As of April 1 my health insurance premium is going up 25%. My insurance company gave me 30 days notice of this whopper of an increase in a letter dated Feb. 26 and received March 1. There was no discussion, no advance warning. “Important, please read” the letter began. So just like a month-to-month tenant who got a little too comfortable in his space, I got myself a 30-day notice. Pay up or we drop you. That was the gist of the letter.

And it’s not like I have any choice in the matter. Soon, it will be illegal for me to not carry health insurance. As currently proposed, the law of the land will dictate that I carry heath insurance purchased from a private insurance company. Uncle Sam, in all his problem solving glory, will not even offer me a health insurance program to participate in or to choose from. There will be no equivalent of Medicare or Medicaid or Medi-anything for me. I will be left to fare in the free market place.

President Obama says this is a good thing. He says that insurance companies will compete for my business and that a competitive market place will deliver up savings and economies. I beg to differ with the Chief Executive, but my economics professors taught me otherwise. They taught me that free economic principals require that I be able to make the ultimate economic choice - that choice being the option to vote with my feet. But I cannot vote with my feet - I cannot walk away and self-insure. It will be against the law.

By definition, a captive market is not a free market

What’s a fella to do?

Well one thing I’m not supposed to do is talk about it. President Obama unilaterally declared last week that, “everything that can be said about health care has been said.”

I wonder if the President’s speech writers intended that line as a laugh line. He delivered the line up like a joke - and the audience of health care professionals surrounding him laughed heartily.

I didn’t laugh. I don’t think that’s an accurate statement. I don’t think that “everything that can be said about health care has been said.”

To paraphrase Shakespeare: “me thinks he doth rush too much.”

But rather than a rush to judgment, it seems this steamroller approach to health care reform or health insurance reform (you pick) is simply a rush to taking credit of solving a vexing problem. Obama looks to be Don Quoite rushing in with spear thrust forward to take on the windmill of a poorly defined crisis.

Consensus and clarity are nowhere to be found in ObamaCare, yet the problem seems big enough to warrant, even demand, both.

ObamaCare is legislation:

(1) too thick to read - several lawmakers have come right out and said they couldn’t

(2) too partisan for consensus,

(3) too complex to summarize.

As it stands right now, ObamaCare appears to be 2,700 pages of special interest crafted, lobbyist authored provisions cobbled together. If that is basically what the legislation entails, then those who vote it in will also enact a companion bill - the law of unintended consequences.

No one seems to have a grasp on what this legislation will ultimately do and how the bill will be paid.

Why then, has there been no appetite for a proposal of incremental changes to the existing system? Incremental changes offer the reward of change without the risk of imploding the system. Incremental changes allow scrutiny and clarity and minimize unintended consequences. The trouble with incremental changes is that they offer little sizzle and little legacy.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the debate, my insurance company gets to raise my rate 25%. And I’m supposed to keep still.