Why not start with the no-cost option?

You’re out burning leaves at your curb one fall afternoon – believe it or not, not so long ago the standard way of disposing of fall’s debris was to burn it. Well anyway, you’re burning leaves and some thick white smoke begins to billow from the pile.

A concerned neighbor calls the fire department. Firemen rush to the scene. The fire captain orders his team to spraying down the exterior of your house. He tells you that you have a heck of fire going here. He tells you he needs to break down your door and hose down the interior of your house to "save it."

More firefighting equipment arrives and begins hosing down the neighborhood. A van with loudspeakers begins ordering an evacuation as firemen begin kicking in doors.

Meanwhile the smoldering pile of leaves at your curb continues to smolder untouched by the firemen.

America has a small fire burning at the curb. We have 30 million citizens without health insurance. That figure is a lie but, as we always do, let’s play along. That figure when stripped of people who can afford insurance but don’t buy it gets cut in half.

So along comes the Dear Dope and his fire company who want to evacuate every one in the neighborhood and destroy their houses while pretty much ignoring the problem.

The Dear-Dope-a-Care being considered in congress this week pretty much destroys healthcare in America as we know it while leaving much of the problem Dear-Dope-a-Care was supposed to solve untouched.

Questions for the firefighters:

If there is a real emergency in healthcare, why does most of Dear-Dope-a-care kick-in in 2013?

If there is 50+ BILLION in Medicaid/care fraud, why don’t we stop that immediately?

If the whole idea of Dear-Dope-a-Care is to insure the uninsured, why do these bills still leave millions of uninsured Americans after full implementation?

Wouldn’t it be better to offer healthcare coupons - a food stamp for the sick so to speak -to the uninsured rather than destroy the entire system?

Wouldn’t it be better to try things that don’t put the country another 2 TRILLION dollars in debt before we sign on to that debt?

You know, sort of like using a rake to stir the leaf fire to allow more air into the fire for cleaner combustion or God forbid, throwing a bit of kerosene on to it so it'll burn hotter.

Allowing health insurers to compete across state lines doesn’t cost anything.

Reforming tort law doesn’t cost anything.

Giving Dr.s tax incentives to treat the poor doesn’t cost anything.

When you propose a no cost solution for your smoldering leaves to the fire captain, he tells you, “Look bub, we have a neighborhood crisis here. Do you see all of these men and all of this equipment? We gotta do something.”

So as we all too often do, we listen. We evacuate. When we return to our once beautiful neighborhood, it has been pretty much destroyed by the firemen, and it’ll never be the same again. Oh yeah, and the burning leaves – the proximate cause of all the destruction – are still smoldering at the curb.

Call your Senator/fireman today.

Apologies to firefighters everywhere for the analogy.