I’ve been following the national healthcare debate approximately as well as any concerned journalist. To be honest, I find the topic tiresome, because I think it’s really a moral question that Washington has tried to (unsuccessfully in my opinion) make economic. At this point, much of the media is characterizing those who oppose national healthcare as a small right-wing fringe. I think that’s wrong.

I know a fairly significant number of people who oppose national healthcare, and none of them are right-wing nut jobs. Most of these people lean right politically, but they’re hardly going to try to wound you with their bibles or shotguns if you bring it up. They’re happy to have a calm rational debate about it. They just don’t believe it’s ultimately best for the government to control healthcare.

At this point, it looks like national healthcare is on a slow march to its grave. But if Congress and the Obama administration really believe that America wants national healthcare, I have a suggestion: let’s vote on it. Have Congress draft a plan. Give Americans a month or two to read, understand and discuss the plan. Then make a national referendum vote for it. That will eliminate special interest lobbyists that are whispering into the ears of our politicians and let the people really voice what they believe. If Congress and Obama are right, and Americans really do want national healthcare, then it will pass, and they will have their victory. If they’re wrong, then it shouldn’t pass anyway, and the debate will be over.

There are so many important political and economic discussions out there right now that Washington needs to be having, but the healthcare debate seems to be sucking up all of its time, energy and money. Why not let the people decide so we can just move on?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.