Healthcare

Healthcare in the United States does not produce health and certainly does not care for the vast majority of people in such unending dire need of it. How many millions of us can afford it? Forty seven million, and counting, of us have no insurance to defray its unconscionable spiraling costs. Twenty four million more have inadequate health insurance. That means 71 million of us are denied proper health care and resort to episodic emergency treatment that ends up costing much more than preventive care. Remember what your mother said: An ounce of prevention….

            Rather than cope with the anticipated back breaking, and budget busting billions, needed to finance a system doomed to fail, recent administrations, pressured by reluctant Congresses, put health care on the back burner. Bowing to the pressures of Political Action Committees such as   the American Medical Association, American Dental Association, and the octopus like tentacles of the omniscient insurance industry, represented in past commercials by characters called Harry and Louise, Congress has nullified any proposed health care program rather than fight off the heavily endowed lobbyists who only want to preserve their turf and the current profitable businesses they advise and feed off. Your health and welfare never enter their thoughts or business decisions, despite their syrupy disclaimers to the contrary.

            Following the misguided efforts of Congress, former president Clinton, had allowed health care to be determined by the marketplace. The Bush II administration is only interested in exponentially enhancing the bottom lines of the industries already profiting from our health care system. Lower health care costs, improve diet, cut out fat? Fugeddaboudit!!

            Rather than root out the cause of the exploding health care crisis, the politicians have opted for the easier way out, put a Band-Aid on the wound, take two aspirins, and don't call your congressman in the morning. Rather than eliminate fee-for-service that cleans out your wallet, insurance coverage, and union benefits, the government is enabling the marketplace to dictate health care reform. Will that produce better health care? Not until managed care, in its many forms, takes over the market. Until then, only those who provide the included benefits will benefit. The doctors, pharmaceutical corporations, insurance companies, and other ancillary businesses involved in administering whatever health care remains after the political surgeons cut the program to shreds.