Yesterday I tweeted the following quick thought about healthcare reform:

Reading abt passage of healthcare reform. At this point any reform beats no reform: once there is movement, the course can be corrected

Just wanted to quickly expand on the idea behind this, which comes from sailing (one of my favorite hobbies).  With a sailboat you can find yourself “in locks” which happens when you get stuck with the wind coming directly from the front.  In that situation you may slow to a complete stop and lose “steerage,” meaning the boat does not respond to the helm.  A sailboat can only change course when it is moving because otherwise there is no water moving across the rudder and hence the rudder has no effect.  The solution to this situation is generally to “back” one of the sails manually (meaning pushing it out so that it catches the wind) and turn the boat.  Sometimes this result in the boat moving backwards!  But as a sailor you just care that the boat moves again because now you can use the rudder and correct the course.

Our healthcare system reminds me of a sail boat “in locks” – completely stuck with no movement and hence no ability to correct course!  So while even many reasonable people find fault with the reform (for some it goes too far, for others not far enough), at least we are getting the health care boat moving.  Once there is movement we will see where we are actually headed, which is likely to be somewhat different from what everyone anticipates.  With that momentum there will be the possibility for course corrections.

If you are not doing so already, I strongly recommend following Jay Parkinson on Tumblr for many interesting posts about healthcare.