news story / By Ron Ross

Many Questions, Few Answers

Remaking the health care sector is probably the biggest domestic issue ever undertaken by the government. Something that massive and historic should only be attempted after careful analysis as well as deliberate, serious, and open debate. Mr. Obama has not had discussions with Republican lawmakers since April. He has taken a “my way or the highway” attitude. Rather than take alternative proposals seriously and respectfully, he has demeaned and ridiculed anyone who’s not on board with his own particular prescription for reform.

One undeniable aspect of government solutions to problems is that the “cures” are extremely inflexible. Technology, our culture and the economy are all changing at an accelerating pace. Even if an answer is right today, it isn’t necessarily right tomorrow. Politically imposed rules and bureaucracies all suffer from chronic rigidity. Government imposed regulations necessarily take on a “one size fits all” character. Bureaucracies treat people not as individuals but rather as categories. Is that really the direction we want to go with health care?

Consider, for example, how the federal government attempted to deal with agricultural problems in the early years of the Depression. Their “solutions” were based on what we now realize was a complete misreading of the underlying problems. Nevertheless, their ill-advised programs are still with us more than 75 years later. There have been numerous attempts by presidents from both parties to end or modify such programs as agricultural price supports, all to no avail.

Creating a whole new set of rules that will significantly change one-sixth of our economy is an undertaking far more difficult than the advocates of health care reform seem to grasp. Neither Mr. Obama nor the congressmen involved are experts on the health care industry.

Politicians have a fatal urge to oversimplify reality. Problems and shortcomings of our health care system are exceedingly complex with an endless list of origins. Politicians arrogantly assume that in a relatively short period of time they can design solutions that will make the whole system function more efficiently. Whatever “solutions” they impose on a complex system will make some problems better and some problems worse. More often than not, politically imposed “solutions” create far more problems than they eliminate.

Ron Ross Ph.D. is an investment advisor at Premier Financial Group in Eureka and author of The Unbeatable Market.

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