Congratulations to Vice President Cheney. Due in large part to his hard work and vision in putting together his “Energy Task Force” just weeks after assuming office, (you remember the one. He invited all the top executives of the big oil companies over for a planning session on how to deal with the energy situation. And he has steadfastly refused to discuss with the rest of us what they discussed or what plan they came up with…you remember...it was in all the papers!) we can all take heart in the recent news that foreign oil now costs $100.00 a barrel, more than 40% higher than just 7 short years ago. At the pump, we could soon see $4.00 per gallon gasoline. And just in time for the deepest cold of winter.

As of this writing, the New Hampshire Presidential Primary has not yet taken place but I am going out on a great big firm limb and predicting that Hilary Clinton is about to have the same kind of night on January 8th as she did on Jan 3rd. Being a presumptive front runner in the Iowa Caucuses can be as meaningless as having intentions to go on a diet. Just ask former Iowa front-runners, President Howard Dean, President Pat Robertson, or President Gary Hart. Those including myself who eulogized John McCain’s Presidential campaign should definatly not quite their day jobs. And those morons who donated 100 million bucks to Mitt Romney should not be trusted with other people’s money…like ours!

But, enough of this congratulatory harrumphing. I have bigger fish to fry.

National health care, or lack of it is what’s on my mind today. Actually it’s been on my mind for a while but last week while sweating out a terrific case of strepp throat on the couch near a roaring fire and in front of the T.V., I had a chance to learn what some of the Presidential candidates had to say about it, mostly from C-Span. I settled in with a basket of fruit, a bottle of aspirin and a gallon of orange juice and got an extended education on the candidate’s positions on the subject.

To a person, every candidate was in favor of “affordable health care”. That’s like saying you’re in favor of being healthy. Hell, I’m in favor of everybody being Green Bay Packer fans. My plan…? don’t have one.

All of the Republican candidates save Huckabee, lauded President Bush’s recent veto of the bill that would have expanded child health care coverage and to no ones surprise, each of the Democratic candidates were highly critical of said veto.

Most of the proponents of “affordable health care” (that’s the buzz word the candidates were using so I’ll go with that) mean that insurance companies manage costs out of the system and take everybody in regardless of their existing health condition. Some tax incentives will be provided so you can deduct some of the cost of the premiums from any taxes you owe Uncle Sam on April 15. But that’s only if you itemize.

Typically the Republican candidates are against negotiating with drug companies for cheaper prices while nearly all of the Democrats promised to do just that. And that’s pretty much the whole issue.

As far as I could tell, only John Edwards wants a single payer health care provider, the Government, to give blanket coverage to everybody. He is calling for socialized medicine-flat out. He points out passionately that every night in America, 47 million people go to bed without health insurance and that if they woke in the middle of the night with a sick child and brought them to an emergency room they would literally have to beg the hospital to treat that child if they could not afford to pay them. That’s a stark picture.

While in school, I worked graveyard shift in a large regional medical center as an ER Tech. I’ve seen many people in similar straights come to our facility. I never saw anyone turned away, but I heard a lot of grousing from the staff about “dead beats” that should go to the health department. The Medical Staff clearly wanted no part of them. And while they got care they were sent away many times with a prescription that we knew they could not get filled. Many times we would see the same people back the next night sicker and more desperate than before. That system isn’t the answer.

In the last mid term election, both Houses of Congress switched to the control of the Democrats largely due to the war in Iraq. Since then, the troops are still there, the civil war they are mediating, which we started, continues and the death count of American military personnel has climbed past 3,900. The feckless Democrats whine that they need a bigger majority in order to stop it and this year’s electorate seems hell bent on giving it to them. But while the war remains a dominant motivator for political change in this country, health care is beginning to take the most prominent place among the many intractable problems that will be faced by the new President and the next congress.