As a nation our use of health care services is continually expanding.  This expanded use of health care services is the second of eight significant contributing factors that are escalating costs in U.S. health care, but are not addressed in HR-3200 as I pointed out on the 10^th of September.  In my youth, a trip to the doctor was an infrequent event for members of my immediate and extended family and friends. A visit to the doctor or hospital was driven by an observable wound, injury, or unexplained condition that called for immediate action. I can remember as a child that hospitals were perceived as places where “People Went to Die”, or to get patched up if severely injured.  Doctors were highly respected and hospitals were highly esteemed institutions, but both were to be avoided if at all possible.

Our society has shifted its perception of health care services during the last fifty years away from a more narrowly focused but necessary reaction to wounds, injuries, and treating emerging illness. Today many Americans embrace health care as a means of maintaining a higher quality of life, identifying and addressing potential medical problems as early as feasible, and as an early intervention to support extending their lives as long as possible.   There is nothing wrong with this change in philosophy, but it comes with a price. This general shift has become a significant contributing factor to increased overall costs for health care within our nation.  If we are going to use greater and greater quantities of a commodity (even health care), then overall costs for expanding those services will escalate. In our personal lives, expanding choices for spending on health care must be offset by reduced spending elsewhere in our budgets.

We now have significant elements of our elected representatives in the House, Senate, and the Administration who advocate expanding even further the use of health care resources through wellness and early detection programs beyond that used today.  I am amazed that they postulate that expanding the use of a resource such as health care will result in a decreased cost. Of course I should keep in mind that these are the same people who continue to push our nation further and further into debt through deficit spending so we can once again become prosperous.  At best these supposed leaders are ignorant. At worst they are devious, deceptive, seek to bankrupt the country, and transform us into a Socialist Nation.

Controlling the expanded use of health care services by individual citizens through creation and administration of federal regulations and policies is not a sound solution. We will see the inevitable and wasteful dichotomies of federal government intervention emerge. A real example of this can be seen where one segment of the federal government subsidizes the growth and production of tobacco products, another rails about the evils of the product and the health impacts it brings, and yet another imposes huge taxes upon the product to enrich the federal coffers.  This is a single example from many where the federal government has proven repeatedly it cannot be trusted with the nation’s health care.

My strong commitment to Constitutional limitations on the Federal Government, State Sovereignty, and the Freedom and Liberty of individual American Citizens shapes the solutions I see available to us in this area.  Ideas for addressing the expanded use of health care services by Americans include:

• Recognize and honor that each citizen has freedom of choice to include decisions on how much, how little, and what type of health care is appropriate for themselves and their family without federal intervention
• Freedom requires responsibility, in the case of health care having choice means individuals must make the choices within their personal budgets and insurance options – there are no free health care lunches
• Attempts to federalize the health care system will result in fewer available services, rationing, and reduced satisfaction by individual citizens – there are no free health care lunches
• Prohibit the expansion of federal health care programs and services in any shape or form there are no free health care lunches
• Remove, reduce, and/or prohibit  regulatory barriers which inhibit entrepreneurs from entering the health care market to satisfy expanded health care services Americans seek, at reduced costs

Bill Parson