Letter from the Editor

My doctor would not recognize me if I bumped into him on the street. As a healthy male thirty-something, I've had very limited exposure to the health-care system. I endure the annual unpleasantness of a physical and have enjoyed only a couple of visits to the emergency room. With the exception of the time I asked the receptionist to assign me a doctor whose first language was English (you would have thought I was asking to see a specialist), my experience with the health-care system has been smooth sailing.

My dad on the other hand has plenty of exposure to doctors and the health-care system. As a healthy sixty-something, he elected to have open heart surgery to fix a congenital heart defect. He reasoned it would be better to do it now by choice than to wait and be forced to do it when he was 80. He also figured that if he did it now, his odds of getting up off the table and back out on to the golf course were exponentially higher.

For months leading up to the surgery, my parents researched doctors, hospitals, and procedures. They participated in online discussion forums and interviewed doctors. They became knowledgeable about all of their options. Ironically (can you sense the pending sarcasm?), their months of research never led them to Michael Moore's or Hillary Clinton's pillars of world class health care--Canada, Great Britain, or France. And their research certainly never landed them in Fidel Castro's model of modern medicine, Luis Diaz Soto General Hospital in Havana, Cuba. In fact, their journey to find the very best doctors at the very best facilities led them all the way to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. That's right. My dad's very best chance of survival was right here in the United States!

This issue of Red County touches on the health-care system. It by no means addresses all of the problems and is able to offer very few solutions. But it's a start. Congressman Ed Royce (CA-40) pens his first OC/DC column on the benefits of health saving accounts. Troy Senik returns to outline the efficiencies to be gained in California by harnessing the benefits of the digital revolution. Dan Baren offers a thorough comparison between Governor Schwarzenegger's health-care proposal and the program implemented by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

We also welcome to our stable of outstanding writers, James Lileks. For twenty five years, James has delighted and entertained readers of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I am confident he will do the same for you. Welcome James.

Enjoy!