When I was in college, I fell for a guy who was cute beyond measure. He worked in a snowboard shop, and was an avid skateboarder and snowboarder. He had sun-streaked hair, a bit long, a bit unruly, a lopsided smile on his sun-beiged face...Sigh.... On the surface, he was magic. Below the surface, however, there wasn't much there. He just wasn't very smart, and for a while, I was able to ignore the less erudite musings coming from his beautiful mouth, but not for long. I caught myself stopping in mid-sentence to change my words, essentially dumbing down my language for him. When I realized what I was doing, I knew I had to end the relationship. I was lowering my standards to accomodate his limitations, and it was clear to me that to continue down this path meant that we would BOTH be worse for it.
I was reminded of this time in my youth because it seems that our leadership in America is much more interested in altering our health care system to emulate far less exceptional systems in the world. Evidently, imposing mediocrity for the whole is far better than expecting excellence,and acknowledging that people have a least SOME responsibility in their current circumstances. Now, I am not holding up our current system as perfect, any more than I would hold myself up as perfect in comparison to cute boy. What I do know is this: reducing myself to the lowest common denominator would have diminished us both, and reducing our health care system to that same level of mediocrity will ultimately diminish us all.
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Amen. Just where, may I ask, do advocates for a sweeping government takeover of healthcare think all the new miracle cures, vaccines, and innovative treatments for cancer, heart disease, dementia, etc. will come from once free enterprise in medicine is quashed? I challenge you to come up with any groundbreaking research in new drugs that has come out of Canada or the UK in the last 10 years. Where will the rest of the world go for cures when we cease to provide them?
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