One thing everyone agreed on regarding the Obama presidential campaign was  that he picked his messages and stuck to them.  And one of the ones that stuck to me, in fact, with all the media coverage I felt like it was nailed to me with a hammer and sixteen penny nails, was the notion that if you liked the health plan your employer offered you could keep it, but if you didn't you could have the same insurance federal employees enjoy.  And for employers if they didn't provide insurance for their employees, they would have to contribute to a medicare type plan to cover the uninsured.

As I tried to read the tea leaves of Obama's healthcare reform, being the conservative guy that I am and generally distrusting of the U.S. Government, my interpretation of the above campaign message was that it cloaked  of a movement toward government run healthcare.  After all, healthcare in America is a multi-trillion dollar industry, power follows money, and the Government loves power.  Being somewhat cynical, I figure the underlying message of the stated policy was that if the new administration could get some traction around healthcare reform, it would make employee sponsored insurance so untenable for employers they would be forced to pay into the Government sponsored plan, and that would be the end of healthcare as we knew it.

But there is another possibility here, one that a conservative and somewhat cynical blogger hadn't really given much thought to.  There is an article in the November 17^th edition of Business Week entitled Heath Care-Immediate Relief From Rising Costs which made me wonder if rather than putting so much pressure on businesses their only option is to default into the Government plan, the Government might create enough incentives for employers to cover their employees meaning that less of the insurance market and burden would fall to the Government.

Personally, I think we need to tools to rely on ourselves when it comes to healthcare.  The Government needs to be an advocate for us, not control us or our employers.  Consumer Driven Healthcare, and specifically High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPS) and Health  Savings Accounts (HSAs) are tools the Government has given us.  Could they be better?  Absolutely, they are far from perfect.