Healthcare The American Way?

Could our health care system be based on ethical principles?

America's founding documents reflect ethically supported principles of personal and governmental rights and obligations. That is how our country began.

A modest mom and pop shop or a large well-financed public corporation, will fail unless its owners and executives understand and articulate the business mission and pattern its business plan to fulfill that mission. Failure will be associated with a departure from the ethical principles, goals, objectives and priorities established at the beginning and revisited on a regular business. Whether it's "we supply fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables to our immediate community," or "we bring good things to life" or "do no wrong" those principles (and their ethical underpinnings) guide and center the successful business.

What is the clearly articulated mission of our health care system? What is the clearly articulated mission of each of its components? What are the ethical principles, goals, objectives and priorities that should guide its development and function? What are the ethical standards we are entitled to expect it to meet?

We have allowed our health care system to grow like cancer, draining resources and destroying our humanity for the benefit of transient political and business advantage while the patient is dying. Our system is more responsive to insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, durable medical equipment vendors, hospital lobbies, financial people, trade associations (often masquerading as professional organizations) then to people who can't afford insurance, mothers who do not have adequate obstetrical care, the sick, the poor, minorities and those damaged by poor food, air and water pollution, and public institutional indifference.

There should be an opportunity for every American to participate in the development of ethical principles for the development of our health care system through local, state-wide, regional and national forums. Those principles should be the starting point for Congressional overhaul of our health system. This should not be a Hillary Clinton type of mid-1990s paternalistic top-down proposal. It should come from the ground up and reflect our heritage as a democracy.

When Americans agree on ethical principles underlying our health care system there will be a visible standard to measure the performance of Congress and the Administration. Until the ethical consensus is achieved, rehabilitation, reform and improved efficiency of our system won't happen.

We need to get back to "the American Way" for health care.