Very early in every course I teach I try to make the point that complex issues do not have simple solutions. Stated that way it seems so obvious, yet if we look around us we see otherwise intelligent people continually expecting that with the stroke of a legislative pen a problem will be magically corrected and all will be right with the world.
End slavery and we will have an egalitarian society. Didn't quite happen yet, did it? Amend the Constitution to prohibit abortion. Think that would do it? Provide free healthcare to all for less cost and with greater efficiency? Un-bloody-likely! How about ending dependence on foreign oil without tapping our national resources and shifting to wind and solar power for our economy within the next twenty-five years? Gimme a break!
Hit the block of white marble in just the right place and all unnecessary chunks will fall off to give us Michaelangelo's David.
That's why this brief piece in the WSJ is fascinating:
Himalayan Glaciers Will Persist
While the item quite clearly points out the fallacies in the "science" which attempted to attribute receding glaciers to anthropogenic global warming, it still is able to acknowledge that since records have been kept there has been erosion. The important aspect is that the writer avoids the Chicken Little hysteria which tends to characterize most debate these days.
Taken in greater context, those few paragraphs admit that global climatology is complex, that we've only taken a chronological snapshot of trends in a century, that over the very long run there have been huge shifts in climate patterns, and that stifling a growing nation's economy by collapsing to pseudo-scientific snake-oil salesmen is bad policy.
Which brings us to the lesson which the Messiah might want to consider for the coming year.
Recall four years ago when an effort called McCain-Kennedy was proposed. It was comprehensive immigration reform which contained border policy, fence-building, fine-paying, language requirements, alien registration, country of origin repatriation, re-entry, work visas and an incredible bureaucracy. There was something for everyone to object to.
Now flashback on the last year with comprehensive healthcare reform. Eventually we wound up with 2600 pages of carve-outs and set-asides dealing with every aspect of our lives and setting up a situation which attempted to offer everyone something to support. There was something also for everyone to object to.
The key word is COMPREHENSIVE. We are too fractious a nation to be able to deal with sweeping comprehensive solutions. In 1776 we were revolutionary. In 2010 we are evolutionary.
Evolutionary is doable. Revolutionary is destructive.
If there truly is a demand to reform our healthcare system, then let us fix a wheel bearing this month. Let's change the transmission fluid at the end of summer. Let's install new shock absorbers in the fall. Maybe after Christmas a tune-up and new battery.
That's a more approachable path than jacking up the rear-view mirror and installing a new car around it.
3 comments:
And may I suggest the first item to fix is tort reform? Difficult to pass, but, IMHO, if passed makes the magnitude and difficulty of passing other parts much more manageable.
You could start the list almost anywhere, but in each instance limit proposed legislation to a single issue. Tort reform is a great one. Insurance availability across state lines is another.
Tort Reform, get government out of the business of restricting who can offer what coverage where, and get rid of the idea that Medical Services are a "Right"
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