There are so many things wrong with all this healthcare stuff, one hardly knows where to start. A good place might be to define some terms so that a common language and set of tools can be deployed in the discussion. This may seem fruitless as such terms are usually chucked out and replaced by political babble and catch phrases by people who are smart enough to know better, but are too morally adrift to resist the mass hysteria that inevitably comes from attempts to control other people’s lives. Make no mistake: The Affordable Care Act has nothing to do affordable care.

So, healthcare. Health and care. Take care of your health. There is a set of skill that an immature human being can learn from its parents, if it is careful to listen and not “dis” every notion of the previous generation. So healthcare is a personal responsibility, that you should have learned throughout childhood and adolescence. Wash your hands after you go the bathroom and before you eat. Exercise. Eat your vegetables. Don’t stay up too late. Lots of other rules, but you get it right? The things that our leaders are now making against the law because we would not listen to our mothers. Some people do not take personal responsibility for their health. That does not make it my responsibility.

Health insurance. Contrary to popular belief, health insurance is not a magic hall pass to the land of health and longevity. Health insurance is a contract. Under this contract, I pay some other people to protect my financial assets from devastation in case some disease befalls me and the cost of treatment exceeds my ability to pay. These other people agree to share in that risk with me, and they base the cost of that contract upon statistical and underwriting standards. I’ll pay the first thousand or five thousand dollars. Then we start splitting it up. I pay twenty percent, they pay eighty percent. Possessing a health insurance policy does not make me healthy. It makes me a responsible adult who understands the component parts of a financial plan. Obviously, these people who agree to share risk with me understand that the more I listened to and heeded my parents’ advice, the less of a risk I likely represent. Some people choose not to buy health insurance. This is not my problem. When they get sick, they can either pay for their care out of pocket (and why should that be illegal if someone can afford to do it?) or they can treat themselves at the drug store, or they can just live with the consequences of their actions or inactions. When it becomes mandatory to buy health insurance, all of the market factors that keep it affordable are eclipsed by government fiat. Care to guess where that will lead us?

Medical care, the biggest part of the whole debate and the one we hear the least about, is what I seek if, in spite of my best efforts in personal healthcare, I get sick. And by sick, I don’t mean a stomachache. Or sniffles. Or a headache. Or anything that is likely to go away in a couple of days if you give your body a chance to heal itself. So, I go to see a doctor and seek treatment. If an office visit, a prescription and maybe a follow-up can take care of it, great. I write the doctor a check for his services, go get my prescription filled and pay for it. Then I take special care to avoid whatever landed me with such malady in the first place. No insurance company or government agency need be involved. If it is something more than that, say appendicitis that requires surgery and recuperation, I contact my insurance company and begin the process of filing a claim, the mechanism by which I compel the insurance company to perform the contracted obligations.

Healthcare advocates (very few of which are medical professionals, but are rather involved in some financial aspect of the healthcare industry) are now suggesting that almost any symptom is probably an early sign of cancer and should be immediately and aggressively diagnosed and treated. Toe nail fungus may lead to heart disease. So don’t just go to a podiatrist and get your nails clipped, go instead to the cardiac center and get into a rehab program before the big one hits. If you have a headache, you should probably go and have a scan of some sort to rule out a brain tumor instead of taking a couple of aspirin. Anything, real or imagined could possibly be a sign of depression, tongue rot, lupus, fibro-hypo-tosis, mental illness, stroke, or tooth decay, and you probably need to be in a long term program in which you get dietary counseling, medication, and lots of pamphlets. Now they want to take these same behaviors, which have lead directly to healthcare costs spiraling out of control, and bring them to the millions of people who have thus far escaped their great deception.

Before you ask, the answer is no, I have not read the healthcare bill. There are several reasons for this. I know to well the environment in which this legislation was created. No good can come of this. Secondly, I reject the premise that healthcare reform is: a) necessary, and; b) the responsibility of the United States Government. As is almost always the case, when the government tries to solve a problem (which in this case it had to create and it did so effectively by hijacking the language, which I tried to clear up in the first few paragraphs) it almost always tries to fix the wrong thing, inevitably making things worse. Rather than forcing people to buy health insurance, which is not even health insurance anymore, why not create the environment in which people can succeed and prosper and grow. Then you will have a great many people demanding health insurance, driving the premium costs down. If you create a system of incentives and consequences people will figure it out. If you build a society that does not fear a set of human values (Honor your mother and father; Do not lie, kill and steal,) we may find ourselves a healthier, happier society spending much less on healthcare. My many liberal friends are rolling their eyes and tsk-tsking right now, but hey, why not try it? It just might work and won’t involve spending billions we don’t have on problems that can’t be clearly defined.

