Whatever your views on the current health care reform debate, it’s clearly one of the more divisive issues to come along. But while we are arguing about health coverage, health issues and how to improve medical care, potentially more important issues are being ignored. Even if the current attempt at redirecting health policy were settled quickly, and hoped for lower costs of the medical care system achieved, it will be the wrong priority at this crucial moment. Here’s why:
* With staggering debt and little more borrowing capacity, the economy needs both cost reduction and revenue growth. No matter what the outcome of improving the health system, it will not by itself, be an engine of economic growth.
* Health issues, health coverage and health system reform, while attention-getting, are not inspirational. With incendiaries like “death camps,” and “illegal immigrant coverage,” there’s little currently that can unify and rally us toward a common goal in health reform.
* While it does affect everyone eventually, the group that matters most to America’s future, our youth, is understandably uninterested in health policy. Except for the issue of their having to pay for health insurance and the cost of health reform via taxes, the need for health care in this arguably healthy group is low.