MORE BAD HEALTH - AT 9:42 A.M. ET:  While Congress is "fixing" the health-care system, the honorable members might contemplate how the system would look without much care.  Apparently, recruiting enough competent physicians in needed areas hasn't been a priority for the "reformers," as The Washington Post points out:

As the debate on overhauling the nation's health-care system exploded into partisan squabbling this week, virtually everyone still agreed on one point: There are not enough primary-care doctors to meet current needs, and providing health insurance to 46 million more people would threaten to overwhelm the system.

Fixing the problem will require fundamental changes in medical education and compensation to lure more doctors into primary-care offices, which already receive 215 million visits each year.

The American Academy of Family Physicians predicts that, if current trends continue, the shortage of family doctors will reach 40,000 in a little more than 10 years, as medical schools send about half the needed number of graduates into primary medicine.

COMMENT:  We face the prospect of a British-style system, complete with long waits, short visits, and whole areas of the country without primary care at all. 

The mistake we're making is allowing the government to increase its presence in the health-care system without any demonstration of competence.  Yes, government may have some role to play in areas where the private sector refuses to take needed action, or cannot solve the problem.  But the shortage of primary-care physicians is not going to be solved by government bureaucrats.  Now, with the prospect of a complicated, government-controlled system, the shortage may get worse. 

I just get the sense that the Obama administration and its friends in Congress are plowing ahead with little real understanding of the complexities involved.  It is true that there are issues involving health coverage that need to be addressed.  It is also true that we need to address the critical issue of costs, especially when those costs are arbitrarily inflated. 

But we must also acknowledge that anyone in America who needs health care can, though some existing program, get it.  It may not be elegant, and there are certainly inequities.  But Americans are not dying in the streets for lack of health care.  Maybe that's the fact with which we should begin the national debate.

June 20, 2009