Dear Mr. President-

I know you are running into trouble getting your ideas about universal healthcare across to the American public in spite of your continual campaigning style of promotion. I heard you were on 5 different Sunday talk shows yesterday and are going to be on David Letterman’s show tonight. I didn’t watch you yesterday and I won’t be watching tonight because I think Letterman is an obnoxious jerk and I won’t stay up past my bedtime to be annoyed by that cretin. I also know that you have risen to the top of our government without ever having managed so much as a sidewalk taco stand and that your demonstrated skills and provable results are transparently invisible to the majority of law-abiding and tax-paying American citizens. I think I have a suggestion for you that might make implementing your plans possible- show us the money!

 

I have heard you say on television that you think you can pay for your healthcare schemes by reducing the waste and overspending that you claim are currently in place in Medicare and Social Security and other federal care programs. You believe, (or at least state publically), that the increased costs of your universal healthcare programs can be implemented without raising the federal budget by identifying and correcting all the overspending that you claim is presently in the system.

 

Here’s my suggestion. Take 2 years off from implementing your healthcare plans. Spend those 2 years rooting out those millions of dollars that you claim are buried in overpayments and mismanagement in the existing programs. Show the American public where that money is , and how much of it there is. Show us that your administration can first of all locate and fix the mismanagement that you claim will be the cornerstone of funding for your health care plans, make these existing programs more streamlined, fair to both the recipients and the taxpayers that fund them. Show all of us that you really do have the top-level management skills that you seem to believe you have and then, after you have had some fiscal success, we might believe that the savings you have created should be applied to the new, more inclusive programs that you envision.

 

So go to work. Quit asking for programs that can’t possibly operate without more money, (just ask Massachusetts how that is working for them) and quit telling us how wonderful your new programs will be and how these new programs will be free based upon savings that you haven’t yet identified. Find the money, the overspending, the mismanagement. Weed it out first then we can discuss expanded healthcare! With success up front your supporters will have something tangible to brag about and we citizens might believe that we hired the right guy for the job of President.

 

Feel free to take my idea and implement as your own. You and I (and those I email this to) will be the only ones that know that you are cribbing my idea and that is fine with me. Talk it over with your staff and those fawning folks in Congress and see if this idea doesn’t have some strength. Consider how badly the Clinton’s got clobbered when they proposed HillaryCare to an unwilling public, too early in that administration. As I recall, the crushing of that proposal really set back all their schemes for a number of years  and their health care plans never became possible.  Until you have some proven results, I think your health care scheme is doomed to failure and I believe my idea is the perfect lead-in to a more comprehensive health care plan.

 

Sincerely,

Nate McCord, Ogden UT

Wasted Electrons blog