The most effective tactic used to stifle debate in politics is name-calling.

As left-wing theorist Saul Alinsky noted in his "Rules for Radicals," this is "cruel, but very effective." After all, no one likes to be called stupid. And if you get your opponent to cry, so much the better.

Perhaps, the second most effective tactic is less talked about, but certainly familiar to everyone. It dismisses all legitimate debate and criticism of a proposal with one pungent, paralyzing phrase: "What's your solution, stupid?" Oops, I snuck in a little name-calling there just to make it more effective.

The perfect example of this rhetorical trick has been witnessed in the health-care debate. Proponents of a massive government takeover of medical services trot out a 1,000-page bill in Congress that provides the framework for a completely new government bureaucracy, then reject all criticism by simply saying, "So what's your alternative?"

Huh?

Do you really mean that in order to oppose a 1,000-page bureaucracy-building, dollar-sucking health-care bill, I have to write my own 1,000-page bill outlining how I would engineer a government takeover of health care?

OK, OK. I know, you are just trying to shame me into feeling guilty and thus into keeping quiet, but here's the thing… I don't want the government to take over responsibility for health care for every single human being situated within the geographical confines of the United States.

My preferred alternative, if you must know, is to leave everything more or less alone.

Yes, I do realize that health-care costs can be prohibitive for many people, myself included, but that doesn't mean I have to choose to bankrupt our country - or overthrow its foundational principles - in order to solve the problem, does it? There is no money for the program, and there is no constitutional provision for it.

Besides, I - along with many of my fellow citizens - believe that the reason health care is so expensive in the first place is because of burdensome government rules and regulations that force doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to waste huge amounts of time, energy and money. So getting the government more involved is definitely not my preferred option.

BUT…

Just for the fun of it, let's try to come up with an alternative health-care plan that would guarantee medical coverage for everyone without penalizing people who don't want to participate in a government plan. I know it still wouldn't be constitutional, but nothing's perfect, right?

It's a remarkably simple solution and doesn't involve any kind of insurance. Let's remember, after all, that insurance is not a medical service. When we talk about "investing" billions of dollars in creating a government-mandated, and probably government-controlled, medical insurance program, we are really talking about wasting billions of dollars on something that doesn't see patients, doesn't prescribe medicine, and doesn't save lives. Insurance is a regulated gambling industry, not a medical-services provider.

So the first and most important part of my health-care solution is don't waste government dollars on insurance.

The second part of my solution is that government-provided health care will be free.

Yep, free. There's no need to waste time trying to squeeze money out of people who don't have any. This is called charity. We used to count on the goodness of our citizens to fund charity, but that was before government took more and more of our money in the form of taxes. So since government has all our money these days, we may as well let them put it to good use.

The third part of my program is "You get what you pay for."

What does that mean? Simple. If you don't pay for your health care, don't expect the best care possible. You will not get access to every fancy diagnostic tool and every experimental treatment that is available - not unless you can pay for it, and if you can pay for it, you don't get into our free clinics.

Remember, the goal here is not to make rich people and poor people have the same amount of money. That would be 'redistribution of wealth," not health care. The goal is to make sure that poor people have access to doctors. We will give them that. But we are not going to guarantee them that they will get the best doctors or the best treatment any more than we guarantee poor people that they will be able to drive Cadillacs. They will get what we can afford to give them. Yes, it is a two-tiered system, but that is the way life works.

Now comes an important question. Who will get to use our free clinics?

So far as I am concerned, everyone can use them as long as they can prove need and are willing sign a waiver acknowledging that they are getting the best medical care we can afford, not necessarily the best care possible anywhere in the world at any cost. That also assumes they will sign some sort of waiver that says they won't sue the bejeezus out of us.

If it comes down to it, I am willing to let anyone use the clinics who will swear under penalty of perjury that they cannot pay their own debts. The price of admission in other words is to admit that you can't take care of yourself. It's kind of demeaning, but do we really want recipients of charity to feel as though they are entitled to it? Shouldn't there be some sense of humility involved?

What about illegal aliens? Should they get treatment? You bet, as long as they sign a waiver that acknowledges they are illegal aliens and they will agree to be deported immediately after receiving service. Minor illegals could be treated as long as their parents agreed to be deported with them after the treatment was given. Harsh? Uh huh. And entirely reasonable. Illegal immigrants have no right to free medical care, nor do they have any right to be here in the first place.

So how exactly do we get doctors to staff these clinics? Not surprisingly, lots of doctors are in the medical business because they want to help their fellow human beings. So a number of existing doctors would sign up to work in the clinics for low wages. We would also set up a scholarship program that allowed the government to pay medical school bills for doctors in exchange for six years of service in our free clinics. Hospitals might be persuaded to donate a percentage of their revenue in exchange for being freed from the obligation to treat everyone who walks into the emergency room with a runny nose.

There are more details to be worked out, of course. Maybe it would even require a 1,000-page bill to get it all just right. But let's hope that before Congress OKs such a major change in our health-care system, all of our representatives and senators would actually read the bill and learn what it is about.

Oh yes, and about the Constitution? It might not be a bad idea to re-read it.

There definitely is no provision in there for a federal takeover of health care. So, after we get through prescribing treatment for a medical system that isn't really broken, maybe we should talk about fixing the government. As they say: Physician, heal thyself!

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com