I was reading an article this morning wherein Nancy Pelosi is doing some shadow dancing around the costs of the Democrat proposed health care reform.  She was saying that  the CBO would indeed have to score the cost of the proposed plan (good), BUT they need to rely on other sources as well to help validate those costs ,and basically what I read was that if they didn’t like what they got back, they would use a little Congressional pixie dust to  give some quantitative weight to things not scored in the plan.

Specifically, she wants to give credit to savings derived from prevention.  A nice concept for sure, however, far be it for Congress to value an ounce of prevention.  Well maybe not so far, because they are going to lick their big ole fingers and hold them up to the wind, and if they don’t get struck by a bolt of lightening in the process, they will divine for all of us suckers, the value of an ounce of prevention.

I think I might need to have an ounce of Cutty Sark, which is what my Grandmother took every day as her ounce of prevention, and she lived well up into her 80s.

But what’s missing for me in the honorable madam speaker’s comments is the “HOW” in this equation.  I have yet, (and I may be deaf) to hear in the plans put forth by Democrats, what is going to motivate individuals to actually do anything to prevent chronic (and other illnesses).  I am one hundred percent in favor of preventative measures when it comes to health care.  That is why I have a high deductible health plan with a health savings account.   But let me ask again, how do plans on the table address prevention?  Because without the “how” HOW in the world can they try to put educated assessment of what it is worth; prevention that is?

My HDHP pays for preventative check ups, my big nasty deductible is damn good motivation for me to go outside and ride my bike as soon as I get this article posted, and my HSA gives me pretty good motivation to put money aside for my family’s health care needs both present and the future.  Is it perfect?  No, but it has helped my family reduce our health care costs overall, and we are more focused on the “health” part than the “care” part than we used to be under my old company’s smorgasboard plan where we were basically pigs at a trough. 

Well now there are a bunch of Congressional pigs lined up the trough of power.  Many of them don’t want you and me to be able to take care of ourselves through consumer driven health care plans.  So they are talking about changing the rules (lower contribution limits, they don’t trust us so they want to make us jump through more hoops with regard to substantiation of withdrawals from our HSAs, higher penalties for non-medical withdrawals from our HSAs–stuff like that).  

I fall into the category of folks who say, “if you think the Government is going to take care of you, you’ve got another thing coming.”  I hope this is healthy skepticism and maybe it even qualifies as an ounce of prevention.

If you want to contribute an ounce of prevention click here to read about a pragmatic approach to health care and to sign the “Free Our Health Care NOW” petition.  On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing it represents, “one small step for man…”