In Defense of My Proposal

At the health seminar, I suggested one possible non-partisan option that could instantly improve the health and lower the cost of healthcare of this country.

My suggestion was a guaranteed free visit to a general practitioner for every patient every year. This would be paid for by the government, but it’d be a net plus, I argued, if only because it would help catch chronic ailments before it was too late.

My original proposal had holes: the deadline was December 31st and people pointed out, rightly so, that most people would wait until the end to attempt to make their appointments.  I was also attacked both on the ‘front end’— in that there were not enough doctors in the country— and on the ‘back end’ — in that the administrative issues would be overwhelming. The latter criticism was directly related to the Dec. 31st critique.

Well, here’s my new proposal:

The United States government should immediately enact a program which would allow one (1) free visit to a general practitioner per person per year.  This could be regulated in the same way we regulate job hires: a certain combination of IDs would suffice to identify a person, which would be moderated through some central hub. This would not instantly clog up the system for the same reason that the country doesn’t shut down on election day.  Not everybody chooses to vote and not everybody will choose to go to the doctor.  It would also not clog up the system because the deadline will be tied to each person’s birthday.  So I would be able to go to the doctor for free once at 24 then once more as soon as I turned 25.  Since the cost would be more than over compensated by the savings in the health system.

What do you guys think?

-Carlos