In the America that I know and love, healthcare is not an entitlement subject to government regulation. If it were, the same would be true for all essential goods and services. Can we expect a government-mandated exchange for breakfast cereals, shoes, and baby diapers to follow Obama’s healthcare insurance exchange? Where will it stop? Nonessential goods and services would also require an exchange under the Obamacare model considering that not all healthcare is essential. Some healthcare profoundly enriches our lives rather than sustaining it. Perhaps the only thing saving us for the time being from an exchange for each of life’s simple pleasures such as air conditioning, a hot tub, or a cold beer at a barbeque is the fact that this administration lost control of Congress.

What is clear is that it is up to us to arrest this trend and stop the insanity before our government follows its thinking to its logical conclusion, which is that the food we rely on, the clothes on our back, the roof over our head, and our transportation to work are also things we all must access at some point in our life, thus qualify as entitlements that require subsidy and regulation by government standards.

No matter where Rhode Islanders fall on the spectrum of assumptions of what the span and reach of our government should be, it’s unlikely that they have any concept of who’s toying with our healthcare system and their lack of expertise. Everyone agrees that affordable care and an efficient delivery system is vital to our quality of life. We are precariously relying on a system that’s in a stranglehold of costly, wasteful government regulations. The Rhode Island General Assembly apparently agrees that our system is under duress because it did what bad government does when faced with a problem, set up a Special Senate Commission to study the problem.

Meeting minutes from a gathering of the Executive Committee of the RI Healthcare Reform Commission on May 2, 2011 paint a clear picture of the Senate Commission’s activities lead by state Senator Joshua Miller (Democrat - District 28, Cranston, Warwick). The minutes state that the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner (OHIC) presented a report in January of 2010 on access, quality, cost containment, and the transparence of care delivery in our hospitals. The reform group criticized the report as incomplete and the general consensus must have been that the OHIC couldn’t get it right, because the Senate stripped the Insurance Commissioner of the project. Once in the hands of the Special Senate Commission, the project ballooned beyond the study of hospital transparency. A string of stakeholder meetings was held in which hospital leaders, insurers, providers, and physicians were at odds with the recommendations of the Commission. The Senate noted the Stakeholder’s dissents and set about developing mindless legislation anyway.

With Senate Bill 873, they questioned the need for individual hospital contracts going forward seeing that the Insurance Commissioner can set rates. Senator Miller suggested further study on the possibility of mandating all hospitals in the state to contract for the same rates. Thankfully, someone in the room astutely pointed out that hospital contracts do address issues beyond compensation rates, thus there may be an ongoing role for them even in a highly regulated market. They set out to create a community referral system for intoxicated individuals with Senate Bill 875. Fortunately, someone noted that public money already funds Emergency Rooms to care for persons engaging in this activity.

While these bills siphon off critical resources by throwing good money after bad, by far the most irresponsible reform considered that day was in Senate Bill 871, which created a call center to help families evaluate referrals for children’s behavioral health treatment. Again, it was an unnamed participant in the meeting that alerted the group to the fact that this could result in diverting people away from the pipeline to necessary services. I find this alarmingly dangerous knowing how fragile our children are when it comes to antidepressant medication management for example. It has been widely publicized that a medication adjustment that results in discomfort for an adult carries an increased risk of suicide for pediatric patients.

Pulling back the shroud of busy work and manufactured chaos within our state house by spending an hour in a committee meeting or reading over meeting minutes available on various state websites immediately reveals the source of the gross negligence that threatens our health and possibly the future for our loved ones. Senator Joshua Miller’s expertise is operating a beer microbrewery and restaurant. This is certainly not a person that I want taking a scalpel to my healthcare system.

I see only two options from where I sit. We could blame those that voted for Senator Miller (and every other delegate unequipped to do the job) along with every registered voter that didn’t bother to vote, or we can take control of our future by accepting our responsibility to participate in managing what goes on in our government between elections. There are countless people in this state with more knowledge in healthcare delivery systems than Miller has. Active or retired consultants, executives, managers, social workers, physicians, providers, and business owners to name a few that make it a priority to voluntarily sit in these meetings a couple hours per month, speak out, and sound the alarm for the public to hold policy makers accountable for risking our health and safety.

I’ve heard it said in these meetings that it makes no sense that one doctor gets paid more than another doctor when the patient accesses all of them with the same insurance card. That rational leads me to conclude that the price of a bottle of the Senator Miller’s microbrew must be government controlled so that it does not exceed the actual wholesale cost of a bottle of the cheapest generic beer in the state. However, we know that there’s no place for such activity in this capitalistic society and it’s obvious that Miller doesn’t value what our free market system affords him. It’s also clear that there’s no place for Senator Miller in our state government. Managing the performance of our delegates must be priority one for all of us to avoid the unnecessary tragedy that comes with a mismanaged healthcare system. What will you do to that end today?