Call it single payer or Canadian way,
Socialized medicine is what we need today.
Let me hear that dirty word...Socialism!
J. Billington Bulworth (a.k.a Warren Beatty in the film Bulworth)

I don't think I need to rehash the reasons a number of close races went Republican a couple weeks back. A lot of folks have weighed in, and the more thoughtful observers on both sides are quite correct in saying that the national Democratic party didn't take a principled stand on any issue, preferring to dance like a Sig Ep in a southside blues joint.

And don't tell me about how great a leader the Prez is. Leadership is about challenging people, telling uncomfortable truths and inspiring folks to be better people. The Prez pranced around like Marie Antoinette, offering the same vacant economic panacea (tax cuts) and knee-jerk corporate welfare paranoia (massive defense and "homeland security" spending increases) that he's been preaching since he first darkened the door of the White House.

Telling people what they think they want to hear isn't leadership. It's pandering.

Anyway, I've got a couple of pet ideas that I think are needed now more than ever (um, sorry about the phraseology): National health care, by whatever name and means, and national child care.

I'm still pissed off at Bill Clinton for screwing up health care. The problem wasn't the final plan, which was much better than what we have now. The problem was that Clinton spent all his political capital building consensus and then tried to lead. That's ass-backwards. You've got to lead first and then build consensus after everyone is on your side. A lesson Clinton learned at the expense of the health of the American people.

Don't believe that health care is still an issue? My wife has a decent plan through her employer. This year the plan cost us about $300 a month. Next year, the same plan (with significantly-reduced benefits) would cost more than $500 a month (her employer is paying the same percentage of the overall cost each year). Yes, there are some unusual circumstances. Her newspaper is the only large one in its chain without a union contract (where the costs and benefits are locked in over several years). So her paper gets to absorb all of the extra costs, while the other employees in the chain continue to pay much less.

Sounds like a good reason to start up a union, even in a right-to-work state like North Carolina. But see, I don't work there. And being friendly with some of the managers at this paper, I happen to know precisely how companies train their supervisors to make life hell for any labor agitators. Fear and intimidation work wonders, believe me.

Forgive the tangent. If the concerns of middle-class worker bees aren't enough to get you excited, then try this on for size: Life expectancy and infant mortality in America's urban centers rival those of third world nations. A lot of people use the emergency room as a primary care physician, thus never getting the preventative care they need. And forget about pre-natal care. When you look at a baby and think "how cute" before realizing this tiny tot is two months older and five pounds lighter than your five-day-old child, you begin to gain some perspective on the benefits of regular pre-natal visits.

But health care is only half of my agenda. National child care is the other. My own personal concept is to send out a specified amount to each family with children between the ages of 0 and 5 (thus making this a limited-time benefit), say $250 per week per child. If this helps a family to keep one parent at home to take care of the child, fine. If that money goes to putting a child in a center of the parents's choice, fine. The main idea is to subsidize child care so that every parent who wants to work can do so without worrying about how much money they're spending on child care. While this isn't as big deal to those making thirty grand or more a year, the cost of child care is one of the main problems facing those attempting to go from welfare to work.

The benefits of these two programs should be obvious. If we give everyone in this nation health care, our overall costs will go down. The poorest among us will be able to take advantage of cheaper preventative care and won't tax the more expensive hospital system. And since we already pay for those folks (hospitals simply raise the rates for paying customers to cover the unpaid bills of the indigent), we might as well make that care better and more efficient.

As for child care, that program would be a boon to those who want to cut welfare to the bone. No longer could parents claim that the cost of child care is keeping them out of the job market. Look at it this way: A two-earner family making minimum wage for both jobs would bring in about $20,000 a year. After taxes, that's something like $1,300 a month. Not enough to save for retirement or college, but enough to live in a decent place and feed and clothe the kids. Enough to get by.

Now, I think the minimum wage ought to be much higher. But I wanted to make the point that once health care and child care expenses have been taken out, life is at least somewhat affordable.

So Jon, you ask, how do we pay for these programs? Easy. Higher taxes.

This is where leadership comes in.

Here's the deal. Tax deductions for medical expenses and child care would be eliminated (no need for them any more). The taxes which will pay for these programs can then be structured so that any new payments pretty much cancel out the old ones for the middle class. My wife would pay about $550 more a month in taxes, but we would receive that $250 a week check and wouldn't be paying $300 or so a month in health care costs. We come out about even. Hell, if take-home were to drop $100 a week, I'd still be in favor of these programs. I'm more than willing to make little sacrifice for the benefit of a vastly healthier and happier society.

Sure, there are logistics to work out. Would the current health insurers continue to operate and simply collect fees from the government instead of employers and employees, or would the government take complete control of the system? What about prescription drug benefits? Dental? Vision? And how would that child care plan take into account the different prices for care in different parts of the country?

All good questions. I've got answers of course, but in this column I'm simply putting forth a couple of ideas. It's now time for a real political leader to make those ideas work, damn the details. Or, more accurately, make the details fit the plan. The only problem is I don't see anyone--in particular a Democrat--with the ability or will to articulate and support ideas like this. After all, we can't even find more than a handful of folks to stand up against a blatantly immoral war.

Taking care of the neediest in our society is much more patriotic than killing every terrorist on the planet, much less hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. I mean, scads more people in the United States die from the effects of poverty than at the hands of terrorists. If we're serious about homeland security, let's actually take care of the homeland's most precious resource: Our own people.

Jon Worley is the founder and president of the Libertarian Socialist Party of America, a.k.a. the LISP.