03 Mar AmTrack and Affordable Care Act

President Obama’s recent article (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533698) in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) resurfaced the idea of a single-payer health plan. While I respect the President for many of him accomplishments and abilities, I am strongly opposed to his assertion that a government managed health plan is a good idea for the patients, providers, or the marketplace.

Let me ask a simple question: if our government cannot run Amtrack successfully, and cannot make USPS a profitable service in a truly competitive manner, and cannot run wars without having billions of dollars going unaccounted for while producing no value for us as a country, how on earth can it propose to manage our health and indeed our lives well?

If we ever get to a single-payer healthcare system (read government healthcare) our national healthcare system will look no different than the picture above of an Amtrack train (this is a picture of only one of the numerous tragic mishaps of Amtrack).

Is this what we want?