The Trump administration came into office promising to fix things. Donald Trump promised to vastly improve the affordability and availability of health insurance (and, therefore, health care) for all Americans. He has also promised to cut domestic government spending in a series of sweeping reforms that include drastically cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency and lowering or eliminating restrictions on industrial pollution. But industrial pollution causes health problems that increase the need for medical care, ultimately increasing the cost of health insurance. So, these two initiatives are working at cross purposes.

Clever things can undoubtedly be done to improve the way we pay for health care. We can cut overhead, give people more and better choices, etc., but ultimately, health care costs are reduced when actions are taken to improve public health. Allowing industry to increase the toxicity of our environment will have the opposite effect, because pollution makes people sick, and sick people need more medical care than people who are not sick.

Sick people sometimes die, though, and then they don’t need health care. So maybe there is something brilliant to what looks on the surface like a complete cognitive disconnect. The faster we die and get off the health insurance roster, the cheaper it is for everyone. Bravo, we have a plan!

LAURA M. EDWARDS
Edgewood

First Published: April 5, 2017, 4:00 a.m.