PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

To almost no one’s surprise, Democrats in Congress – at least in the House – are pushing to propose a so-called “Medicare for All” proposal in the next Congress.

The reason, apart from political momentum coming out of the recent mid-term elections, is that the D lawmakers plan to capitalize on a Texas judge’s ruling against ObamaCare to jump start their push for a single payer system in the next Congress.

They don’t want to wait for another judge, or even the U.S. Supreme Court, to overturn the Texas ruling. They want to move ahead on their own, even with an uncertain end in Congress.

So, bring on the single payer system, another example according to humorist Dave Barry in his annual Year End Review, of “Congress Continue to spend huge amounts of money that we don’t have.”

I suspect single payer advocate Senator Barry Sanders doesn’t give a lick about too much government spending.

Sanders and other supporters of a single-payer health system are arguing that now is the time to start moving in a new direction from the Affordable Care Act, in part because they feel the 2010 health law will never be safe from Republican attempts to destroy or sabotage it.

“In light of the Republican party’s assault, a version of Medicare for all is necessary for the future,” said Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress. “There are just too many points of vulnerability in the current system.”

The court decision in Texas that invalidates ObamaCare in its entirety came on the heels of sweeping Democrat victories in the midterm elections, a combination that has energized advocates of “Medicare for all.”

I have opined on health care policy so often that I am bit hesitant to do so again.

Still, it is important to consider health care issues from the standpoint that, even if it’s a long stretch, I continue to hold out hope that reasonable Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle – yes, there are some – can find a way to carve out the smart middle ground rather than just propose a full D or a full R program.

That should have happened by now, but in the Obama years, Democrats were so eager to put a pelt on the wall that they proposed the “Affordable Care Act” even though some of them had not even read the bill before they voted for it.

In retaliation, Republicans, when they were in complete charge of the Congress, could see no other approach than to kill the existing law.

No middle ground and we end up with nothing that works for most Americans.

Even as advocates fawn over it, the single payer system won’t work. For one thing, if Democrats in the House pass it, Republicans in the Senate, who are still in charge there, will just not consider it.

Why not do what I have advocated for years? Get smart people from both sides in the same room, sit around a circular table, and build a health care system that will last – and not further break the U.S. government dollar bank.

In a statement for hill.com, Representative Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, said this: “We need to do everything we can to ensure every single American has access to affordable, quality healthcare. Medicare for all has the potential to do just that as it can reduce the complexity and cost with a single payer health care system.”

Yet, Dingell doesn’t say so, but the effort could very well create divisions within the Democratic Party, as leaders who want to protect and strengthen the health law are reluctant to completely embrace government-run universal health insurance.

The lawsuit in Texas is almost certain to be overturned, they argue, and their time is better spent making sure people with pre-existing conditions remain free from discrimination by insurers.

Oregon’s own senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said Democrats should focus on making sure the insurance landscape doesn’t revert to what it was before ObamaCare.

“The first thing we have to do is make sure people don’t lose what they have today — the pre-existing conditions protections — and going back to the days when there was health care for the healthy and the wealthy,” he said.

Well, with all due respect to my friend Senator Wyden, his first step is not the only step that should be taken.

To those who believe I don’t have ideas about health care reform, let me just reiterate what I think should be the underpinning of any new health care legislation: A government mandate that, in order to be alive in this country, everyone would have to buy health insurance.

Think of it like automobile insurance. In order to drive, you have to buy insurance and, if you don’t, you pay a price.

The same should be true of health care. If you want to live there, you should have to buy insurance, which would put all of us in the insurance pool – and the larger the pool, the better to spread the risk.

Of course, any smart legislator would have to design an element of any plan that would provide insurance – say, an extension of Medicaid or Medicare – to cover those who have no money to buy insurance.

A country like ours should be able to build a good system that has the potential to surmount the left, which says government should pay all, or the right, which says government should not be involved at all.

Find the smart middle.