Let's call it what it is: Wealthcare

Let's not call what we have in America "health care" any longer. Let's be honest.

It's "wealthcare"--health care for anyone and everyone with money.

That's what we have and it's getting worse.

There is a terrific, front-page article in The Kansas City Star today that shouldn't be overlooked, partly because the Star can't do that many insightful articles any more, what with their much-reduced staff but also because it gives great, cutting-edge information on yet another new wrinkle in our health care system.

It's called "concierge medicine" and if you assume that, because it has a French name it's more expensive, you'd be correct.

It works like this: You pay, say, $1,000.00 up front, PER MONTH--that already puts most of us out of this option--then approximately $125.00 more per month. For that you get virtually unlimited access to your own personal family physician.

Want to see him or her that day? Sure.

Need to see him or her that evening? No problem.

For that much money, it shouldn't be a surprise.

Get this--the doctors still recommend you carry insurance, on top of these costs, of course, to cover "hospital visits and specialist's care."

Sure, it's terrific, personal coverage but at what a cost. Holy cow.

Understandably, as it says in the article, doctors are going crazy with our current system of health care because it pays them for procedures. This means that, the busier they are, the more they get paid so the more their practice gets paid.

Let me repeat a familiar refrain: This is no way to run a health care system.

It's crazy.

It's paying the doctors to just fix problems after the fact, instead of helping us all stay healthy ahead of time.

But as long as we keep going back in and paying our insurance premiums, and the doctors work like little rats in a cage and the clinics and hospitals keep their costs down--by denying care, frequently, and minimizing treatments and reducing the amount of time a patient sees a doctor and the amount of time we're actually healing in the hospital--then the system works great.

Except not at all.

This is another, gross extension of this crazy system that's been created here in the US since the 60's, when corporations have taken over health care.

All they see and want is money and profits and the more and bigger, the better.

This makes health care even more a matter of good health for the wealthy and little or nothing for the middle- and lower-classes.

It provides further proof that our system is grossly broken.

We need both the single-payer option so there is only one form for all care--instead of the 1300 different forms there are now, one for each insurance company in the country--and we need the "public option" for health insurance to keep costs for coverage much lower.

At best, with the proposals now going through Congress, we may get the public option. Hopefully, it won't be too watered-down as to be meaningless.

Push for reform, folks.

We need it badly and it will help all of us.

Just not the insurance companies.

Then go read this article in The Kansas City Star, if you haven't already. You need to know what's going on.


Link to original story: http://www.kansascity.com/746/story/1513257.html

Article on "Wealthcare" from The New Republic:
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/wealthcare-0

And go here, to The New Republic, for a large selection of articles on our current health care status: http://www.tnr.com/blogs/the-treatment