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Good health care is not a personal right. It is a parent’s responsibility. Parents everywhere have the initial and basic responsibility to care for the infant(s) to which they give birth. If they have insurance to help with the costs of this initial care, that is fine, but it is not the responsibility of any government or other relative or neighbor or religious group or friend to provide the funds for this ongoing responsibility or service any more than it is the responsibility of any of these entities to provide the funds to anyone for the purchase and operation of a phone.

Any insurance benefits that are available to help with the costs of health care must come from companies or agencies that collect premiums from their customers who want this financial service. And they are only able to pay individual customers and their health care providers for the specific costs of health care procedures if they can maintain an excessive level of premiums over expenses, if they can make a profit from their business. They have to be able to attract a “pool” of healthy customers who will have a minimum amount of costs for health care during a reasonable time frame so that they can afford to pay the costs for their customers when they become sick or otherwise injured. These principles of business are true for any company or agency that is engaged in providing financial services for health care irregardless of the name of the company or the government program that provides the financial plan, which is the insurance policy. They are true whether the policies are secured voluntarily or through compulsory taxes or fees.

Once an infant is born, his or her body is no longer “new”. It is like a “new” car that immediately becomes “used” once it is driven off of the dealer’s lot or taken out of the display room. Then it is the responsibility of the owner or parents to maintain the car or the health of their child. The dealer may provide a warranty to cover some possible costly repairs to the “new” car, but these would only be effective for a limited period of time and they would basically only cover parts of the car that were not subject to a lot of poor maintenance or abusive driving habits, and the price of such warranties is included in the price of the car. Warranties for used cars are usually very expensive and very limited if they can be purchased at all. Health care is a legitimate cost of living for adults and their dependents even for those who are unemployed.

So insurance companies or agencies that agree to cover the costs of health care on the “used” bodies of their customers must be wise managers of their financial assets if they are going to maintain a necessary level of profits in their business. That means that they must recognize and take into account the personal factors, such as age and gender and health habits, of their customers. It is foolish to expect good business managers to ignore these factors by trying to force them to issue insurance plans without regard to the “pre-existing” health conditions of their customers. That is like forcing a car dealer to issue a service warranty on a used car irregardless of whether or not it was caught in a flood, involved in a crash, or just poorly maintained for years. Such an effort by congress to force insurance companies to ignore “pre-existing” risks, such as high blood pressure and smoking and health histories, is nonsense or poor business.

Our congressional representatives and the president should not be engaged in this current effort to reform health care, particularly the business practices of insurance companies who are seeking to provide individuals with some funds for the costs of this service. And they should not be seeking to put caps on the level of fees that private professionals can charge their customers and patients for the health care services that they provide. Such fees and premiums are matters of the business market place. This reform is not a responsibility of our government.

The health care reform that needs to take place in our society should not be focused on the insurance business or the services of health care professionals, but it should be focused on getting adults to recognize their responsibilities to provide health care for the children that they produce and to practice habits of good health. Such reforms could go a long way toward enabling them to maintained their bodies for many decades of comfortable living, although “old age” is basically not a preventable disease.

A lot of good health care could be established by going back to a previous plan by many insurance companies who would issue health insurance policies that would only cover “major” medical expenses, such as those that might come from unexpected medical emergencies or accidents. All other costs for health care would be recognized as being outside of these policies and within the personal responsibilities of adults. These costs would be for such services as for eye glasses and regular dental cleaning or braces and flu shots and blood tests and physical therapy. The service of emergency health care for the unemployed and the persistently poor should be provided by more non-profit medical clinics in our communities, with these being operated by caring charitable foundations, churches or synagogues, or other such agencies. Doctors and other health care professionals could be encouraged to spend a few years of service at a less than normal wage in such clinics in the course of their careers. This would take some of the financial pressure off of the hospitals that are profit-seeking businesses.

Good health care is a basic need for every person, and some reforms in this service are necessary. Let’s talk about what makes for good health care.