Rolling around my head

Tomorrow I get to go to my brother in laws 8th grade graduation. I firmly believe that the pre-school, kindergarten, 5th grade and 8th grade graduations are a root cause for many of the problems befalling our nations youth. By proping these youths up with praise for praises sake we are diminishing the value of real accomplishments. Unless a signifigant portion of your class isn't moving on to the 9th grade, this is a celebration for little more than the change from classes in one building to classes in another.

A lot of you out there wonder why healthcare costs have gone up so much over the last 20-30 years. I have a simple analogy for you. How much did you pay for television in 1980? 1990? 2000? What caused the increase?

In 1980 you were most likely watching via antenna and only receiving a handful of channels. I received 4: ABC, CBS, NBC and Public television. In 1990 I had graduated to about 30 channels of cable tv. I now had a monthly bill that was somewhere around $15-$20 a month, but I had 30 or so channels including the very important ESPN and aussie rules football. In 2000 I really made the step up. DirecTv. My bill is $60 per month and I have more channels than I could ever watch. There is more programming and the quality is also higher. I can catch most Cards and Blues games. I have NFL Sunday, Sunday night and MNF. I get so many college football games, once again I could never watch them all. Remember 1986, you might get 2 or three college football games a weekend.

Healthcare is the same way. We have more treatments, more drugs more options. The quality of the care, drugs diagnostics has increased. The problem is that unlike TV, we as a society believe that it is important for everyone to have access to all the channels of health. Imagine what the state of TV would be if those that could afford it, paid for it and those that couldn't got it for free via charity and government subsidies.

Healthcare is a victim of its own success and good old American entrepreneurship. We have too many options and you need to pay for the option to flip to that option at anytime. I can predict that I will never watch Lifetime, but I can't predict that I will never need a corneal transplant.