National Healthcare

There is so much fear and anger about President Obama’s call for healthcare reform in this country. The “Party of No & Status Quo” wants us to believe that things are just fine. No need to change a thing. Doctors in large practices with vested interests in expensive test equipment businesses are doing just fine. Drug manufacturers who pass on their cost of research and development to American consumers so they can offer discount prices to the rest of the world could not be better. Large insurance companies that can raise their premiums at will, “cherry pick” those customers with the least risk and exclude ones with preexisting conditions are doing very well. What’s to change? They are happy with the way things are. Big business is happy. Why rock the boat?

It will cost the taxpayers billions! And do we want the federal government running our healthcare? Look at the countries that have government run healthcare, like Canada and England. Hell, we have enough problems with doctors getting paid for current Medicare and Medicaid patients! We have heard it all before…all the problems, all the fear, all the reasons why we can’t provide affordable healthcare in one of the greatest countries of the world.

I say, how can we NOT provide affordable healthcare for our citizens? Our congressmen and senators have one of the best healthcare plans in the world, yet they choke at the thought of spending billions on healthcare for the rest of us. They can pass bills to fund two wars on the other side of the world. They give billions of dollars to bailout the banks, AIG, GM and Chrysler but when it comes to the rest of us…let the free market prevail. Let us be at the mercy of the large health insurance corporations and their cherry picking. Let us pay the highest price for life-saving medicine that the rest of the world gets for only a fraction of the cost. Let the hospital costs of those who cannot afford insurance continue to be passed on to our hospital bills and the cost of our care. Leave us to the profit-driven practitioners and big business in a system that no longer works for most Americans living from paycheck to paycheck. The rich and powerful will always have their healthcare, but as for the rest of us, we are one major illness, one more premium increase away from disaster. We cannot go on with such a broken system.

As I understand it, President Obama’s plan would put in place a Public Healthcare Option at an affordable premium. It would compete with (not eliminate) private insurance plans. There would be no exclusions for preexisting conditions, no “cherry picking” and it would be available even if you just lost your job (unlike COBRA insurance which is expensive and only lasts for 18 months). His plan would have the ability to negotiate much better prices with the big drug companies. He would help fund this plan by reducing the cost of overhead (no highly paid CEO’s with golden parachutes) and administration of paperwork by using uniform electronic forms and filing. Doctors would be rewarded for the outcome of each patient’s health, not by the number of tests they can prescribe (whether needed or not).

Yes, we can keep the system we have…or we can make it better, more competitive, more efficient and more affordable. Find out what’s going on and contact your congressmen and senators. This may be our last chance to get real healthcare reform. The time is NOW.

FOOD for THOUGHT...