We aren't going to have a scathing commentary about government waste and corruption, we talk about healthcare and how to pay for it. What we are going to do is beg the powers that be to just leave us alone to use our "American Know How" and "Get it done attitude" to well, get it done.
In the late 60s California introduced legislation for gas mileage and emissions standards that crippled the automotive industry. Their little black hearts were absolutely in the right place, good gas mileage and low emissions are wonderful goals. These standards were implemented nationwide in the early 70s and gave us such stellar examples as the Mustang II. It wasn't until 1982 when the Ford (since we picked on the abject failure of the "Little Jewel" Mustang II) introduced the Taurus with Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI). EFI, with some other things did the trick. The technology to accomplish the goal was a decade behind the legislation. In fact, the legislation had absolutely nothing to do with the solution and since the laws put a stranglehold on the United States automobile industry, were counterproductive in achieving their stated objective. In short, auto makers were too busy to trying to downsize cars and comply with stupid regulation to think and innovate and come up with a real solution. Yes, putting a bell on the cat is a great idea, President Mouse. Let's pass a noble law that mandates all cats must wear bells. Here is a list of 12 ridiculous government regulations that are idiotic and mostly unenforceable. NC's bathroom law didn't make the list. You that are familiar with this blog see where I am going with this.
Since we've now proven that complex problems require innovative solutions from bright people, and can't be wished away with idiot laws forcing us to first be aware of the new laws and then comply with them, what do we do? I think that in the late 60s, if California wanted better gas mileage and clean air, they should have ponied up and given a bunch of smart guys a grant to research the problem and come up with several solutions. The budget for the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the agency that strangled the US auto industry, now has an annual budget of $581 million. In their defense, they do research now to actually come up with a way to achieve their mandates, but they didn't then. I heard it said once that "If they (CARB) took every ten year old car off California Roads and replaced it with a brand new Cadillac, they'd be ahead in both cash and air quality." ...and have happier people.
Flash forward to March 23, 2010 when the Affordable Care Act AKA Obamacare, was signed into law. I remember exactly where I was and exactly what I was thinking: "You can't DO that." Legislation is almost never the answer; we just want to be left alone to pursue our happiness. Go put a man on Mars or something. So now that Obamacare is proven to be a miserable failure (my own personal health insurance is about 50% higher now and I only go to the doctor for the annual physical (which the insurance company ALWAYS finds a way to wriggle out of paying for(and admit it, you like the nested parentheses))), what do we do? Luckily, we saw all this coming and wrote our own EMR which became the basis for Sentia Health. You have read the landing page at Sentia Health, so you know what we are capable of. We use advanced technology to build an insurance company that basically has no people and therefore no people to pay for and only charges the user $10 per month to house the data, similar to Netflix or or Pandora. This is the technology that solves the problem. Legislation is not and never will be the answer to this problem.
Real Solutions
This post was originally published at https://sentiahealth.com/WebLog/Details/6 on 6/1/2016
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