… That is the question. 

A belief I regard highly is, “That government is best which governs least,” a quote historians have attributed equally to Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson.  Mind you, the operative meaning or the verb infinitive in the quote is “to govern.” Few who have been paying attention to the gridlock in our nation’s capital give high marks to our elected representatives for meeting this core job requirement.  In fact, one credible poll gives Congress an approval rating of only 14 percent, with the Obama Administration receiving only slightly higher marks.

So, what’s my beef?  Succinctly put, I’m a hospital lobbyist who doesn’t like what the federal budget sequester will do to my clients.  Because the White House and Congress are unable to fashion a bipartisan agreement, beginning in April, hospital operators will sustain yet another cut ― 2 percent this time ― to their payments for treating Medicare patients.  That’s on top of the cuts agreed to in 2010 to support health care reform and those made this past January to fund the delay in Medicare payment cuts to physicians. 

Our federal government’s inability “to govern” is why we’re facing the budget sequester.  This is problematic for our nation’s defense and most other programs dependent on discretionary federal budget funds.  What this means for California hospitals is that the statewide average underpayment of 84 cents per dollar it costs to provide care to hospitalized Medicare patients will drop even further.

I am as dumbstruck as most political pundits by the gridlock that has paralyzed our federal government … so much so that I find myself listening more attentively to the critics who extol the virtues of an alternative parliamentary system of democratic governance.  I hasten to add that conversion to a parliamentary system is not something I advocate, but I do ponder if this might be the cure to the partisan gridlock that has disabled our current system at the national level. 

For those of you who are unsure about how this would work, this is the form of government used by most democratic nations.  At the most basic level, it means that we would elect a party to run both the legislative and administrative branches of government. If no single party receives a plurality of the popular vote, then the formation of party coalitions to comprise a majority bloc would be allowed.  The winning party or coalition of parties would decide who will lead our government until the next election when voters would judge the ruling party’s performance by reelecting it or choosing another party.   At best, partisan gridlock goes away.  At worst, the ability of a minority perspective to stymie changes in national policy and fiscal matters would be eliminated.

Don’t get me wrong.  Such a change is much more complex than I described.  I neither claim to know better than our nation’s founders about federalism, nor do I have the answer to our gridlock problem.  However, it would appear that our nation’s Democrat, Republican, Tea Party and No-Label federal representatives also share in the knowledge deficit.

Your thoughts?