The Best Kind of Choice and the Best Kind of Competition

In our time, word-salads have become common place, confusing to everyone of goodwill.
It is sadly predictable, pace Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, to be told that up is down, and down is up.
It was Humpty Dumpty himself, after all, who declared with astonishing arrogance: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
In Washington D.C., where I live and work, when a member of the federal bureaucracy uses the words ‘choice’ or ‘competition,’ for example, I find myself, even as a certified non-cynic and non-skeptic, returning to a game of my boyhood called ‘opposite day’ — the point of which is to humorously reverse what has been said or asserted, and only then alighting upon the truth.
In both verbal and non-verbal ways, Americans have almost silently trained ourselves to hear a message, and then apply a version of ‘opposite day’ to what has been communicated so that, in the end, we can approximate what the truth is — a sort of never-ending quest to get to the point beyond the proverbial smoke and mirrors.
A wise, former U.S. senator adroitly and cogently observed, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.”
And so it is refreshing and even nourishing to read a new book Modernizing Medicine (John Hopkins Press, 2023) by scholars Robert Emmet Moffit and Marie Fishpaw, the former a friend and comrade at the Heritage Foundation who has long specialized in health care and its prudent reform, and the latter an adroit policy analyst who has worked at The White House, in the Congress, and is an esteemed health care editor of important work.
Together, Moffit and Fishpaw have written a remarkably useful and helpful guide for American families who are trying to see their way through the endless debates on how our nation’s major entitlements should be reformed, and with a laser-like focus on Medicare and the countless millions of older Americans who rely on Medicare for their health care needs.
With longer life spans, millions of American moms and dads find themselves stretched in a new sort of middle-way. On the one hand, they are raising young children and pouring their time, talents, and treasure into making and shaping the next-generation of outstanding citizens while on the other hand expending significant amounts of energy and time working to make the lives of their aging parents healthy and fruitful.
It is all expensive – this three-generational-balancing-act – and working to find peace of mind, often through Medicare for older parents, is inevitably a major part of the challenge.
Moffit and Fishpaw have provided an incredibly useful and readable roadmap in navigating these often and predicable policy highways, and they do so in a manner that is clarifying and clear-eyed.
They boldly take on the Herculean task of deducing in easy to understand English (and not the gibberish that often accompanies studies of this kind) the major problems and hurdles of the present system. As a non-specialist, I was bowled over by the seemingly colossal problems and challenges our beloved country faces in reforming and getting a handle on this governmental-programs-problem which is a kind of Leviathan entitlement matrix voraciously gobbling-up our national treasury and tax dollars.
The authors offer reliable reforms rooted in giving maximum freedom to Medicare’s recipients; they show how transparency into the entire system can be achieved – a major reform that is long overdue and almost criminally negligent; and their section on market reforms rooted in measurable performance as it relates to pricing is the ultimate common-sense in an era when runaway government is what we have all come to expect.
Families can benefit from learning first-hand what major entitlement reform might look like, and how it would directly impact them and those they love.
The authors’ goal in writing this book is equally refreshing: to “secure patients more affordable, more accountable, and higher-quality medical care.”
Former President Reagan famously quipped, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.” He also said, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear.” Both true indeed; and yet, there is little to know will in Washington to begin the trek toward needed and necessary reform.
The authors are leading the way by providing a GPS through the policy swamps.
Now that Medicare and other related entitlements have vastly expanded in spending, our national debt and deficits are rising concomitantly. More government means less freedom.
What to do about the dizzying health care challenges before us as America ages and at a time when marriage and fertility rates are at the lowest in American history?
Begin by reading this important book that, almost singularly, is proactively bold and blunt about the challenges we face yet equally sanguine about an achievable way forward that will greatly benefit untold millions of our citizens in the years ahead.
The authors are, dare I say it, courageous, intrepid, fearless, and undaunted about offering a Medicare roadmap that will give the next generation access to high quality care by employing strategies that actually work.
No more Alice in Wonderland, pie in the sky hollow promises that don’t work. Here is a book that elides the health care mechanics that can work. That, after all, is the American way.
’Tis the season for holiday reading!
Check out Daily Citizen’s cheery winter reads.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Goeglein champions God’s welcomed role in the public square. His years of public service and private initiative have been devoted to faith, freedom, and family. Tim is the Vice President for External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family in Washington DC. He served in high-level government posts for two decades. He worked as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, where he was the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison from 2001 to 2008. He was the President’s principal outreach contact for conservatives, think tanks, veteran’s groups, faith-based groups, and some of America’s leading cultural organizations. He was a member of the President’s original 2000 campaign and White House staff, serving for nearly 8 years. Also, he has served as a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a professor of government at Liberty University. Goeglein is the author of the political memoir THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE: FAITH AND POLITICS IN THE GEORGE W. BUSH ERA (B and H Books) which was published in September, 2011. His second book is AMERICAN RESTORATION: HOW FAITH, FAMILY, AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE CAN HEAL OUR NATION (Regnery, 2019), in which he offers a roadmap to national and spiritual renewal by examining American culture. His new book is TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION: THE MORAL AND CULTURAL CASE FOR TEACHING THE GREAT AMERICAN STORY (Fidelis Books, 2023). From 1988 through 1998, Tim was the Deputy Press Secretary, and then Press Secretary and Communications Director, for U.S. Senator Dan Coats of Indiana (who was in the Senate for a decade). Between his time with the Senate and Bush campaign, Tim served as Communications Director for Gary Bauer in his presidential bid. Tim was an intern for then-U.S. Senator Dan Quayle in 1985, and for then-Representative Dan Coats and for NBC News in 1986, during his college years at Indiana University’s Ernie Pyle School of Journalism. When he graduated in 1986, he was the Richard Gray Fellow in his senior year. Tim’s first job upon graduation was as a television news producer for the NBC affiliate in his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. During high school and college, he produced a show for WOWO Radio, then owned by the Westinghouse Broadcasting Corporation. The program was heard in 28 states. Tim holds Honorary Doctorate degrees from Concordia University, New York City; and from Faith Evangelical College and Seminary, Tacoma, Washington. Tim is the secretary of the Coalitions for America board, a member of the board for the National Civic Art Society, a member of the board of Family Policy Alliance, and a member of the board of governors of the Young America’s Foundation which owns and operates the Ronald Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara, California. Tim also serves on the Institute for American Universities Advisory Board. Goeglein served as Board Secretary of the American Conservative Union Foundation. Also, he is a member of the Council for National Policy, the Philadelphia Society, and the Capitol Hill Club. Tim serves on the Sanctity of Life Commission for his church body, the 2.5 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; is a board member of The Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty; and has served as a deacon in his church in northern Virginia for 30 years. His hobbies include reading, tennis, swimming, biking, and the fine arts. The most important thing to know about Tim is that he is married to the love of his life, Jenny, of 31 years, and they have two sons Tim and Paul -- one in public policy and one in the fine arts and music.
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