Why does it feel like that one sentence is hugely inadequate for expressing the need and the solution?

I don't know enough about health care but I do know a lot about social assistance programs. I think if this nation wanted to do something great that wouldn't be nearly as daunting as nationalizing health care they'd fix the welfare programs.

My wife and I walked between the lines on every program we knew/know of and it's such a hassle. We get phone calls, quarterly audits and everything for a small $22 check we get every month. I know (yes personally) so many families that are taking advantage of the system and they don't have to do anything.

I think that social assistance needs to be hugely revamped and if you get welfare and food stamps a worker comes to your home every 3 months to assess your needs. In that time you demonstrate that you have been very proactive in trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and if you do demonstrate that but still are short (and you have a kid like Katie) you get hassle free help.

A social worker helps you to review needs both financial and medical. You work out a care plan for the next 3 months and she/he helps you by coordinating doctor visits, insurance assessments and other things. Reduce the number of people drawing social assistance by 90% because so much of it is fraud and improve the quality of it by 90%.

My wife and I don't know enough. We simply don't. We tried to get a nurse to help us with Katie a while back and the one we got was horrible. She couldn't have taken care of a stick of butter. But the nurse who came to give Katie a Synagis shot (a booster for RSV that's a $3000 per injection) was so dang knowledgeable it was insane. She sat and visited with us at length and did it off the clock. We only saw her 4 times ever but she went through our finances with us. She told us "how" to legally get around certain hitches in the system and to try and get help. She went through our infamil formula needs and said she'd fill out a slip for us to get a case of it for free. That case was worth over $1000 to us (it lasted about 6 days but it was hugely wonderful). This lady had so much knowledge and wisdom. She was a grandmother (of course) and had been a nurse for 30+ years.

I think the biggest problem is that the information and how to find it just isn't out there visibly. There's a guy here who's emailing me privately about the Katie Beckett program. He must be half attorney because he knows so much about it.

I don't know if we need to radify health care here. It seems like every time our nation does something huge like that they screw things up worse. I think what needs to happen is that the abuse of current systems needs to be aggressively pursued and stopped completely. I think that they should use as much money as they have but instead of spreading it to 90% abuse and 10% real need they need to focus it on the 10%.

If they fixed all the abuse and focused on a "One Stop" location that had all the information and each family was assigned a fully informed case worker it would help so much. I think there would be less of a burden on the system and costs would come way down.

That's my two cents but then we've been right in the middle of it so maybe should say that my four cents...