The Bogus Health Care Debate

For the last six months, I have experienced the pathetic American health care system up close and personal while my father has been ill.  The whole system is failing.  I listen to the alleged debates by our legislators and think that it is all nonsense.  They all have health insurance, the best in the country.  So many people have nothing.  But you know what?  None of it matters.  Even if you have the best insurance, if you have no continuity in your care you have nothing.  If you have no family advocating on your behalf, you have no chance.  It is not that the doctors, nurses, technicians, don't care.  It is that the system is designed so that they can't care for the patients adequately.  They don't have time.  Their hands are tied by the financial constraints placed upon them by regulations, by insurance companies, and it is killing us.  I can no longer stand to hear this fiction that we have the best health care system in the country.  We don't.  Our infant mortality rate is lower than any other industrialized country.  Our life expectancy is not increasing at the rate of other industrialized countries.  When you look at the objective evidence our system is failing.  

We need change now, major change, not incremental change.  This is not an abstract argument, it is based in fact.  I also think about those who claim that the government should not be running our health care system, but it is already.  Is it any better or worse than all the insurance companies running it?  I do not trust either, but I trust the insurance companies less.  The financial incentive to deny care is too great.  

Also, for years I have been watching as I and so many others do not start businesses and do not take risks for fear of losing health coverage for me and my family.  Wouldn't our economy be that much more dynamic if people knew that no matter where they worked they would have health care for themselves and their families?  Wouldn't more people start businesses?  Wouldn't it give more people the option to stay home with small children?  Wouldn't our health in this country be better and, thus, make workers more productive?

Our system makes no sense and is not helping us stay healthy.  We take more medication per capita than any other industrialized country.  The drug companies own us.  We are constantly subjected to bizarre advertising that names diseases and conditions that we've never heard of.  Millions and billions spent so we will request these drugs from our doctors.  Millions more spent to influence our doctors to prescribe these drugs.  

Several years ago I read a comprehensive biography of Eleanor Roosevelt's first years in the White House and her efforts on Social Security which in its original form included nationalized health insurance.  All the same arguments were made then that are being made now.  We need an Eleanor Roosevelt to champion this cause.  Unfortunately, Hilary Clinton couldn't get it done in 1993.  Maybe Michelle Obama can do it in 2009.