This latest effort in the US Congress to reform the health care system in the US proves to me that the Federal Government has ceased to be an appropriate venue for any real reform. The best we can hope for is that they don’t pass something so dismal that is prevents state and local governments from doing the real work. Unfortunately, its looking like the US Congress won’t even achieve that.

There is one well proven system of providing good, affordable health care: government. Sure, private options work well in some situations, and there are undoubtedly some bad government systems. But the vast majority of the top 30 health care systems in the world are based around a “public option”. Even in the anti-government USA, we have many good, public health care systems: Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Affairs (VA), etc. The VA is a single-payer system even.

Insurance companies are scared to death of the “public option” precisely because they know that government-run health care systems in the US and most of the world are far more efficient that private health care.

Back in July Kucinich tried to get some real health care reform into the current process by
allowing states the freedom to try their own single-payer system. Currently the federal ERISA law forbids that. While Kucinich’s amendment passed in committee, it was killed by Pelosi.

That’s the worst part. Not only is this current federal health care bill a dismal collection of random, half-baked ideas, it restricts state and local government from setting up their own public systems. Massachusetts is leading the charge and it looks like ERISA will stand in the way. I’m with Howard Dean and the Republicans on this one, the current bill does more harm than good. Please kill it. And let state and local governments get on with real health care.