A 50-state strategy for health care

This past Monday, Washington, D.C. hosted the 100th annual meeting of the National Governors Association with the White House. The first meeting occurred in 1906 under Teddy Roosevelt, with the intention to push forward Roosevelt's conservation policies.

Rising, current and fading political stars littered the photo of 22 Republican and 28 Democratic governors along with President Bush on Monday. Seeing all these governors there together reminded me of the vastness of this nation and the importance of relative state autonomy.

This meeting got me to thinking how every state is vastly different: Arnold Schwarzenegger's California has little in common with Bobby Jindal's Louisiana, which is wholly different from Sarah Palin's Alaska or Pawlenty's Minnesota.

Because of the diversity of states we have in the union, often the state capitals know what is better for their specific populations than does Washington, D.C. Governors and state legislators live closer to their constituent populations and must be more responsive to local needs.

Today, many argue that America is more the same than it is different. That is largely true. However that does not absolve the fact that America continues to be made of variant parts. For this reason a national health care plan may not be the best way to provide universal health care.

Health care is not a right. However, for practical and certain moral reasons, universal health care should be a goal. This is especially true since the current system tends to be more costly as we have people who can't buy health insurance and thus wait until they have to get medical assistance but then taxpayers still have to pay a more expensive bill.

Though we should pursue the expansion of access to health care and highlight preventative and affordable health care, we as a nation must also remember our priorities.

America has a problem deep at its core. The entitlement programs that are weighing down our governments with mandatory spending are on track to truly threaten our way of life as a strong nation.Eventually, these entitlement programs, such as social security, Medicaid and Medicare, will prove unsustainable. At that point the only solutions available will be raising taxes and lowering benefits.The effect of the growing amount of money that these entitlement programs are sucking out of our governments will be devastating. The strain of entitlements will eventually start hurting America's external and internal infrastructure.

External infrastructure, such as support for military, international organizations and foreign aid to help troubled regions, will shrivel, as will internal infrastructure, in the form of transportation networks, homeland security and national defense.

Despite this, one of the critical policy debates coming up is how to provide universal health care to our citizens. It may be a noble goal, but it may not be wise to start another federal entitlement program at this time. We should fix the broken entitlement programs we already have, not to mention our illegal immigration problem, before starting new programs. However our health care situation does need to be addressed.

Initially, I liked the idea of a national health care plan, largely because I didn't want Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-Md.) choosing my health care plan. I prefered Gov. Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan.

Yet Romney's presidential policy for universal health care was that the federal government should get the states to provide and implement their own plans for universal health care: Massachusetts had its own, California and Maryland are developing their own and this would go across the country. Even if this may have been a calculated move to appeal to a conservative base, today it now appears to me to be the most logical step to take.

If America had 50 ways of dealing with health care, all learning from each other, somewhere in that mix, we might be able to produce the most affordable and effective health care that recognizes the specific needs of that state.

Our current health care system needs reform. Instead of looking outward, to the nationalized systems of France, Spain and Canada for solutions, maybe we need to start looking inward to New York, Texas and California. I hope that the next president will use the 101st NGA meeting to pressure and lobby governors to bring health care to all our citizens.