Affordable healthcare?

Saving the health care system must be done by cutting the cost without cutting quality!  First, I would increase the number of doctors by allowing individuals to specialize in a specific area of treatment without excessive school, which would cut the time and money it takes to become a doctor; however, this must be with care and thought so not too diminish quality of care.  Secondly, fund and train start-up companies to make all of the ridiculously over-priced medical supplies competitive.  Remove drugs from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and allow drug companies to test and provide evidence that their drug is safe with the present detailed testing process.  Drug companies would be regulated as a “utility” and prices MUST be justified limiting profitability.  Eliminate malpractice law suits, do homework on treatment options, doctors records will be posted publicly for all to see.  Give incentives for proper Body Mass Index (BMI), being drug free, and not smoking from taxes collected from cigarettes and legalized marijuana, yes legalized marijuana!  Finally, make low interest loans available to start-up medical facilities to limit the monopoly the big institutions have on the healthcare market.

Forcing these bold changes on the entire country would be irresponsible; this should be tested in one city or state before standardization.  All of these ideas create competition and more JOBS!  This all sounds good on paper, but once the trial lawyers, drug lobbyist, health insurance companies, and big hospitals get to the law makers it would never get a chance… 

Government waste?

Here is a comparison between government spending and sewage treatment.  I own a sewer utility and this comparison crossed my mind one day while working on the sewer plant.    

A sewer plant treats sewage with an aerobic and anaerobic process that produces clear water, which is discharged into a pond or water source.  However, the process produces phosphates (fertilizer) that remains in the clear water discharged, which feeds pond scum allowing it to grow.  If the amount of sewage treated is excessive the amount of phosphates rise in the discharged water and cause an increased amount pond scum.

Here is my point. The sewage is the money the government provides for programs, phosphates are government spending, and Pond scum is inflation.  For example, student loans have driven the cost of college up from $16,000 (total 4 years) when I went to school in 1985 to $88,000 (total 4 years) presently.  The costs of education has sky rocketed.  Why?  Capitalism, that’s why.  Supplying a free market with a ton of funding and the market will find a way to extract the money.  I recently visited my old campus, there are many upgrades that make it super nice and it is easy to see where the money was spent, but is it really necessary for this over indulgence?  It is clearly driven by students with borrowed money to spend.  Government backed mortgages are another example of government interference gone wrong.  Just wait until the fertilizer hits the healthcare system, people will not be able to afford to get sick!

The media mob

Is the media the Pharisees of our world now? 

How has our society allowed the media to become our moral compass and display the aura that they are perfect?

The power they abuse can ruin someone regardless if charges are true or false.  If it sells air time then it is news worthy, but it is not only the media's fault because the mob yearns for the entertainment of watching someone fail or self-implode.  The media continues to judge people and sway public opinion to that which suits them best in order to gain attention (which sells air time) 
Please read this passage about judging others.  

John 8
   But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.  But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.  At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  “No one, sir,” she said.  “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

If Jesus will not willing to judge this woman then who is better than Him to judge her?  I have been guilty of judging others, I believe it is difficult to refrain from doing so, but that does not make it right and I am getting better at staying away from judging others showing mercy.  It is easy to practice self-mercy and justifying our own mistakes; why do we find it so difficult to forgive others theirs?

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

I believe I'll leave judgment to God...I have enough to do today.