Saturday, June 13, 2009

Decent health care for everyone or third world country ?

The first line of the constitutions states that it was established and ordained to promote the general welfare, among other purposes. If health care isn't the general welfare, what is? We need a strong public investment in health care for all Americans, or this country will no longer be the great beacon of hope and freedom we love.
The health care industry, along with the military industrial complex, is draining vast resources that could be going to education, scientific research, and public works that benefit and advance our society. How much of that money is siphoned off to go to insurance companies? Insurance companies provide no health care. They solely exist to make a profit and the only way they can do that, is to restrict access to health care. Providers must pay a large percentage of their income to workers who do nothing but deal with all the paperwork involved in filing claims to all the different companies. Consumers pay vast sums of money to insurance companies who ration their health care. Doctors don't decide what you need. The insurance companies tell doctors what you may have.
What a waste.
Our lack of a decent system of efficient health care puts us at risk the next time a virulent pandemic appears. And it will. History tells us that disease is as likely to bring down a culture as invasion. Ask the Incas and the other Native Americans who were conquered by the smallpox virus and the measles virus which decimated their populations and allowed them to be subjugated by Europeans.
Look at the black death, which forever altered the structure of medieval society.
If we work together as a nation, we can do this. We can develop a real, health care system and conserve our resources.
Or we can go the route of greed and corruption, of division and fear, and finally, the end of the American dream.
It ain't looking good.