Exercising choice for national healthcare. In the end, we'll get what we choose

Whether we evolve toward a market model, a play-or-pay model, or a national model will depend largely upon our personal beliefs and perspectives. Unfortunately, in the hectic and fast-paced life that virtually all of us lead, we base many of our conclusions on unexamined bits and pieces of conventional wisdom. We have looked at but five of them. Yet these bits and pieces become the yardsticks by which we measure other plans and other people. Instead of listening to and studying the approaches proposed by others, we are often too quick to dismiss them with labels such as "too costly," or "too capitalist," or "too socialist," or "too whatever." As a consequence, we become prisoners of our own ideology. Would that we were more like Tillich's (1951) description of the famous theologian, Karl Barth, who "...strenuously tries not to become his own follower" (5). In other words, we would work to continually inform and correct ourselves in light of new understanding. Our healthcare problems--any social problems, for that matter--are never really solved. All we can do is do our best at meeting needs, even if it means that in meeting one set of needs we inadvertently create other needs. But that is why we are enriched when we accept the challenge of continuing to question our personal bits and pieces of conventional wisdom. In a recent column in the Houston Post, Richard Reeves cites statistical evidence, known to most who work in the healing professions, indicating that people who live alone tend to suffer from greater illness.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)