My daughter is currently undergoing chemotherapy. The cost of one of her treatments is more than the cost of my first home. Fortunately, she has good insurance. To go to the ER for repair of a simple laceration can be over a thousand dollars. I realize that it cost to provide medical services but the costs have become ridiculous. The sad thing is that many people don’t have insurance and many are tooled around by their insurance companies.

We have excellent healthcare in this country but it should be more affordable and available to all. We need healthcare reform but our politicians can’t sit down and work out a reasonable plan. The Democrats want to push a pork filled, gluttonous plan down our throat in great haste just to say they accomplished this great feat. The Republicans just want to say no to anything the Democrats propose. We sure can’t leave it to the insurance companies to do something reasonable because their entire motive is profit. A government run program like the VA will only result in poor quality and less accessible medical care. To have an expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, where doctors are not mandated to be providers, will make care less accessible with fewer people to deliver the care. No scenario is perfect. It looks like my party, the Independents, are emerging as a power and perhaps they will come up with the perfect plan. I want everyone to have quality care that is affordable and will not add to the national debt.

There is no way we can have all this expanded healthcare without the government footing a large share of the bill. First, we need to make certain that the cost is reasonable by stopping fraud and abuse, eliminating self-referral by doctors, curtailing malpractice cost, reducing the cost of drugs and having doctors accept reasonable fees rather than contributing to their million dollar a year incomes. All these things will adequately reduce the cost of care so that we can have an expansion of Medicaid for the poor and tax reduction incentives for individuals and businesses to purchase insurance. Doctors should be mandated to accept Medicare and Medicaid. Something this simple could solve the healthcare crisis. To accomplish this we need to abolish the Republican and Democrat parties and make me President for a day. This is about as likely to occur, as it is to snow in Texas on The 4th of July or the current plan to pass. It would be interesting to rule from the porch for a day. There is a lot more I would like to do but I better not write about it on the blog. I would also issue an executive order to remove all the deer from Salado.