US Health Care

While everyone else, on both sides of the aisle, rant and rave, one way or another about Sonia Sotomayor as the next Justice on the Supreme Court, I'm going to let them and go on to something different, if not more important.

And that is, as you see above, health care in America.

I've said for a long time, the way we need to fix health care in the US is to take the gross, ridiculous profits out of it, the way the rest of virtually all of the world has so it's more a right instead of a privilege.

We're the only people on the planet that do it this way, ours is the most expensive, we don't have the highest mortality rates and yet Americans have been convinced ours is the only and best system to distribute health care.

Insane. Insanity. Fools.

Anyway, as I write this, I saw, a few days ago, some writing by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship that asks the question: "How can we expect an industry that profits from disease and sickness to police itself?"

Followed by this note: "The health care industry has spent $134 million on lobbying this year to keep its profits high and public health in the shadows."

And it is crazy.

Why would we even expect them to be involved in the conversation? They're only going to have one answer, again and again, and that is to either NOT CHANGE anything about the current system or, at worst, to change it as little as posssible from its current form.

They'll be thrashing about all over, saying how horrible it will be to change virtually anything about our health care system.

They'll say the same things they always do--

--"We have the finest and best health care system in the world" (we don't)

--"In Canada and Europe, you have to wait for hours or days to see a doctor" (you don't)

--"In the rest of the world, you can't see the doctor you want" (yes, you can and in the US, for lots of us, we can't--and we know it)

And more.

But it's all just rubbish.

We have the MOST EXPENSIVE health care system IN THE WORLD;

We are not the healthiest group of people on the planet;

Millions of us in this country are going WITHOUT health care, because it's so expensive;

The numbers of us that are going without health care in the US is growing--the situation is getting worse;

The doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, insurance company executives, pharmaceutical companies and their executives are all GETTING RICH, on the backs of the working people of this country, just so we can have health care--and that's an insane, unsupportable, unsustainable outrage.

We need to change the health care system in America.

We need to change it radically.

We will need to fight the health care, insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital corporations and lobbyists TOOTH AND NAIL, so to speak, to get a good, smart, workable system for us all, instead of for them.

They shouldn't even be let into the conversation, frankly.

There needs to be an organized riot, of sorts, by us, regarding health care in America.

We need to be strong. We need to be forceful. We need to push to make this happen.

Frankly and sadly, I don't think the American people have the stomach for it.

I don't even think the average American on the street knows we have a problem.

I salute Bill Moyers and Michael Winship for trying to educate us.

Link to story:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140226/bill_moyers%3A_how_can_we_expect_an_industry_that_profits_from_disease_and_sickness_to_police_itself/