Since Health Care is in the news, and since some folks who commented on my blog yesterday seem hungry for a serious discussion of the issues, I remembered a blog I wrote last year on Health Care and the Federal Government.

You can find it here.

Why it took me two months of current national health care debate to remember this, I have no idea. But I just went back and re-read it, and it still reflects much of my thoughts and feelings on both the role of government and the issue of health care.

Actually, the first part of the blog is about the role of the Federal Government. Part of why our nation doesn’t agree about the “solution” for Health Care, is that we no longer have basic agreement as to the role of the Federal Government.

As the blog suggests, for over forty years, we’ve lived with political leadership who are constantly denigrating the role of the government and even the work of decent, ordinary government workers. This cynical and fatalistic view, espoused best by Ronald Reagan’s short quip that “government is the problem,” must be confronted and overcome.

Without that basic agreement –that government has at least *some* positive role to play in society– there can be no real health care “debate.”

I put forward my thoughts on the issue, using my faith as the compass for my moral views.

The second part of the essay is from an ER doctor, and is a quite good description of what is wrong with health care today.

Hope you find it helpful.