Rational thoughts on health care reform

I have hesitated to start this blog. Who cares what I think about health care reform, anyway? Who am I to opine on the subject? And so I've been sitting on my hands.
Day after day, however, I've been inundated by so many other writers, and pundits, and self-styled experts on health care reform, reporting not facts or statistics, but hysteria, misinformation, or just plain ignorance.
In Journalism School I learned the importance of checking facts, of using corroborating sources, of showing as much objectivity as it is possible for a human to have. That's a lot of work! Who has time for that? I have a life (well, sort of), with real responsibilities, and demands on my time. But then I've been reading and listening to so many so-called journalists who clearly aren't following the responsible route of reporting. From Ann Coulter, who wrote the most inane column on health care and the free market, to the Regular Guys, a couple of syndicated shock jocks who ramble audaciously about completely false concepts such as forced euthanasia in the health care reform bill. Hell, I thought, I'm not any stupider than these guys!

I can't fault Fox News or Clear Channel for airing these morons and allowing them to spread misinformation on the public airwaves. After all, as the parent of a severely developmentally disabled child, I've always been a proponent of hiring the handicapped. But if I'm going to complain, then I have to offer a responsible alternative. So I have decided to jump into the fray with this blog: Miranda Writes about Health Care Reform (if I have to explain the pun in the title, then you should probably stop reading now and turn on Fox News).

What are my qualifications to discuss health care reform? Well, I'm no Uwe Reinhart, but I do have some street cred. I earned an MBA with a concentration in health care in 1999. I have worked for 17 years in a not-for-profit community hospital, concentrating on cancer care. I consume the Wall Street Journal daily - which, by the way, is absolutely the best health care reporting in the country. I have immersed myself in source documents published on the CMS website, making me somewhat of a local expert on government-run health care.

So that's me, and that's why I believe I have something to say about health care reform. In the coming days and weeks, I will talk about different aspects of health care reform, including, but not limited to, the current bills moving through the House and Senate. I'll also talk about concepts that may or may not be included in the current debate, but have been presented and discussed in recent years and hold merit for today's discussion.
I welcome your thoughts, your responses, your disagreements, your ideas. But you have to promise to consider the facts and alternative views before making up your mind. If you've already made up your mind, then don't waste your time reading this, and don't waste space responding.