getting this crazy health care bill off our necks. If the Feds do challenge Arizona and tell them in court that immigration is a Federal role, not Arizona's prerogative, then maybe Arizona and the rest of the States can get a foot hold to say, Hey Feds, health care is our problem, get yourself out of our business, because we may have troubles, but we know carrying your weight is just going to make it worse.