As the debate about how we should reform the American healthcare system rages in Congress and across the country, just about everyone has an opinion. That opinion is largely shaped by personal experiences and by whether or not a person has adequate and affordable healthcare insurance. Beyond that, it's shaped by ideology. My views have been shaped by the fact that if it weren’t for the miracles of modern medicine and my access to them, I would have died in 1984. I rely on that access to stay alive, and I don’t want big government to get in the way.

In November 1983, while serving as the assistant US Army attaché to China, my wife and I were traveling in Xinjiang Province. I became ill and upon returning to Beijing the embassy nurse sent me off to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. Five years earlier I’d been diagnosed with glomerulonephritis, and it had finally taken its toll. At Clark a blood test revealed that I had barely any kidney function left. They operated on my arm to create an access for dialysis then sent me off to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, where I began dialysis treatments and was medically retired from the Army.

In January 1985, I received a kidney transplant at Walter Reed. The kidney came from an 11-year-old boy killed in an automobile accident in Florida. That was nearly 25 years ago. The kidney is now 36 and I’m 65. The side effects and higher risk of disease the immunosuppressants all transplant recipients must take for the rest of their lives have kept me in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals.

The fact that I was serving in the US armed forces when my kidneys failed and that, as a military retiree, I’ve had continuing access to military doctors and hospitals puts me in that category of Americans who, by virtue of their employment, have access to top-quality healthcare. I’m one of those fortunate people who are very happy with the healthcare they receive.

Military healthcare is just one of the several systems and programs that occupy the American healthcare landscape. Each one--military, veterans, private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid--has its advantages and disadvantages. Talk to enough people in any one of them and you’ll find people who are happy with their care and people with horror stories. Much depends on where they receive their care, who their doctor is, to what extent they demand information about their condition and their choices, and if they made good decisions.

No one, not even the more fortunate among us like me, however, can argue that the system of systems that make up American healthcare doesn’t need reformed. Costs are spiraling out of control and between 35 and 47 million people, depending on whether you count undocumented aliens, are without coverage.

The question currently before us, with Democrats pushing major healthcare legislation in Congress, is will it result in positive, affordable reform, or will it bankrupt the country and produce a system worse than what we currently have? Given my personal situation and past experiences, I want to know if I’m going to continue to have access to the healthcare that’s kept me alive for 25 years or, as I get older, if the government will place restrictions on it.

The issues involved are complex, politically volatile, and difficult to resolve, otherwise we would have fixed the system before. People in Washington, DC, have been working on them for years. Hillary Clinton took a run at the problem during her husband’s administration and ran right into a brick wall. Now President Obama, who has made reforming health care one of his top three agenda items--healthcare, energy, and education--behind ending the country’s economic crisis, has run into problems.

Despite the president’s personal popularity, the Democratic majority in the House, and the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the president's health care plan is in trouble. Conservative Democrats in Congress are balking. Few Republicans, if any, support the Democratic plan. They don’t accept Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s claims that Democratic healthcare reforms will pay for themselves or that they will accomplish what the president and the speaker claim they will. Critics of the plan make a compelling argument that it ultimately will cost taxpayers trillions and result in rationed care. And there are numerous provisions, like tax-payer-funded abortions that Republicans and conservative Democrats oppose.

Popular opposition to the plan also is growing. A Democratic Congress rammed through a near trillion dollar stimulus bill that few members, if any, read that’s failed to stimulate the economy. Democrats in the House rammed through a 1,300-page energy bill that if passed by the Senate and signed into law won’t reduce global warming, will substantially increase energy cost for all Americans, and will further weaken the US economy. Ramming through a healthcare bill that contains a $650 billion in tax increase and that likely will result in worse, not better, healthcare is a bridge too far.

President Obama and Democrats could have taken a different approach, a bipartisan one that would have produced a better result. Instead, they interpreted their victories in November as a mandate to pursue a partisan agenda. They assumed they could pass healthcare reform without Republican votes and made the bill a Christmas tree weighted down with every Democratic constituency’s ornament. Reminding Americans frequently that “we won,” they’re behaving like used car salesmen. They want to ink the deal before the buyer, the American people, have an opportunity to look under the hood or kick the tires.

If Obama is successful at buying off the Democrats that stand in his way and passes his healthcare plan without Republican support, Americans aren’t likely to get a better healthcare system, just bigger deficits. President Obama would be wise to use the Congress’ summer recess to rethink his strategy and remember the underlying principle of the Hippocratic Oath--do no harm.