Column: In praise of DMV-like health care

Not content to save the world's economy, salvage the entire auto industry, rein in greed and corruption on Wall Street and rid the globe of household pests (have you seen his ninja-like reflexes in the fly-killing video?), President Barack Obama now is tackling health care reform.

I don't know what his plan is here. Tackle so many projects that Republicans can't focus fire on any one of them? Do as much as he possibly can while Democrats control Congress?

What I do know is that Obama has critics on their heels. They're left only with two responses to his health care plan.

They either can argue that what we've got is working pretty well and ought to be kept exactly as it is, or they can resort to fear tactics without addressing the issue at hand.

Not surprisingly, they've done both.

Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, called Obama's plan "the first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known."

Really? The best the world has ever known?

Our average costs are among the highest on the planet -- they went up 6.9 percent in 2008, according to the National Coalition on Health Care, and between 1990 and 2004, costs increased by 120 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Since 1988, insurance contributions by employees have quadrupled.

What does all that buy us? An infant mortality rate that trails those of Slovenia and Cuba. An average life expectancy worse than those of Bosnia, Andorra and Malta (and most of the rest of the Western world.)

So how about fear tactics?

Even though Obama has said from word go that he doesn't want government-run health care, critics have claimed that's exactly what he's proposing. The Sunday-morning talk shows were overrun by talking heads warning of "government bureaucrats between you and your doctor."

"If you like the DMV and think they do a great job, or you like to go to the post office and think it's the most efficient thing you've run into, you'll love" government-run health care, GOP Rep. John Boehner of Ohio warned.

Actually, that doesn't sound so bad to me.

I'm 43, so my experience with the Department of Motor Vehicles stretches back 28 years, to when I got my learner's permit. Not once in those 28 years have I gone to the DMV and walked out without what I came for.

Contrast that with trying to interact with my health insurance company. I've sat on the phone for hours, only to be disconnected or transferred to an automated system. Even when I have reached a human being, he or she has denied me coverage, claimed not to be able to find my files or told me I hadn't completed the proper forms or sent them in within required deadlines.

I've never once had an experience as satisfactory as my interaction at the DMV.

And the post office? All it does is pick up mail from my home, cart it all the way across the country and hand it to the precise person to whom I sent it, all for less than the cost of a soda.

I can't think of another operation that efficient.

Even if Obama did want to have a government bureaucrat make decisions for me, it's got to be better than the insurance company bureacrat who makes them for me now. That bureaucrat's sole mission in life is to make more money for my insurance company -- not to keep me healthy and alive.

None of this is to say that I agree with Obama's health care plans. I don't know enough about them yet to form an opinion.

But I do know that earlier this month, a survey of 100 insurance companies that cover about 95 million Americans revealed that health care costs are expected to increase another 10 percent in 2010.

It's damned hard to argue that the system we have is working. I'm willing to try just about anything at this point.

Peter Wasson is assistant managing editor for public service of the Wausau Daily Herald.