The School Board has promised transparency in the selection of the next Duval County Schools Superintendent. Transparency has become one of those magic words, that if uttered enough times in the right context begins to confer credibility in and of itself. Like stakeholder. That one fooled and continues to fool people to this day. It gives putative leaders the opportunity to say, “All of the stakeholders were involved in a transparent process. Who am I to question their decisions?”

You want a transparent process? You want stakeholder involvement? I have the solution. Let’s elect our superintendents from now on. Now, I know the mental processes that this notion kicks off. If you are over fifty years old, you immediately think about the pre-Consolidation days before the city and county merged in 1968. The corruption, the indictments, the embarrassment of it all. The schools lost accreditation under an elected superintendent. If you are under fifty then you have been seduced by the modern progressivist movement and believe that only the properly educated, well trained academician with the right pedigree from the right institutions can be entrusted to lead the ignorant masses to salvation. And the only thing he or she has to do is convince (fool) four of the seven members of the school board.

I think that Jacksonville has progressed in many ways since 1968, and I believe that the voters of Jacksonville can elect their superintendent. He or she can hire the academician elites to help manage things. But the real benefit is this: The superintendent no longer works for the school board. He or she works for us. It restores that beautiful balance of powers in which the board sets policy, and the superintendent executes.

Think about this relationship. The superintendent is asked by the board to come up with a plan for something – student transportation, virtual textbooks, whatever. The superintendent need not fear for his or her job when presenting such plan should that plan not suit four of the seven members. In fact, the school board members must now deal with the fact the superintendent, having been elected county wide, has more of a political base than any of the members individually. The superintendent needs the member’s vote for his plan, and the member needs the superintendent’s political base and popularity either to get re-elected or just to feed his ego. Suddenly everybody is playing nicely.

Of course, it won’t always be a bed of roses. To put it into another context, think of the city. The council did not fire Mayor Peyton over the courthouse boondoggle. They do not have the power. But in a transparency like no other, every detail was played out in public with political players lining up on one side or another. If Jacksonville had an appointed city manager rather than an elected mayor, we would need a revolving door on the fourth floor of city hall to accommodate the traffic. Do you think a city manager would have come up with the Better Jacksonville Plan? With no political constituency outside of the body that hires and fires, such progress is stunted.

The school superintendent need not be a master educator. He must be a leader. He should not be hired because he subscribes to one theory of education (and therefore one group of vendors, possibly) over another. He should he elected because of his ability to communicate and lead and build coalitions that will attract the right people to positions of responsibility, and lead to success. He should not be someone who, upon achieving some metrics imposed by the board, marks that off his list of accomplishments and moves on to a higher paying, higher profile job somewhere else. His metrics are set in the marketplace of ideas that we call elections. If he does not meet them, he will not be re-elected.

With the transparent process of the school board selecting a superintendent, we are going to have out-of-towners flying in and out of Jacksonville on some headhunter’s dime, being driven to school board headquarters for their interview. Such transparency is self-limiting. I would rather have a school superintendent who was in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts here. Or is a member of a local Rotary or Meninak Club. Whom I have seen at the grocery store for many years before he or she came to Jacksonville to deliver us from ignorance. Who doesn’t have to hunt for the right church to belong to, because he or she has been going to it all along. I want a superintendent who will go around the county to fish fries and barbecues telling groups of people who matter (voters) what they are going to do and how they will run the system.

Look at the transparency of the elective process. Haven’t we all received invitations to fund raisers or meet and greet receptions for political candidates? What is on the invitation, but the list of people supporting that candidate. The steering committee, the finance committee, local politicians and civic leaders. This gives you a great idea of the caliber of the person. I will submit that transparency might be improved in the campaign finance area. But in this age of the internet, what is to stop that? Each candidate should have a campaign finance website on which is immediately disclosed every contribution and from whom. If textbook publishers are a big contributor, and you think virtual textbooks are the future, you have some idea as the how that candidate will go on that issue, and you can govern yourself accordingly.

This is how we will get a strong leader. Let him face the people – all of the people. And when there is a dispute between the board and the superintendent, let’s let it play out. Instead of the superintendent updating his resume and contacting headhunters, let him update his debating skills and contact his political supporters. Let’s find out what these people are really made of.