JOHN HERBERT: HEALTH CARE REFORM LECTURE >>>

Pacific Lutheran University philosophy professor Paul Menzel will present a public lecture exploring the moral and political issues facing health care reform tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the PLU Scandinavian Cultural Center. He promises a non-partisan look at the moral underpinnings of the clash between the major political parties’ approaches to healthcare reform.

I predict the discussion will be framed thusly:

Democratic policies usually call for some sort of government intervention, such as a government-run universal healthcare system, like Medicare, only for everybody. Menzel will mention that the United States is the only industrialized nation without such a system. He also will mention that a great deal of our current problems stem from a grossly bureaucratic and underfunded Medicare system.

Their Republican counterparts, he will explain, generally call for tax credits and free-market solutions. Free-market solutions, the new ones anyway, generally involve banks, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies making a lot of money. They also leave a depressing percentage of the population sick and dying, which is apparently a price worth paying while we wait for the market to work it out.

Menzel will fail to mention that the system we have now is the result of a combination of those two approaches.

Grab a copy of the Weekly Volcano on the streets today for our other predictions of the week, which includes Nick Lachey’s Celebrity Weekend.