The "You First" Plan

Maybe you have been hearing about some sketchy plans to overhaul our healthcare system. Even now President Obama, our House of Representatives, and our Senators, are insisting that we must reform our healthcare system by sometime in August 2009 or we will all die. There is much back and forth about how much it will cost, who will be in charge, and how it will be implemented, but very few actual details. The President has assured us that, though the bill will not be perfect, all these pesky details can be worked out at a later date.

Here is my proposal to insure that we get the very best possible healthcare system with the minimum of chaos as possible. I call it the "You First" Plan. It's simple, easy to explain, and it won't cost one cent more. As a matter of fact, I guarantee it actually might save a few dollars in the process. My plan has one requirement: We first implement the President's new system with the healthcare we supply to our Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of our Federal government and their family members including all Federal employees and their family members (excluding Veterans Administration , Medicare and [for now] Medicaid recipients), just to make sure it works. If my "You First" plan works, we will all be happy knowing that at least our Congresspersons have read their own legislation and, as a possible added bonus, it might actually shrink the size of our Federal government in very tangible way [see the "comparative effectiveness research" link below]. Win-Win for all.

In case you did not know, the American taxpayers pay about 75% of the bill for healthcare premiums for all of our federal employees' plans including our esteemed Members of Congress, Judiciary, and the President along with their families. This includes hundreds of thousands of employees, appointees, and retirees of the Federal Government in every state of the Union. In case you have never seen the plans federal employees enjoy, click here and take a look at how generous we hard working taxpayers really are. The Office of Personnel Management website even highlights that "[t]he Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program can help you and your family meet your health care needs. Federal employees, retirees and their survivors enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country." Federal employees in California alone have eleven healthplans from which to choose, employees in Washington D.C. have six, and in the tiny state of Delaware, they have four. Federal employees in most states choose from an average of between four and eight plans. I don't know about you, but it looks to me like there is an enormous amount of wasted tax dollars just administering so many choices.

We have to start the overhaul somewhere, so why not start here. Apply "You First", start by reducing all the plans offered to Federal employees and try out President Obama's public plan on them. Let's see if a single-payer system administered by the Federal Government with the healthcare decisions made by a new Federal super bureaucracy armed with the results of their comparative effectiveness research can really work as touted. They can be our control group to work out all of the sketchy details of the plan that President Obama and our Democrat Members of Congress keep insuring we must have right now, but fail to spell out in any coherent way. They can work out the details on themselves as to what that plan will be, when it will be implemented, how it will be implemented, to whom it will apply, and, most importantly, how much it will ultimately cost. Then they can report back to us in full and comprehensive detail. Maybe even supply a handbook or website.

So let's say "You first, Mr. President and Members of Congress". Let them and their children be the national guinea pigs for our new system. Let's let our elected officials, our appointed policy makers, our Federal employees, and our many, many Czars and their families make a covenant with the American People that because they believe so strongly in this new system that they will be the first to participate solely within it (without any opt out for any private system) for a period of time so as to insure that it will be sound, cost effective, and will meet all of the promises and healthcare demands of the American people. Only this way can we be assured that we will get a plan that benefits all of us with minimal chaos for us and our future. Who knows. If "You First" works for healthcare, maybe it can work on greenhouse gases and lowering the deficit too.