Back to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

In the tale of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe a planet expels its middlemen keeping its thinkers and doers. Of course the middlemen survive and the thinkers and doers implode upon themselves. Then there is the Obama meeting on healthcare as reviewed by the Washington Post.

I have spent a few minutes looking at the list and it is composed of legislators, lobbyist and lawyers! The deadly three Ls. At least Hillary collected a group who had been thinking and analyzing the problem for some time before assembling. Imagine if you will, for but a brief moment, in a room with Jimmy Hoffa, Marian Wright Edelman, Donna Shalala, John Dingell, and Larry Summers. Even Dante could never have imagined such a collection! And from this we will get a new Healthcare Plan!

To gain credibility, one first needs to assemble those who bring value to the process. In a conversation with a good friend and highly successful and technically advanced physician, we discussed electronic medical records, and he said it will never work because Physicians are just "stupid". I took that in the sense of accepting technology. However anyone who has ever taken a patient history clearly knows that this is not a table checking process, it is not always linear, you don't start from the head and work your way to the toes. There are interjections, deflections along differing paths and the like. The problem is to diagnose and if at all possible cure. Diagnosis requires first listening to the patient, and sometimes that can be a lengthy and circuitous process.

Thus the almost childlike simplicity of the new Healthcare Plan, yet to be formed, needs the 3 Ls only after it had been developed and digested. Otherwise it becomes just another fire hydrant exercise with all of the dogs in the neighborhood.