Don’t let this “reform” be the last word. You decide what we need. Use the same moral standards that worked fine for building up America. Use your head and fight for what’s right. WE are still the ones that run our country.

Fair warning: The Political Stray supports the idea of a National Health Care System.

If our legislators give us the corrupt and unworkable, we don’t have to settle for it. Get these legislators out and start again.

We don’t need or want middlemen in our health care reform. That is, we don’t need HMO’s or Insurance Companies

We need to work with our Doctors and their satellite staff. (Nurses, lab staff etc)

We need to include our Dentists and their needed staff in our health care system from day one. Dental care is an important part of quality health care. Their rules and perks will come under the umbrella of physicians and health care staff with a “subdivision” status.

We need to drastically reduce the role of lawyers and big business in our medicine.

Did you know that those that were heavily invested in our home mortgage market and hedge funds started jumping ship when they saw that the ship was going down? Do you want to know what ship they jumped on? Yep. Health care. Big surprise we’re not getting good legislation, hm?

There obviously have to be some exceptions here. We can take bids from medical supply providers and the ones that become a part of the system will become big. We just need to make sure that there are no monopolies and that no one gets so large that we are overly dependent on them.

This is a good place to point out that a National Health Care System will be an enormous employer. Some of the people once in the insurance field will have ample employment opportunities in health care supplies and health care.


Every community college will need to develop employment training programs for the non physician/nursing positions. Students would get tax breaks or scholarships offered by developing health care branches.

To get the drastically reduce the presence of lawyers in our medicine, we need what we should have insisted on in the first place, that is, the doctors have to come down hard on bad doctors. Self-government in conjunction with a specialized division of our judicial system will be better able to manage people that shouldn’t work on our shoes, let alone our bodies. Bad doctors were the reason the lawyers were drawn into medicine in the first place. No more “it could be me next time” thinking.

Procedural disagreements that are difficult to agree on will be put to the people for a vote. They must, however, be adequately educated with ACCURATE information beforehand.

Acknowledging that a strong self-rule will be hard, we need to remind doctors of the return. They’ll get to be doctors again. They will once again be the real decision makers in our system. We can also put out a public call for the doctors that have left the field. Let’s get them back. Other health care people too. Let’s begin a national standard and incorporate child care and job sharing into the structure of the system.

The doctors can meet with the major medical schools to figure out what would be needed for “re-certification”. Pull any federal funding for medical schools that don’t want to cooperate with health care reform. Don’t shut them down, just pull Federal funding.

We need to add a little to the cost of medical care to develop a pool of money to care for those hurt by human error in medicine. Our doctors are human, so are our nurses. To expect perfection from them that we ourselves cannot supply is just plain stupid. A medical quality control board made up of both health care workers and patients will help decide the difference when necessary.

Standards for payment of our health care people will have to be developed. Obviously, this will have to take state living costs into consideration. This may be challenging, but consider the alternative of everything remaining the same and motivation should be natural. There’s also that rush you get from doing the right thing. It’s also satisfying to be in on the ground floor when developing a new system. We’ll call on the nation’s very best physicians and medical school teachers. Cream of the crop, if you will.

Funding. We’ll have a decent start when we pool the various funds for health care now. Medicaid. Medicare. SChip. Where else do we have government money going to health care?

More daily funding will come from either the people paying for the care they actually get, costs plus fair markup. A tax on elective procedures can help defray the costs for the poor. This would be one way.

The more hospitals and clinics already in operation that we can use, the better. Their acceptance will rely on their desire to be a part of it all, their help in getting it started and their overall operational function. (there’s no use starting out with screw-ups) I doubt if this will cover all of our needs, many new facilities will need to be built.

That offers jobs to the qualified construction people. Maybe some of the stimulus money could be used. These contracts cannot go the way that so many do these days. The contractors will have strong oversight and must offer competitive prices. No corrupt good old boy contract awarding. If we have to develop special penalties for the violation of this rule, so be it. Community spirit is key and mandatory in this huge project.

Money used for this will be American. Contracts should be given to American companies. Period. Price-gouging (anything above fair markup) and cost-undercutting (the use of materials provided by countries with lower production costs) will be ground for severe penalties and immediate contract termination. Qualified contractors should get tax benefits though.




Other civilized countries simply include the cost of National Health Care in their taxing systems. What are we paying our insurance companies now? For care we don’t actually use? How much of that would the average person be willing to give up in the form of a health care tax instead? Whatever it would be, it would still be a fraction of the costs now. Approached that way, our government might see a lot more cooperation from the public.

All people will be cared for, regardless of who or what they are. America will not start stepping over bodies.

Long term care. Long term care patients without children or family may be encouraged to leave their estates to a special fund developed to help defray costs for long-term care and hospice facilities. Encouraged, not required. Every effort should be made to keep people out of long term care. That means development of home health care workers. In addition to regular funding, special non-profit managers helping to raise money for home care assistance might be helpful here.

Cities and towns should be encouraged to develop retirement communities to help facilitate these home care setups.

As far as rationing, we’re already experiencing severe rationing. The main stream care facilities may not offer heart transplants to ninety five year-olds, but neither will they forbid such surgeries obtained outside of the system.

Legislation shouldn’t forbid external organizations of insurance companies or clinics. They will just be on their own, subject to our standard laws of monopolies etc, with no subsidies or anti-trust agreements.


Well, what do you think? Do you have any ideas to contribute? Send them in. We’ll post them.