Healthcare no longer sits near the top of the presidential election agenda, media headlines have trumpeted as Election Day approaches.

What a fundamental fumble, a colossal collapse on part of both political parties.

While considered a blight and a scourge by the Republican Party, the Democratic Clintons at least propelled healthcare reform to the center stage back in 1993, alternatively stoking and playing on fears of a broken system. The White House tried to tackle a bloated machine that saw its last overhaul a decade earlier with the release of the reimbursement-refining diagnosis-related groups. DRGs and the emergence of a universal managed care philosophy (practiced by several coastal healthcare systems/payer groups at the time) were supposed to steer the nation’s healthcare operations in the right direction but somehow they were left behind.

Newt Gingrich, then the Speaker of the House and architect of the so-called "Contract With America," offered the GOP alternative when the Clintonian initiative sputtered and failed, but it too, soon met a similar demise. Since those halcyon days of healthcare needing healthcare, the government seems no closer to "fixing" the issues – even with more medical doctors sitting in Congress today.

What masquerades as meaningful discourse between the two presidential candidates in the 2008 election and their respective running mates amounts to nothing more than captivating and mildly motivational oratory theater about mandated universal care and/or coverage on one hand while decrying the skyrocketing costs of healthcare on the other.

What’s amusing and sad at the same time is the apparent mental disconnect that the former only causes the latter. Even though we may not have mandated universal coverage today we already have mandated universal care. You’ll find evidence of that in hospital emergency rooms around the country – those that are required to provide care regardless of the ability to pay. Sure, that’s compassionate, but let’s be honest: It’s not cost effective or efficient. Someone has to pay for the free service. Guess who?

That’s why it’s so disingenuous – and downright ignoble – when politicos and pundits point their accusatory fingers at healthcare facilities for charging such high prices. It represents a dumbfounded ignorance about basic economics. Hospitals must be run by oil companies or technology companies or even dot-com powder kegs.

Either side touts red herring concepts and stopgap measures like consumer-directed health plans, medical savings accounts, economic stimulus checks and tax breaks, government-funded and/or operated medical care, all of which may fight the symptoms but don’t cure the illness. Think of healthcare as the rhinovirus. The common cold. And it’s leaving our bolted-on and duct-taped system clinically, financially and operationally with the rotavirus – ejecting contents at both ends.

Perhaps erstwhile reformers are looking in the wrong directions. Maybe instead of labeling healthcare a crisis you could call it a catastrophe or an administrative disaster area. That way, the Department of Homeland Security or even the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could take charge, manage the process and distribute the bills to American taxpayers. Besides, both will need something to do in November once the war on terror as we know it winds down and hurricane season ends.

Better yet, continue calling it a crisis or a credit crunch and talk about mortgaging your healthcare coverage so that the Department of Treasury teams up with the Department of Health and Human Services to seize control. Such a bailout may not be that much different than federally backed universal coverage anyway. Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s Associated Press quote about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, "They’ve gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers," seamlessly could be applied to insurance companies. Time to modify the message. Throw out the stump speechwriters, stat!

With a healthcare economy awash in red, not much will fade it to black without controlling the green. And that’s nothing to sneeze at.